I take care of my health more than before. Being healthy is the most important thing for everyone in everyday life. There are lots of things we can do for our health. I took in those to be more healthy. Especially, it is I think important to know my sleep cycle and quality. So I decided to track my sleep and analyze it to improve my lifestyle. For that purpose, I bought Mi Band 6 and have recorded it for 1 month.
Why did I choose Mi Band 6?
I first thought I should have tried an android app because there are many apps for that. However, I couldn’t choose one of them because there are too many apps. In addition to that, I didn’t know how precisely can it record my sleep because a smartphone is on the bed aside from me. I believe a smartwatch works better than a smartphone because the watch is always on my wrist.
There are many smartwatches on the market but I chose Mi Band 6 because it’s really low in price.
Mi Band 6 is a low price but I thought it was good enough for a starter. It’s possible to see the history on Google Fit even if I want to change it to another brand in the future. The main feature for me is tracking sleep.
Summary for this chapter.
The reason why I didn’t choose an android app
- Too many android apps
- I believe an app record less precisely than a smartwatch
The reason why I choose Mi Band 6
- Low price
- Good enough
How long does the battery last
It lasts about 7 days with the following setting.
Notifications & reminders
| Menu | Setting |
|---|---|
| Incoming call | on |
| App alerts | off |
| Idle alert | off |
| Incoming SMS | off |
| Goal notifications | off |
Vibration
| Menu | Setting |
|---|---|
| Incoming call | Default |
| Event reminder | Default |
| Alarm | Default |
| App alerts | Default |
| Idle alert | Default |
| Incoming SMS | Default |
| Goal notifications | Default |
| Find band | Default |
Health monitoring
| Menu | Setting |
|---|---|
| All-day heart rate monitoring | Every 1 min |
| Heart rate alert | 150 times/minute |
| Activity HR monitoring | on |
| Sleep monitoring assistant | on |
| Sleep breathing quality monitoring | on |
| All-day stress monitoring | on |
Smart analysis
| Menu | Setting |
|---|---|
| Sleep quality analysis | on |
| Body type analysis | on |
General
| Menu | Setting |
|---|---|
| Night mode | 18:00 – 07:00 |
| Auto activity detection | off |
| Discoverable | off |
| Activity heart rate sharing | off |
| Pairing restrictions | on |
I turn workout mode on almost every day but it’s only for 10 minutes or less.
It doesn’t last as well as Mi Band 5. I don’t have Mi Band 5 but it lasts 14 days. However, it’s ok for me. It takes only 30 – 60 minutes to charge it once a week. The charge is completed while I take a bath.
Auto activity detection
Mi Band 6 has auto activity detection. I thought it was a nice feature because I go to my office by bicycle and it takes less than 10 minutes. I don’t turn workout mode on for this purpose. I expected this feature but it doesn’t work as I expected. It detects the activity when I get off the bicycle and sit down to my chair. I thought it could record it automatically but it just asked me whether I wanted to start the workout mode or not. Since Google Fit can detect it and record it, it’s not a big problem at all.
However, Mi Band 6 detects walking activity and automatically sends the info to Google Fit without changing the mode.
Idle alert
The watch alerts when no or less activity lasts for 60 minutes. However, it doesn’t seem to be able to know whether I’m standing or sitting. I sometimes change the height of my desk and work while I’m standing. It alerts me while I’m standing. No! I’m standing now! I turned it on at first but I turned it off again for this reason.
Recorded data
Let’s see the recorded data. Mi Band 6 records several data.
- Sleep
- Heart rate
- Stress level
- PAI (Personal Physiological Activity)
- Blood oxygen saturation (Manual)
- Workouts (Manual)
Sleep monitoring is what I want. It shows a sleep score. There are 4 types shown there. Deep sleep, light sleep, REM, and time awake. It records nap and sleeps breathing quality as well.
We can see where we are among similar users. According to it, I’m an excellent sleeper because my sleep score is mostly more than 90. I often see “Slept better than 90 % of users” even though my deep sleep is very short. This is my sleep in June.
I usually go to bed around 21:30 and get up between 04:30 – 05:00. I will look at each piece of data and write what I did before going to bed.
06/23-24
I took a bath this day between 19:20 – 20:00. Many books recommend taking a bath to sleep well. This data shows that deep sleep intermittently appears in the first 90 minutes. Was I borderline between light sleep and deep sleep? The device might not be so precise. If I put them together into one band it makes sense because its cycle looks about 90 minutes. I remember that I woke up at 01:30 this day for 1 or 2 minutes and looked at the time but this data doesn’t show the short awakening.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a bath | 19:20 – 20:00 |
| Drinking | No |
| Training | 16:36 – 16:40 Push up for 3m38s Heart rate ave 122, max 166 |
| Total Steps | 3042 |
06/24-25
I took a shower at 16:40. Dinner at 17:00. I finished drinking 120 ml of Martini Vermouth Extra Dry 15% at 17:30. Its pure alcohol amount is 18g. The first hour was light sleep. Total deep sleep time is still short. I think drinking didn’t affect my sleep since I finished early.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a shower | 16:40 – 16:50 |
| Drinking | 17:00 – 17:30 (Pure alcohol 18g) 120 ml of Martini Vermouth Extra Dry 15% |
| Training | 19:13 – 19:19 Jumping on trampoline for 5m8s Heart rate ave 120, max 146 |
| Total Steps | 3218 |
06/25-26
I drank more than last day. Deep sleep time is short but the first 70 minutes look good. Others are mostly light sleep and rem sleep. The score is worse than yesterday but alcohol seems not to make a big difference. Is it because I finished drinking more than 2 hours before bed?
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a shower | 16:50 – 17:00 |
| Drinking | 17:20 – 19:10 Havana Club 7 years Ram highball (30ml) Havana Club 7 years Ram rock(30ml) Johnnie walker black (30ml) highball with Ardbeg 10 years float on it |
| Training | 16;26 – 16:37 Jumping on trampoline for 10m7s. Heart rate ave 141, max 173 |
| Total Steps | 4591 |
06/26-27
I cooked Japanese Ramen this day. I just went out to take a walk for a short time. I drank only a can of beer 330ml at dinner time but I woke up to go to the toilet even though I finished drinking 17:40. The result shows that I woke up twice but I don’t remember the second. Its cycle is different from other days. Deep sleep appears in the latter half. I don’t see any good relationship between sleep and activities.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a shower | 16:50 – 17:00 |
| Drinking | Lunch and Dinner Mythos Beer 330ml 12:00 and 17:40 |
| Training | No |
| Total Steps | 3460 |
06/27-28
It is a very good sleep score but I used pc for 2 hours before I went to bed. When I got up in the morning I was a bit more sleepy than usual and didn’t work on my blog.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a shower | 16:00 |
| Drinking | Mythos Beer 330ml 13:00 and 17:00 |
| Training | No. I was outside for 3 hours |
| Total Steps | 7063 |
06/28-29
Even though I stop drinking beef before 17:00 I woke up to go to the toilet. I woke up at 04:00 but I didn’t get up.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a shower | 16:00 |
| Drinking | 16:40-16:50 Mythos Beer 330ml |
| Training | 16:27 – 16:38 Jumping on trampoline Ab wheel for 10m25s in total Heart rate ave 136, max 189 |
| Total Steps | 2797 |
06/29-30
I drank 4 days in a row but my sleep quality is still good.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a bath | 16:10 – 16:40 |
| Drinking | Johnny Walker Black (30ml) Highball 18:10 |
| Training | No |
| Total Steps | 2068 |
06/30-07/01
I used pc for 2 hours before going to bed but the sleep score is not bad.
| Title | Detail |
|---|---|
| Taking a shower | 16:30 – 16:40 |
| Drinking | No |
| Training | 15:45 – 15:53 Handstand pushup 7m11s |
| Total Steps | 2405 |
My Impressions
Sleep
My sleep quality seems to be better than many people. I tracked what I did but I don’t find anything to improve my sleep quality except for drinking. I wake up for the toilet more often when I drink. It might be necessary to record more info to know the best thing before going to bed but I will perhaps not do it for a while.
Heart rate
I set heart rate monitoring time to 1 minute because PAI monitoring requires the setting. I usually do workouts after work for about 10 minutes between 16:00 – 18:00. Data looks fit to my lifestyle. I don’t know how I can use this data though.
Stress level
Stress level monitoring is turned on but it doesn’t show enough data during the daytime. I thought my stress level gets high while I’m doing exercise but actually not. I’m wondering how this device or software calculates this. I don’t know the method but the data shows that I’m very relaxed almost all the time.
How long can the armband be used
The band is made of rubber and thus it can be torn. It changed my band 13 months later after my first use. The first band became as follows.
I take the band off every day before taking a shower. The 4th hole is the mainly used and sometimes 5th hole. If you take it off every day, you would change the band every year.
You can find the replacement armband for less than 10 Euro/Dollar in Amazon. I bought the following in a store.
There are 3 colors, red, black, and blue.
Summary
I have taken care of my health this year more than before. My lifestyle got better after I came to Germany. It fits me and I don’t break my regular routine. It has already been good before I started trying this Mi Band 6. Therefore, I haven’t seen a big difference in the sleep quality data so far. However, it’s important to record it with other activities to know what makes my sleep better. The recording is the first step for analysis.
By the way, I was surprised that I really don’t walk!!
Why don’t you start tracking your sleep quality? The recording is the first step to improvement.
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