Buying a new fitness tracker? The Xiaomi Smart Band 7 and Huawei Band 7 are two affordable options with more similarities than differences.
After its launch in China as Mi Band 7, Xiaomi Now launching its latest fitness tracker in global markets as Xiaomi Smart Band 7, and it will compete with Huawei Band 7 for users’ wrists. Xiaomi and Huawei are two of China’s most popular tech companies, but the latter was the bigger of the two. No thanks to the US ban, which significantly affected its business, Xiaomi and other Chinese brands including Oppo and Vivo have now overtaken it in the smartphone segment.
Despite shrinking smartphone market share, Huawei’s other businesses continued to grow. It is still a market leader in the wearable segment and has produced new designs frequently. This year alone, it announced no less than three smartwatches, including the Watch GT Runner, which is officially available in Canada.
Huawei Band 7 and Xiaomi Smart Band 7 are easily distinguishable. Huawei has opted for a design that closely resembles a smartwatch, while the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 sticks to the familiar fitness tracker pill-like design. This design choice of the Huawei Band 7 means that while users can swap out the straps, the color of the watch remains unchanged, unlike the Xiaomi Smart Band 7, which has a replaceable strap that wraps around it. Both garments have a water resistance rating of 5 ATM, making them suitable for swimming and wearing in the rain.
Two weeks of battery life at all levels
The display is the first significant difference between Xiaomi Smart Band 7 and Huawei Band 7. Xiaomi’s fitness tracker has a 1.62-inch AMOLED display with 192 x 490 resolution. It also gets quite bright , with a brightness level of up to 500 nits and its tempered glass has an anti-fingerprint coating. In contrast, the Huawei Band 7 has a smaller (but wider) 1.47-inch AMOLED display with a 194 x 368 resolution. always-on display like the Xiaomi Smart Band 7. Owners will be spoiled for choice in terms of watch faces to choose from, with over 100 available for the Xiaomi Band. and over 4,000 for Huawei’s fitness tracker.
Both wearables support automatic heart rate and blood oxygen level monitoring and alert users when their heart rate or blood oxygen level goes out of the safety zone. Plus, there’s support for sleep tracking and stress monitoring with breathing exercises. However, only the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 supports female health tracking, while the Huawei Band 7 has reminders for water intake and medication. When it comes to activity tracking, Xiaomi has pulled out all the stops as the Smart Band 7 supports over 110 sports modes with detailed analysis that includes training load, recovery, and maximum oxygen uptake. (VO2Max).
The Huawei Band 7 supports 97 sports modes which are impressive but still fall short of what Xiaomi’s fitness tracker is capable of. It also provides detailed metrics such as running ability index, VO2Max, recovery time, and training effect. Unfortunately, neither has a built-in GPS chip for location tracking. They must therefore rely on the GPS chip of the connected device. The Huawei Band 7 connects via Bluetooth 5.0 and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, while the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 connects via Bluetooth 5.2. In terms of battery life, it’s a tie as they both offer up to two weeks of battery life on a single charge in typical usage mode. This drops to nine days for the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 and 10 days for the Huawei Band 7 in intensive use mode. Other features common to both devices are app and call notifications, Find My Phone, and support for playback controls. The Xiaomi Band 7 is available to buy in the UK for £44.99 and in Europe for €49.99, while the Huawei Band 7 is priced at £49.99 in the UK and €59.99 € in Europe. Based on their features, the two are almost on par, and buyers should be okay with either of the two they choose. However, the slightly cheaper price may skew people towards the Xiaomi Smart band 7.
Source: Xiaomi, Huawei
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