In this short post, I am going to share with you my personal experience and try to answer the question, is the Mi Band waterproof?
Mi Band 5, 6 and 7 are rated at 5ATM. This means that your Mi Band will stop water getting into the electric components, withstand water pressure, up to 50 meters (165 feet) under water.
In other words, your Mi Band is protected against rain and splashes and can last for short amounts of time submerged in water, like swimming in a pool.
However, this strictly is an immersion rating, and the manufacture warns that the device “can be worn in the swimming pool, while swimming near the shore, or during other shallow-water activities. However, it cannot be used in hot showers, sauna, or diving.”
It is also not an IP rating, so the Xiaomi has not told us how the band resists dust, or moisture ingress. Only that it can resist immersion of up to 165 feet underwater.
So, I set out to test my Mi Band’s water resistance in different scenarios.
Scenario 1: Everyday Use – Washing Hands et al.
I wear my mi band every day. And there are instances during my day, when it encounters splashes of water. For instance, when I am washing my hands, cleaning my face, or doing the dishes.
During these instances, the main issue I get is not the whether the band is waterproof or not, but that water gets in between the band and my skin. And I find that uncomfortable.
Because the band is tight around my wrist, and the silicon band, it is really hard for this water to dry off easily and thus moisture is retained for hours between my skin and the silicon band and in-between the bands.
I am in search for a more breathable band which I hope will alleviate this issue. At the moment, I have to remove the band before I wash my hand or face and when I forget to do this and water gets trapped in between the band and my wrist, I need to take off the band and wipe it off.
Not ideal.
As far as I can tell the Mi Band is waterproof for everyday use. But water does get trapped in between the band and your skin and it is hard to dry it off.
Scenario 2: In the Shower
Next, I wore my band to the shower. From my previous experience I knew that I had to take it off after the shower and dry it off.
After a quick, hot shower my Mi Band was okay.
No issues.
However, I now tend to remove it before I shower. Mainly because of the aforementioned trapped water issue. But also, because there is one time had an issue with my Mi Band 6 after taking a shower.
After I spent a few minutes in the hot shower I encountered erratic behavior on from my band: it started to scroll and enabled one of the features.
This was very odd, and this has only happened once on my Mi Band 6, and never on my Mi Band 5.
My guess is that the touch screen on my Mi Band 6 became ultra-sensitive, but rebooting the band got it back to normal.
Would I recommend you wear your Mi Band when taking a shower. No. Especially if you like hot showers, my guess is the hot moisture affects the Mi Band – that’s why Xiaomi does not recommend you wear your Mi Band in hot showers or saunas.
From my experience, there is NO guaranteed that your Mi Band is waterproof against hot, high-pressure sprays of water.
So yes, you can wear your Mi Band in the shower – but you might encounter some issues.
Scenario 3: Swimming Pool and Sea
Personally, I don’t swim a lot. Chlorine/salt – yuck!
But I recently got a chance to test out my Mi Band 5 and 6 in a swimming pool and at sea.
My Mi Band 5 was fine in the swimming pool, but had issues with my Mi Band 6 that required a reboot.
Both of them worked at sea, the touchscreen color display showed me the duration, distance covered and estimated calorie burn while I was swimming in the ocean.
Would I recommend you use your Mi Band while swimming – definitely. And any issues you encounter seems to be fixed by a simple reboot.
That it for this post. Hope you enjoyed this review of the waterproof feature of my Mi Bands. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, let me know in the comment section below.
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