The Xiaomi Mi watch undercuts its Fitbit rivals with an affordable price tag, and boasts an expansive suite of features, including over 100 fitness-tracking modes, along with built-in GPS, something many smartwatches at this price point lack. We did find, however, that some of the health tracking aspects felt a touch inaccurate, especially stress, sleep and energy monitoring, and a few features of this watch take some getting used to.
 
While most popular smartphone brands also have global wearable arms – Samsung, Huawei and Oppo all sell smartwatches and fitness trackers in western markets, for example – it took Xiaomi until late 2020 to follow suit and expand its wearables operation beyond China, with its Mi Watch unveiled in September 2020, and only launched in early 2021.
The Xiaomi Mi Watch, launched alongside the Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite with a reduced fitness list at half the non-Lite version’s price, is a fairly low-cost smartwatch with a huge number of fitness modes, a fair range of health features, and a few core lifestyle functions too.
 
It’s easy to view the Xiaomi Mi Watch as a competitor to Fitbit’s Versa range – like those devices it’s a mid-priced wearable with a solid core of features, but without the in-depth high-end health and workout tracking of a more premium device. However, while Fitbit has an ecosystem of products and software to make the Versa range a tempting buy, Xiaomi has opted to offer its device at a much lower price. This is a fine smartwatch, but one with a few issues – if we had to sum up the Mi Watch’s foibles in one statement, it would be this: the watch has a huge breadth of features, but not so much in the way of depth.
 
You can track the ebbs and flows of your heart rate, your energy level, your stress, your sleep, your steps, and more – except the numbers aren’t always right. We frequently found that sleep tracking wasn’t smart enough to distinguish between ‘sleeping’ and ‘lounging in bed’, for example, while the stress tracker tended to conflate ‘highly stressed’ with ‘just had a nice hot cup of coffee’. That’s not to say all these modes are straight-up wrong, and we often found them useful, but the discrepancies stood out.
There are over 100 fitness-racking modes, which vary in depth and complexity, but they’re often pretty useful, and the built-in GPS comes in handy for lots of them. When you go for a run, lots of metrics are tracked to provide detailed analysis of your exertions, though you need to use the Xiaomi Wear app to get all the feedback.
Sure, some of the workout modes aren’t as in-depth as running, which is arguably the most popular one, but then factors like altitude or location aren’t especially useful for sports like Tai Chi. And we did find lots of the information was fairly accurate, although distance sometimes felt a tiny bit off.
An imperfect experience is to be expected given the Xiaomi Mi Watch’s affordable price tag, but to its credit it has a long-lasting battery and lightweight, easy-to-forget-about, design, so you’re not going to spend time idly fiddling with it or constantly putting it on charge. Being able to forget about a smartwatch when you’re not using it is a big tick in its favor.
This smartwatch, then, is perfect for those who want to keep an eye on their health and fitness, without needing nuanced and detailed breakdowns of their wellness. For that audience, it’s pretty good, though it falls short of being great.