Interestingly, the Mi Fitness app will still point out your lowest HR from a particular 24-hour period, as shown above, and this was always very in tune with our Oura and Garmin. There are thankfully some insights that are a bit more useful, though, and they generally come from when the device is instead attached to your running shoe. Pebble Mode

Band 8 Active - Xiaomi UK Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Active - Xiaomi UK

Gone is the long-standing unibody design of older Mi Bands/Smart Bands, and in its place are now the more typical slot connections on each end.

Some, like Garmin and Oura, simply take your lowest heart rate reading from sleep, while others, like Xiaomi and Apple, instead look for your lowest reading when you’re in an awake and inactive state. An hour-long, aerobic run will see the Smart Band 8 advise taking the next 63 hours off to recover, meanwhile, and tag the workout as mostly anaerobic despite an average HR reading of 153. The Smart Band 8 is also capable of high and low heart rate notifications, though this is another feature that you’ll have to turn on manually.

Band 8 - Xiaomi UK Xiaomi Smart Band 8 - Xiaomi UK

It means swiping through menus and viewing graphics and stats is much smoother - and much more in line with what you would see from a smartwatch with a much loftier price tag. Features, OS and ecosystem The Smart Band 8’s battery capacity doesn’t take the same leap forward as we saw with its predecessor, but it is still bigger - and you can expect the newer device to be fairly long-lasting. For those planning to use the device in Pebble Mode, we should also note that our tests found that you’ll only lose around 5% of battery per hour of running.Even with just these two core changes, the Smart Band 8 appears to be one of the most significant upgrades in years - and that's before considering the cheaper price tag, slightly bigger battery, and refined screen. Steps are sometimes massively underreported compared to our other test devices - the Garmin Epix Pro (Gen 2) and Oura Gen 3 - while calorie burn estimates are also very unpredictable. Notifications may be a little cramped on that 1.64-inch display, and you still don’t have the ability to really do anything with them other than view, but they are at least customizable through the Mi Fitness app and come through reliably.