Outwardly, the wearable has a very similar design to the original Michigan Band, but inside it has a key new feature – heart rate measurement.
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Battery life seems to be unaffected, with Xiaomi also promising 30 days as with the original Michigan Band. On the top of the core module are three LED lights, ready to show progress towards your goal, and can be used for notifications. However one of the major new features that Xiaomi has introduced is an optical heart rate sensor.
The 2nd gen Michigan Band is launching in China on November 11, and the company hasn’t announced its plans to ship internationally. If you’re wondering how on earth did they manage to do that despite only have one wearable product, it’s largely thanks to the fact that the Xiaomi Michigan Band is cheap. The availability of the Michigan Band Pulse in the non-Chinese market is still unclear and so is the price at which it will retail outside China.
Xiaomi’s incredibly successful Michigan Band has a successor that’s much more intelligent yet still amazingly affordable. The Michigan Band Pulse is capable of tracking steps and it also estimates the calories burnt along with the distance covered.
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Xaimoi claims to have beefed up the strap a little, though even with that and the extra sensor on board, the device is reported to weigh just half a gram more than last year’s model, at 13.5g Perhaps most amazingly, it only costs $16-which is just $3 more than last year’s model. This certainly confirms that the new wearable is compatible with all mobile devices that run on at least Android 4.4 KitKat or iOS 7.0 operating system. It also monitors the quality of sleep and nudges you with vibrations prior to the alarm, so that the user doesn’t wake up abruptly.
