However, its performance might surprise you because, as weve seen, my previous videos, the price of a smartwatch, does not always reflect its quality in this video ill scientifically test. The smartband pro from a health tracking perspective – and i have to say for the price – the watch might be a good choice for quite some people. Ill first show you the things it was good at then ill, move on to the things that were mediocre and ill. Close off with the things that did not do so well for those of you that are new to the channel, my name is rob and im a postdoctoral scientist specializing in biological data analysis in this video well test the heart rate, monitoring, sleep tracking oxygen, saturation measurements And step counting of the redmi smartband pro will also compare to some of the other smartwatches ive tested in the past. First, let me share the most important background information on this watch on the surface. Theres a lot to like about it. The prices vary, but i bought it for an equivalent of about 50, which is surprisingly cheap. The display of the watch is quite beautiful and comes in at 1.47 inches. The watch has no physical buttons, but the touchscreen is really responsive and easy to use, compared, for instance, to the original mi watch light which had a similar looking menu. The touch capabilities of the redmi smartpen pro are much improved. The smart man pro is pretty light.
Weighing just 15 grams and as is true for most modern smartwatches, its waterproof up to 5 atmospheres, the watch has many of the features weve come to expect from smart bands and smart watches. It has 24 hour heart rate monitoring. It can measure your blood oxygen, saturation or spo2, and it tracks your sleep stages and sleep quality. The band also claims to monitor your stress levels. Now. I wont test that feature in this video, but i personally have some doubts about his accuracy and usefulness. I couldnt find a real description of how this works, but on reddit and quora people mentioned it was likely based on heart rate, variability honestly, i cant say much more without proper testing and more information, but my gut feeling is that the technology and algorithms underlying this Stress monitoring feature of the smartband pro still need to be developed further. One other feature that could prove valuable for women is the female health tracking, where the band predicts and tracks the transitions of the female cycle stages as redmi calls it now. I should mention that the smartphone pro does not include a temperature sensor which does likely limit the accuracy of such a feature. The app used for the smartpen pro is the xiaomi wear app on android and the xiaomi wear lite app on iphone. The app is pretty basic, but works fine for the most part. I honestly, like the original mi, fit app better and i dont really understand why they insist on filling half of your starting screen with some random avatar, but it works fine for a few months now.
The app also includes travel integration and the app also connects to apple health, especially this strava integration is super helpful, though i did notice that if i started a gps exercise without taking my phone with me, these activities would not be synced to strava. So be aware of that, however, on this channel, we like to put health features to the test. Lets start by looking at the features that perform best in my testing and close off with the things smart bend. Pro did not do so well, and one simple thing the watching to do particularly well is step counting to test the step counting accuracy. I went out and took exactly 4 000 steps while wearing the smart band pro now, since i do not like counting 4 000 steps in my head, i manually counted each step using this tele counter. I actually counted my steps in four segments of 1000 steps. Switching the tele counter between my left and right hand, which is what the left and right labels refer to here, and i want a smart band pro on my right arm now. These numbers right here are the steps counted for each of the four segments by the smart band pro. As you can see, the number of steps counted is super close to the actual 1000 steps i took. It was a maximum of only 7 steps off, which means its really amongst the best step, counts, ive tested so far.
To put it into perspective. Here are the steps counted by the huawei, ygt runner and huawei washi t3 award. At the same time, as you can see, these watches are also pretty good at counting my steps, at least compared to some other devices, with a gt runner counting a maximum of 30 steps too many and the gt3 counting maximally 27 too much. However, the smartpen pro does even better than these two devices now this shows us how good the watch is at counting steps when it is supposed to count steps, but does it count any steps when its not supposed to count steps with that i mean: does it Count any steps when doing other activities that do not involve walking like cycling indoors or outdoors or while tapping on my computer. Well, it also appears to be pretty good on that front as im writing the script for this video ive been working on my computer for about six hours and i havent really done much except for walk around my apartment and so far today the watch counted 381 Steps which is around what i would have expected, so that means it does not appear to count steps from the movements i made with my arms. While i was typing also looking at the steps counted over the last few days, i can see that, whilst working out on my home trainer or when cycling outside it did not count many steps, which is good, it actually counted zero steps while cycling on my home Trainer and around 178 around the period i was cycling outside, but is included, walking from my apartment to my bike, which likely accounts for most of the steps.
The step counting appears to be very good on the smartband pro so based on the data ive collected. So far, id get the step counting of the smartphone pro 5 out of 5 stars. The next thing the watch was okay to mediocre at is heart rate tracking ill show you the results of the heart rate tracking test during spinning cycling and weight lifting to do that ill. Compare the heart rate measurements of the smartpen pro against the polar h10 ecg chest strap, which can generally record my heart rate very accurately, well start by looking at the easiest type of exercise for a watch to track cycling indoors. Now this involves very little movement or tension on my arms and will therefore produce less noise. Here we see an overview of that accuracy. Each dot here has a single heart rate measurement, with along the horizontal axis, the value according to the polar h10 ecg chest strap and on the vertical axis, the value. According to the smart man, pro the darker black, the color, the more dots there are in a certain area and, as you can see, theres a pretty good agreement between the hg chest strap and the smart band pro. As most points are along the blue line. However, theres this weird group of points below the blue line right here, this indicates that while i actually had a high heart rate, the watch detected too low heart rate. That is because, for one out of the four indoor cycling sessions i tested it.
It really struggled to keep track of my heart rate here. I displayed that particular indoor cycling session along the horizontal axis. We have the time and my heart rate is along the vertical axis. In blue, i plotted my heart rate. According to the polar h10 hd, chest, strap and then red is my heart rate. According to the smart man pro, as you can see, especially during the second part of this training, it really detected a much too low heart rate. However, the other three indoor cycling sessions were much better like this one right here, for instance, you can see that the red line and the blue line overlapped almost perfectly indicating that the smartman pro detected about the same heart rate as it just trapped. We see mostly the same thing for this session right here. It sometimes has a small delay in picking up a decrease in my heart rate, as you can see right here and right here, but overall, its pretty good, and we see the same thing for this last training session right here, with a pretty good overlap between both Devices to me it seems like the single training session, the redmi smart band pro showed an issue might be due to a sub optimal position of the watch. On my wrist, i generally take quite some care in wearing the watch tightly and high enough on the wrist, but it might just be that the smartmen pro is particularly sensitive to this still for the price.
I would say that this watch did pretty well during cycling indoors. However, lets now take the testing up a notch, its much harder for watches to track my heart rate, accurately, while cycling outside, because, while cycling outside is much more movement and bumpiness and also much more tension on my wrist making it harder for the watch to detect. My heart rate, if we look at the overview of that accuracy, we indeed see that theres a much larger deviation of the points away from the blue line, especially with many measurements ending up below the blue line. This indicates that smartbandpro performed less well during cycling outside and tends to detect too low heart rate and thats. Also what we see looking at the individual rides during this ride. For instance, we see that the watch quite often detected the two low heart rate and was not able to keep up with the increases. In my heart rate, some rides were a bit better like this one right here, for instance, though generally it does tend to miss a lot of the increases in my heart rate like we can see during this ride right here. So when theres more movement and tension on my arms, the smart band pro begins to struggle what about during weight lifting which is the most difficult for watches, given a very strong tension on my wrist and arms? Well, that is not something i would recommend you use. The smartband pro for, as you can see here each time i do a set, my heart rate increases, but the smartband pro is not able to detect this only in between sets when theres no tension on my arms is the watch able to track my heart rate During this weightlifting session, right here, its even worse with the watch not able to track my heart rate for the majority of the training session, so for stationary cardio exercises, the watch appears to do quite okay as heart rate tracking.
However, as the movement and tension on my wrist begins to increase, the watch really struggles, so overall id give the heart rate tracking of the smartvent pro 3 out of 5 stars now lets move on to the next type of measurements. The watch was ok at spo2 or oxygen saturation measurements, whereas the heart rate is generally measured with green light. Red and infrared light are used to measure oxygen saturation over the last weeks. I measured my oxygen saturation at ground level in the morning and evening using the smartband pro. At the same time, i also recorded my oxygen saturation using a dedicated fingerprint exhibitor at ground level. My oxygen saturation should be within my normal range, which is generally between 97 and 100, and should not fall below roughly 95 before moving to the results. If this video is proving interesting to you, a sub to the channel and a like, or a comment on, this video would be amazing. Now back to the results on the left. Here are ‘ measurements taken with the smartband pro and on the right matching measurements taken with the fingerprint exhibitor. As you can see, the smartband pro is within a normal range of spo2 values. About 90 of the time i would say, however, there are a few low measurements and in general it does tend to detect relatively low values compared to the fingerprint exhibitor. Still, as i said, most values are within that normal range that you would expect at ground level to be sure of the spo2 accuracy of the smartband pro id have to test the oxygen saturation in a low auction environment.
At some point, still, as far as i can judge, the spo2 measurements taken by the smartphone pro are mostly in a realistic range. Most of the time, though, on the low end so id give the spo2 measurements 3 out of 5 stars next lets. Take a look at the thing i found the smartband pro to be worse, sleep stage tracking now, thats, not to say that the sleep tracking of the smartphone pro is not useful at all. It does have its uses, but ill get to that later to check. If the smartbrand pro can detect my sleep stages, ill, compare it to an eeg device, called the dream: 2 headband that can actually measure my brain waves and has been shown to be relatively reliable at sleep stage tracking. Here i show an overview of those sleep test results for getting an overall impression of how well the smart band pro performs. The dream 2 headband should likely be good enough. However, the gold standard would be balasonography, which i would also like to try on smartband pro. In the future, now on top are the sleep stages, as recorded by the eeg device and on the left are the sleep stages, as recorded by the smartbend pro, our both the eeg device and the smart band pro to bet for 10 nights, and i will see How close the predictions of the smartpen pro are to those of the eeg device? Now each column here sums to 100, meaning that we can see what percentage of each of the sleep stages.
According to the dream, 2 was predicted as the sleep stage by the smartband pro. If they perfectly agree, all values along the diagonal should be 100 percent. First of all, we see that 85 percent of what was deep sleep according to the eeg device, was also recorded. As deep sleep by the smart man pro, which is pretty good, if it did occasionally disagree, this is mostly with the smart band pro predicting it as light sleep at about nine percent, but also as rem sleep for about seven percent of the deep sleep. According to the eeg device, for this example knight right here, we see that all of the deep sleep the eeg device detected was also marked as deep steep by the smartband pro now just to explain what you see here. On top, we have the sleep stage. According to the dream, 2eg headband, with the clock time along the horizontal axis and the sleep stages on the vertical axis on the bottom, we have a similar plot. But now for the smartpen pro ive highlighted all the eeg recorded deep sleep in purple. Here and again, as you can see, the smartband pro detected all of the deep sleep that the eeg device detected, but it also detected quite a bit of extra deep sleep throughout the night and we see the same thing for this second example night right here, where Basically, all of the deep sleep i had was detected, but a lot of extra deep sleep was also detected when it comes to light sleep detection.
This seems to be okayish light. Sleep agreed with the eeg device at only about 50 percent. If they did disagree. This is mostly with the smartpen pro predicting it as deep sleep now ram sleep agreed really poorly between the eeg device and the smartband pro only 20 percent of what the eeg device marked ram. Sleep was also marked as ram sleep by the smartband pro. A larger percentage of what was ram sleep according to the eeg device was actually classified as lightly by the smartband pro at over 70 percent. The worst example night of ram sleep detection by the smart band pro – is this knight right here where it did not detect any ram sleep at all? So here in red, i marked a ram sleep according to the dream: 2 eeg headband and, as you can see, the smartband pro detected no rem sleep at all, except for this tiny sliver right here now. Some knights are a bit better like this one right here, where it at least detected some of the ram sleep, though the overlap with the eeg device is still not that great. You can see theres some overlap like right here here here and here, but it misses a lot of the rem sleep and it also predicts it in different moments. Now you go through roughly four to six sleep cycles, each night, each one, starting with light sleep and deep sleep which is marked here in blue and each one ending in rem.
Sleep marked here in red, as you can see, based on the data from the eeg device. I likely had four complete sleep cycles this night. However, because the ram sleep detection by the smartband pro does not seem great, i would judge that we cannot see the sleep cycles based on just the data from the smartband pro now. Awake detection showed a mediocre agreement with the eeg device at about 63 percent. If the smartphone pro did classify awake time as something else than the eeg device, this was mostly as light sleep. Now. This makes complete sense as light sleep is the closest sleep stage to being awake, as you can see here in green, some of the awakenings. According to the eeg device were also detected as awakenings by the smartband pro, though it does not agree all of the time and it also detected some extra awake moments. We mostly see something similar for this knight right here with the smartband pro detecting. Quite a few extra awakenings, so this indicates that the smartphone pro is likely not the best smartwatch when it comes to sleep stage tracking. However, it is important to put these results into perspective by comparing them to other watches. This graph shows an overview of the agreement of different watches with the eeg device along the horizontal axis. We have the average agreement over the four individual sleep stages and on the vertical axis we have the agreement of the worst sleep stage, the better the agreement, the more to the top right device is and, as you can see, the best agreeing devices with the eeg Device include different fitbits in this case the fitbit sends inspire 2 and charge 5, the whoop strap 3.
0 4.0 and the widthing sleep analyzer. If we now plot the smartband pro in the same plot, we see that it is mediocre at best when it comes to the overall sleep stage, tracking, with an average agreement over the four sleep stages of about 54 percent and as we saw before, because of the Bad rem, sleep agreement, its particularly low on the vertical axis as well. However, one thing should not be overlooked, as i mentioned before. I do think theres one good use for the sleep tracking of the smartband pro, namely tracking your total time spent in bed each night and also tracking when you fell asleep and when you woke up for many people. This can already be very helpful by keeping themselves accountable for getting enough sleep and sticking to a consistent sleep schedule and tracking when you fall asleep and when you wake up is something that the smartpen pro is quite good at along the vertical axis. Here we have the date of the night i tested the smartmen pro and on. The horizontal axis is the time difference between the smart band pro and the eeg device for waking up in yellow dots and falling asleep in blue dots. So positive number means that the smartphone pro detected me as waking up or falling asleep later than the eeg device and a negative number detecting me as waking up or falling asleep earlier. As you can see, over these nights, smartman pro agreed pretty well with the eeg device.
Just for one of the nights. It struggled quite a bit where it detected me as waking up too early and falling asleep too late. However, for the other nights, its never more than 12 minutes off and mostly degrees, very well, the eg device, generally sticking within about 5 minutes of the eeg devices predictions now. Based on these results, i would say that the sleep stage tracking of the smartband pro is not very good. The main thing i would use it for is tracking my total time in bed, since it does seem to be quite okay at detecting the moment. You fall asleep and a moment you wake up. Therefore, overall id get the sleep tracking of the smartband pro 2 out of 5 stars. However, i do think we have to take the price point of the redmi smartband pro into consideration when judging it, if it had cost the same as a high end, watch from garmin, polar or apple, for instance. I would not have been super positive about it. However, for about 50 dollars, you get a smart band that functions pretty well as a basic smartwatch. It has a pretty good touch screen with good step counting and what appears to be pretty okay oxygen, saturation measurements, the heart rate tracking is not great, but probably good enough for some basic activities like cycling. Indoor, the sleep tracking is also only good enough for detecting when you fall asleep and when you wake up and its not good enough to detect your actual sleep stages.
All of that being said for 50 dollars. That might actually be a good deal for people that only need and want the basics at only a fifth or tenth of the price of many other smartwatches. It could be an amazing deal if this is all that you need in the end, it really boils down to what you want to use it for and, of course, to be aware of its limitations overall id give this watch 3 out of 5 stars, but take Into counter price, i bumped it up by half a star to 3 and a half stars out of 5., as mentioned before the heart rate tracking of the redmi smartphone. Pro is only good enough for some basic tracking. If you care about hardware tracking during exercise im. Currently, testing the huawei watch gt runner, which is very similar to the huawei gt3, which has amazing heart rate tracking check out that video right here. The apple watch is still the undefeated heart rate king. If you want to see more, you can see videos on the apple watch right here ill also link the recent reviews. I did on many garmin watches right here now. I hope this video informed you about the strengths and limitations of the redmi smartband pro.jX4RRKqGSsc
