Xiaomi's Mi Band 2 Fitness Tracker Featuring OLED Display Launched at $23 (cnet.com)

Chinese technology conglomerate Xiaomi has unveiled the Mi Band 2, the second iteration of its fitness tracking band. The tracker features an OLED display -- which is touted as resistant to scratches and fingerprints, and helps the wearer track time, notifications, heart rate, calories burned, and number of steps taken among other things. The company says that Mi Band 2 can function for 20 days on a single charge. It is priced at $23. It is currently only available to purchase in China, but the company says it will be launching the wearable in other regions as well. To recall, Xiaomi has already begun selling some of its products in the United States.

Venture Capitalist Bryce Roberts said: "$23. If you're thinking of doing a consumer hardware startup let that sink in a bit."

Comments

poor marketing and confusion management

[supernova87a]

Yes, thank you Xiaomi for helping me understand that there are reasonably priced pulse sensors and wearable sleep monitoring bands out there (and these even alert you when your phone is ringing). For that I am grateful I don't have to spend $100 on a silly Fitbit or even more for an Apple Watch.

But the thing that Xiaomi needs badly is someone to manage the brand understanding and confusing proliferation of Xiaomi band models that they're offering.

If you try to buy one of these things, I challenge you not to be bewildered by:
-- Mi Band
-- Mi Band Pulse
-- Mi Band Original
-- Mi Band 1S

This is made worse by the slew of websites that sell these things with poorly explained feature differences between all of them, have pretty different pricing of similar looking bands to the point that you're not sure which one you're getting. You have to admit, Apple does some things much better...

Re:Software

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm willing to forgive an awful lot if I can start and stop the thing, see current, and get to the data. Really, anything important I'm going to calculate post-hoc on a spreadsheet.

Before I'd spend $23 or $230 I'm going to need to see some calibration testing, though. Fitbit is in a bit of a shitstorm now because they've admitted that their HR's aren't all that accurate (14% off, IIRC). They've released a statement that they're not to be used as scientific instruments.

I want a new HR tracker for interval training. 14% off is a matter of me doing fairly serious injury to myself, or not getting the benefits of interval training. I don't get why accuracy is such an afterthought in these devices. For now, I'll keep using the annoying one with the chest strap because it's less annoying than winding up in the ER because I exceeded my max HR by 25 bpm.

Re:slave labor + no environmental laws

[110010001000]

Apple uses slave labor and has no environmental laws where they are building their stuff. So why no cheap prices? You guys don't get it: all the stuff is made in China.