Xiaomi Smart Band 10 Review: Déjà vu

You can also wear the Smart Band 10 as a fashion accessory thanks to the wide variety of bands available. There's also a mode that allows you to wear the tracker as a necklace (Necklace mode, unsurprisingly), and you can also set it in pebble mode and stick it in your shoe or strap it to your ankle to give you some insights about your running form.

The silicone band uses a plastic pin to snap in place, and it's sometimes quite hard (just like with the previous mode) to make it work – you have to push hard until you hear a little click. It's plastic against rubber, and the friction makes fastening the strap not the easiest thing to do.

Xiaomi Smart Band 10 Display

Moving to the display, we find that something has actually changed since the previous generation. I remember nagging about the chin of the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 being too big and not symmetrical. Well, now the bezel around the display of the Xiaomi Smart Band 10 is much thinner, and it's absolutely symmetrical.

The screen itself has grown to 1.72 inches, compared to the 1.62 of the previous model, and all this has been achieved by shrinking the bezel (both devices are the same size). The resolution has been upgraded as well to 212x520 pixels (from 192x490) to maintain the 326 PPI pixel density.

The last model was able to shine with up to 1,200 nits under the summer sun, and the new Xiaomi Smart Band 10 brings that number to 1,500 nits. You have always-on mode and automatic brightness adjustment, and the result is just great – it's a very bright and crisp display, especially when you factor in the price of the Smart Band 10. Impressive!

There's a ton of watch faces to choose from (200+), and you can also customize them or make one of your own.

Smart features, fitness, and health tracking

The lack of physical buttons on the Xiaomi Smart Band 10 might be a little strange at first, but once you're familiar with the tapping and swiping, the navigation becomes very easy. A tap on the screen wakes it up, a swipe down brings notifications, and a swipe up takes you to the menu. Swiping right takes you to the settings, and swiping left cycles through the different widgets.

In terms of smartness, the Smart Band 10 will show you notifications but you can't type an answer. You can use the band to find your phone, light the screen up to act as a flashlight, activate the camera on your phone and take a picture, check your calendar, set an alarm or a timer, and that's pretty much all the smart features you're getting.

There's an integration with Xiaomi's Smart Hub, meaning you can control various IoT devices from the band, but it's a niche use case scenario that I wasn't able to test.

When it comes to sports tracking, there's one innate disadvantage the Smart Band 10 comes with. Even though you can track over 150 activities, including 6 auto-detected, there's no built in GPS, so you need to bring your phone with you for maximum accuracy.

When it comes to health tracking, you have the optical heart-rate and SpO2 sensor to take care of deciphering your overall health.

You can set the band to continuously track your heart rate and SpO2 or leave it in smart mode to conserve battery. There are also stress measurements that take into account heart rate variability to guess if you're doing something stressful or you're in peace.

Sleep tracking uses the same sensors to give you the usual sleep stages, coupled with advice on how to improve your sleep. After a couple of nights you're assigned a sleep animal. The usual caveat applies here – sleep tracking is not very accurate on most wearables but can give you an overall idea of your sleep habits, times you woke up and other sleep disturbances.

Battery life and charging

The battery size has remained unchanged from the previous generation. It's the same 233 mAh battery inside that, coupled with the efficient AMOLED display and humble processor, can get you through days and days of use.

Xiaomi promises up to 21 days on a single charge without always-on, but who would use these gadgets with a dark, blank screen? With always-on activated, the longevity comes down to 9 days, and in my experience, you can get a week easily, wearing the band to sleep and tracking several activities that week.

The charging is still a bit annoying, as it uses a magnetic 2-pin connector that's a pain to attach, but I get the cost-cutting measures; you can't get wireless charging on such an affordable device and keep the price down.

Conclusion

The Xiaomi Smart Band 10 is an evolution. The sheer fact that we're well into the tenth generation of that device goes to show how successful it has been.

Xiaomi has kept the winning formula intact – the compact, lightweight and affordable tracker – but upgraded it where it counts. The screen is bigger and brighter, and the bezels are now thinner, making the Smart Band 10 stylish and refined.

The lack of GPS is the biggest drawback, as you have to bring your phone with you for reliable tracking, and, of course, you don't get the same level of "smartness" as a full-blown smartwatch, but in most cases people default to using just the core features of a smartwatch in a couple of weeks anyway.

If you want something cheap, reliable and stylish that can last days on a single charge, the Xiaomi Smart Band 10 is a great choice.