This is the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro and it’s a bit bigger and a bit better than its predecessor.
It ships with a magnetically attached charger and a handsome TPU strap – our light gray model. The band is already on sale in Europe, priced at €70.
This model looks a lot like the Smart Band 7 Pro it succeeded but offers some quality-of-life improvements. For starters, the display is bigger – it’s 1.74-inches, up from 1.64-inches and slightly sharper at 336ppi. And the panel is 100 nits brighter at 600 nits.
The battery is about 20% bigger.
Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro runs Xiaomi’s proprietary OS. It’s easy to use – a swipe from the right brings up the settings toggle, the left brings up different screen panels, a swipe from the bottom brings up the apps grid, and a swipe from the top brings up notifications.
The band is well organized. It’s made of high-strength fiber polymer but you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for metal because it’s coated with what’s called a non-conductive vacuum metallization coating to look like metal.
The glass on top of the display is Gorilla Glass 3. You can take the smart band swimming with you, thanks to 5ATM resistance. That equates to 50 meters but Xiaomi has a list of precautions if you want to test the water resistance – no hot showers or saunas and remember that resistance can decrease over time.
