In 2022, the line between smartwatches and smart bands will be as thin as ever. It usually comes down to the ability to run third-party apps, make and receive calls, and have mobile data. The Mi Band 7 Pro is a smart band masquerading as a smartwatch that aims to further blur the gap between the form factor of a wristband and a watch.
You get a wider screen, built-in dual-frequency GPS, a battery rated for 12 days of mixed-use, and a few other extras. Is the price justified, are the extra features worth the premium, or should you stick with the non-Pro Smart Band 7? Let's check it out.
design
Our review unit came in ivory for a shade of off-white. It looked fine when new, but it picked up a lot of grime after a few days of use, especially on the bottom of the case. The case is made entirely of plastic, while the top half has a shiny metal lip around the display for added style. A welcome addition to the Pro model is the wider strap, which also features a buckle mechanism for a more secure fit, while the regular Band 7 has a hook clasp that's harder to secure over time and will loosen.
At 20.5 grams, the Band 7 Pro weighs 7 grams more than the Smart Band 7, but it's still ultra-light, and we found it suitable for all-day wear. You'll forget it's on your wrist after a few minutes, though the larger body tends to stand out more when wearing a long-sleeved shirt than the Smart Band 7 does. While the Band 7 Pro has a larger case, Xiaomi decided not to add any physical buttons, which we feel is a missed opportunity.
There is a larger 1.64-inch AMOLED display on the Band 7 Pro with a resolution of 280 x 456 pixels, a peak brightness of 500 nits, and 2.5D curved glass. The 326ppi display is sharp and offers 40% more horizontal screen space than the Band 7. The wider screen is especially useful on the watch face, since you'll likely have complications with nearly every noteworthy device and health indicator, and you'll also have easier-to-read notifications.
The Band 7 Pro also brings automatic brightness control, something you won't find on the Band 7. Always On Display (AOD) mode displays the time and date even when the screen is off, at the expense of battery life.
The Band 7 Pro is 5ATM water resistant, which means pool swimming sessions are handy. The strap is made of silicone and features a proprietary buckle mechanism. Xiaomi also offers more premium vegan leather options. There is no official IP rating for water or dust. The retail box comes with the Band 7 Pro and a proprietary two-pin magnetic charger that ends with a USB-A cable.
feature
Xiaomi packed all the health and fitness tracking features of the Band 7 onto the Band 7 Pro, including 24/7 heart rate monitoring as well as continuous SpO2 tracking, sleep, and stress monitoring. The new feature of the Band 7 Pro is the addition of a dual-frequency GNSS sensor, which supports GPS, QZSS, Beidou, Galileo, and GLONASS positioning, and can track running without pairing a mobile phone.
You can access exercise tracking for more than 110 activities, including on-device guided running sessions that combine walking and jogging with on-band instructions. Sadly, there are no recovery time recommendations or guided workouts for non-running sports. The Mi Fitness app can store up to a month of health and workout data, which you can export to share with friends or track your progress.
Xiaomi's Mi Fitness is your go-to for pairing and managing settings, watch faces, and everything else on your paired Android or iOS smartphone. The app's clean layout is spread across four dashboards -- Health, Workout, Devices, and Profiles -- which let you toggle settings and other features on the wrist.
Our international unit does not have NFC, while the Chinese unit supports contactless systems for payments and transport cards. You also can't take calls here, which is another glaring omission and something the competition offers at this price point. You can only talk to Amazon Alexa using the built-in microphone, although you have to set up the app on your phone and link it to the Band 7 Pro beforehand. Once you're all set, you can ask Alexa to set alarms, control appliances, and show you the weather forecast.
Xiaomi has an extensive list of watch faces on their Mi Fitness app, and you can store up to 7 watch faces at once on the Band 7 Pro, but the 5 preloaded are not replaceable, so you really only have two extra watch faces and one is quite limited time.
The vibration motor here is powerful in its default state and can be programmed through the menu for more powerful buzz settings. Other features include an alarm clock, timer, weather widget, music controls and Amazon Alexa, and a camera shutter for the paired phone.
Performance
Interface navigation on the Band 7 Pro is done with taps and swipes only, though I initially found myself looking for a physical button, as most smartwatches I've tested in the past usually have at least one button for the controls. The lock screen has a quick settings switch on the left, notifications above it, and a whopping 11 widgets on the right. Swiping up reveals the full app list, which can be organized in icon mode, with two rows of app icons next to each other, or list mode with larger icons.
Swiping through notifications can sometimes lag, especially if you have more messages. Band 7 Pro can store up to ten notifications before you need to clear the queue. Notification management in Band is largely inconsistent. If my phone is unlocked and near the band, I get an alert immediately, but when my phone is locked, it takes a few minutes to get the notification on the band.
I need to open the Mi Fitness app on my phone and manually resync the band several times. You can't directly reply to notifications from the band, nor can you get emoji previews, features that other similarly priced bands and watches offer.
The GPS connection on the Band 7 Pro is stable, and like other smart bands and watches, it takes a quick 5-10 seconds for the receiver to find your location outdoors. Once your location is locked, you get reliable coverage that works even in parks with lots of trees around you. Having built-in GPS on your wrist is nice, though the tracks recorded by the Band 7 Pro are still not as accurate as those on any recent smartphone or fancier smartwatch. The Band 7 Pro periodically shows me where I am across the street from my walk/run.
Running, cycling, and swim tracking get additional metrics like calories burned, cadence, stride length, and average heart rate. Swim Tracking Gets average SWOLF and average strokes for pool laps.
Heart rate and SpO2 measurements are on par with other fitness trackers from last year, meaning they show an accurate representation of fitness tracking but are by no means medical grade. The band collects these types of data in just a few seconds, which is better than some competitors that require you to wait a minute or take multiple readings.
Sleep tracking shows the exact time of falling asleep and waking up, and also shows average beats per minute (BPM), average SpO2 reading, and rapid eye movement (REM) for each sleep session. You can read your metrics right on the watch, which is a nice bonus.
One odd thing to be aware of is the slow firmware update process. Once I set up my Band 7 Pro with the Mi Health app, I got the update. Xiaomi did say that the update might take a while, but in my case, it took over an hour to download and install the firmware, something I've never had on any other wearable so far.
Battery Life
Xiaomi claims that the 235 mAh battery on the Band 7 Pro can last up to 12 days of typical use on a single charge. During the two-week test period, I managed seven days of usage, which included all features except the always-on display enabled, for at least three one-hour workouts per week. Just using GPS and fitness tracking consumes 10-12% per hour.
Lighter usage should hit the claimed 12-day value, though you'll sacrifice most of what the Band 7 Pro offers. Still, the regular Band 7 and its predecessors typically offer more than a week of use between charges, so if you want to keep your charges down, you should stick with one of these models. Fully charging the Band 7 Pro takes less than 60 minutes using the included proprietary 2-pin charger.
The Mi Smart Band 7 Pro is an excellent fitness tracker with a large display, all the features of the smaller Smart Band 7, and some notable improvements like a built-in GNSS receiver. You get 24/7 heart rate monitoring, continuous SpO2 tracking, stress, and sleep monitoring, and motion tracking for over 110 activities. Health tracking is fast and delivers solid data, as long as you're not using it for medical analysis, and fitness tracking is on par with other wearables we've seen in the past year.
The wider and slightly sharper AMOLED display here is excellent and more comfortable for reading notifications and navigating through the operating system compared to previous entries in the Xiaomi smart band series.
The Band 7 Pro looks and feels great on the wrist. You could easily mistake this for a better-quality smartwatch, and the lightweight build material and handsome strap make it easy to wear for days. Physical buttons or crown elements are great additions to your navigation UI when you don't want to tap the screen. The onboard dual-frequency GNSS tracking is a nice built-in feature that gets the job done, although it's not as accurate as the receivers on most smartphones.
However, we think the Band 7 Pro is overpriced in its current state and most users would be better off with the regular Mi Band 7 or a smartwatch in the €100 range. We can safely expect prices to drop in the coming months, making the Band 7 Pro an easy recommendation.