Picking up a new fitness tracker? The Xiaomi Smart Band 7 and the Huawei Band 7 are two affordable options with more similarities than differences.
After launching in China as the Mi Band 7, Xiaomi is now releasing its latest fitness tracker in global markets as the Xiaomi Smart Band 7, and it will be competing with the Huawei Band 7 for users’ wrists. Xiaomi and Huawei are two of China’s most popular tech companies, but the latter used to be the bigger of the two. No thanks to the U.S. ban, which has dramatically affected its businesses, Xiaomi and other Chinese brands, including Oppo and Vivo, have now overtaken it in the smartphone segment.
Despite its dwindling smartphone market share, Huawei’s other businesses have continued to grow. It is still a market leader in the wearable segment and has frequently churned out new models. This year alone, it has announced no less than three smartwatches, including the Watch GT Runner, which is officially available in Canada.
The Huawei Band 7 and Xiaomi Smart Band 7 are easily distinguishable. Huawei has gone for a design that closely resembles a smartwatch, while the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 sticks to the familiar fitness tracker pill-like design. This design choice of the Huawei Band 7 means that even though users can swap the straps, the watch’s color remains unchanged, unlike the Xiaomi Smart Band 7, whose replaceable band wraps around it. Both wearables have a 5 ATM water resistance rating, making them suitable for swimming and wearing in the rain.
Two Weeks Of Battery Life Across The Board
The display is the first and significant difference between the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 and the Huawei Band 7. Xiaomi’s fitness tracker has a 1.62-inch AMOLED screen with a 192 x 490 resolution. It gets pretty bright, too, with a brightness level of up to 500 nits and its tempered glass has an anti-fingerprint coating. In contrast, the Huawei Band 7 has a smaller (but wider) 1.47-inch AMOLED display with a 194 x 368 resolution. While Huawei doesn’t say how bright it gets, it has support for Always-on display mode like the Xiaomi Smart Band 7. Owners will be spoilt for choice in terms of watch faces to choose from, with over 100 available for the Xiaomi band and more than 4000 for Huawei’s fitness tracker.
The two wearables have support for automatic heart rate and blood oxygen level monitoring and will alert users when their heart rate or blood oxygen level falls out of the safe zone. In addition, there is support for sleep tracking and stress monitoring with breathing exercises. However, only the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 has support for women’s health tracking, while the Huawei Band 7 has reminders for water intake and medications. When it comes to activity tracking, Xiaomi has gone all out as the Smart Band 7 supports over 110 sports modes with detailed analysis that includes training load, recovery, and maximum oxygen uptake (VO2Max).
The Huawei Band 7 supports 97 sports modes which are impressive but still short of what Xiaomi’s fitness tracker is capable of. It also provides detailed metrics such as running ability index, VO2Max, recovery time, and training effect. Unfortunately, neither of the two has a built-in GPS chip for location tracking. Thus they have to rely on the GPS chip of the connected device. The Huawei Band 7 connects via Bluetooth 5.0 and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, while the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 connects via Bluetooth 5.2. In terms of battery life, it’s a tie as they both provide up to two weeks of battery life on a single charge in typical usage mode. That drops down to nine days for the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 and 10 days for the Huawei Band 7 in heavy usage mode. Other features common to both devices are app and call notifications, Find My Phone, and support for playback controls. The Xiaomi Band 7 is available for purchase in the U.K. for £44.99 and in Europe for €49.99, while the Huawei Band 7 is priced at £49.99 in the U.K. and €59.99 in Europe. Based on their features, the two are almost equally matched, and buyers should be fine with either of the two they settle for. However, the slightly cheaper price tag may tilt folks towards the Xiaomi Smart Band 7.
