I usually walk about 15 000 steps during my workdays without even realising it. Having worked from home for more than a year, though, I have found myself becoming increasingly sedentary. This pandemic is beginning to wear on me and I find it harder to motivate myself.
Over the last month, I have tried to go for one or two walks every day. I used to use the health app on my phone to see approximately how many steps I took a day on my walks. But this meant I had to have my phone everywhere with me during the day to obtain an accurate reading.
So I splurged $20 on a Xiaomi Mi Band 5 health tracker to see my progress and motivate me. It is a budget tracker but displays the weather, calls, texts, emails, social media updates, calendar, steps, and heart rate. You can track sleep, activity, menstruation, and much more. You can take photographs remotely and use it as an alarm clock. You can choose the backgroup photograph and your display. It is light, comfortable, and water resistant.
So far I am pretty happy with it. I didn’t want an Apple Watch or anything fancy as I already have a really nice daily watch – a slim gold Sjöö Sandström with a leather strap – plus I don’t know how long my fitness motivation will last, sadly.
I did quite a bit of research before buying and this one was highly rated by several magazines both for giving the most for your money, and for being the best budget tracker. Here is one of the tests in which this tracker came out number one in several categories (in Swedish)
