Xiaomi Mi Band Won’t Track Your Afternoon Naps

Last year Xiaomi introduced the Mi Band fitness tracker. It is a simple tracker with standard features but what really set itself apart from the competition was its price, where it was priced at roughly $13 when it went up for sale, putting it head and shoulders above the competition as far as value for money was concerned.

However recently the folks at BGR India have discovered a “flaw” in the wearable and that is it does not track your sleep during the day. One of the features of the Mi Band is its sleep tracker, but as it turns out the sleep tracker works only at night. This means that if you take naps during the day it won’t record it. If you’re someone who works a night shift, say goodbye to proper recordings too.

Now this isn’t so much a bug but rather a feature. According to Xiaomi, this is because the Mi Band relies on a passive sleep tracker that only activates the feature at a certain time, versus active sleep trackers that requires the user to activate it manually. Apparently this is one of the reasons why the Mi Band has such a long battery life (30 days according to the company).

According to Xiaomi’s Jai Mani, “It does not enter sleep mode during the day in order to prevent sleep sessions while you are just inactive. We believe this approach results in a better experience than active sleep trackers — it tracks the vast majority of sleep sessions without any effort on your part.”

This may or may not be a dealbreaker for some users depending on your needs, but if you’re the type that has a regular sleep schedule and you’re not too fussed about data collection in your mid-day naps, then we reckon this should not be an issue. In the meantime a recent report has pegged Xiaomi as being the world’s second largest wearables vendor behind Fitbit.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: Fitness, mi band, Wearable Tech, Xiaomi