The swim tracking for the Mi Band 4 is completely worthless and is nothing but an exercise in frustration, especially without any help file or product manual that might give some indication in how to use it. Swiping to 'Workout' and then 'Pool Swimming' starts a three second countdown timer, and then the screen changes to a green arrow in a circle at the bottom of the screen and what looks like a refresh symbol at the top. What does this mean? Is that an indication of a 'lap'? Do I need to manually tap it at the end of each lap I do to tell the band that I've completed a lap? Who knows, I certainly don't, as there is absolutely no help on how to use it.
Not that you can use it anyway, since the button becomes completely random once it's wet. Sometimes it will work when you touch it, most times it won't. Sometimes it will light the display as though you've touched the button even when you haven't, simply from the water running over it. When it does respond, you simply see the green arrow at the bottom of screen and the refresh symbol at the top. Touching the screen just swaps those two items round, putting the green arrow at the top and the refresh symbol at the bottom. What does that mean, what precisely is the band trying to tell you? Without a help file, it's utterly useless.
But then you come to finishing your swim session, and you want to turn it off. How? Again, who knows, because pressing the button simply swaps the arrows from bottom to top and vice versa, or occasionally shows an orange screen with lap information on. If you tap the screen then, you simply return to the arrows as above. Swiping the screen sometimes displays the orange screen of info, other times it displays the green arrow, with no indication of which one you'll get. Very occasionally, there will be a vibration as the orange screen shows, and then if you are quick (which you can't be, because as I said above the screen is not responsive when it is wet) you can hold down the button and the screen will change to a pause button from which you can end the exercise. On my last swim, I started the app and swam for 20 minutes, and then spent ten minutes trying to persuade the app to pause before giving up and swimming for another twenty minutes, and then spent seven or eight minutes trying to end the exercise before giving up and letting it carry on even while I was getting changed. Later in the car on the way home, I noticed it had decided I was no longer swimming and had ended the exercise itself, but as you can imagine all the stats it displayed were worthless as it had time, distance, and stroke all wrong.
The swimming app is truly truly awful, and since that's the only reason I bought this band in the first place, it means the band itself is just going to gather dust in a drawer somewhere because I don't have time every day to try and persuade it to work rather than get on with swimming that I'm meant to be doing. If anyone in the UK wants it, they can have it for twenty quid, as it's patently no use to me whatsoever. I'd like to give a 0 out of 10 review!
Not that you can use it anyway, since the button becomes completely random once it's wet. Sometimes it will work when you touch it, most times it won't. Sometimes it will light the display as though you've touched the button even when you haven't, simply from the water running over it. When it does respond, you simply see the green arrow at the bottom of screen and the refresh symbol at the top. Touching the screen just swaps those two items round, putting the green arrow at the top and the refresh symbol at the bottom. What does that mean, what precisely is the band trying to tell you? Without a help file, it's utterly useless.
But then you come to finishing your swim session, and you want to turn it off. How? Again, who knows, because pressing the button simply swaps the arrows from bottom to top and vice versa, or occasionally shows an orange screen with lap information on. If you tap the screen then, you simply return to the arrows as above. Swiping the screen sometimes displays the orange screen of info, other times it displays the green arrow, with no indication of which one you'll get. Very occasionally, there will be a vibration as the orange screen shows, and then if you are quick (which you can't be, because as I said above the screen is not responsive when it is wet) you can hold down the button and the screen will change to a pause button from which you can end the exercise. On my last swim, I started the app and swam for 20 minutes, and then spent ten minutes trying to persuade the app to pause before giving up and swimming for another twenty minutes, and then spent seven or eight minutes trying to end the exercise before giving up and letting it carry on even while I was getting changed. Later in the car on the way home, I noticed it had decided I was no longer swimming and had ended the exercise itself, but as you can imagine all the stats it displayed were worthless as it had time, distance, and stroke all wrong.
The swimming app is truly truly awful, and since that's the only reason I bought this band in the first place, it means the band itself is just going to gather dust in a drawer somewhere because I don't have time every day to try and persuade it to work rather than get on with swimming that I'm meant to be doing. If anyone in the UK wants it, they can have it for twenty quid, as it's patently no use to me whatsoever. I'd like to give a 0 out of 10 review!
