Xiaomi Mi watch revolve. Mi Watch Revolve review: Pros outweigh the cons

Mi Watch Revolve Review

Xiaomi’s first-ever smartwatch, the Mi Watch Revolve has been launched in India alongwith the Mi Smart Band 5, Mi Smart Speakers, and a few more products in its Smarter Living event. It is surprising to know that Xiaomi, the well-known smartphone maker in India is expanding its portfolio to smartwatches as well alongside its Smart home products which include the Mi Smart Speaker.

The wearables category is now growing big aside from the smartphones itself. Xiaomi-backed wearable AmazeFit GTR smartwatch was another budget-oriented smartwatch we saw last year and now Xiaomi has finally introduced its Mi branded smartwatch – the Mi Watch Revolve which further adds to its Mi devices ecosystem.

If we talk about the major highlights of the Mi Watch Revolve, it’s sleek and light in weight, offers metallic design, AMOLED display, Firstbeat Motion analytics and runs 14 days long without a sweat. Here’s all you need to know about this smartwatch in our Mi Watch Revolve review.

Design, Display, Build

About its design, the Mi Watch Revolve offers a sleek and premium 46 mm round stainless steel frame with a matte finish surface. It has a round face with two buttons on the side, one for the Apps and one for the Sports mode that can be customized.

The smartwatch is incredibly light in weight (40 grams) and looks really impressive at the first glance. The front side comes with a 1.39-inch colored AMOLED display with a slight curved on the surface and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

As it’s an AMOLED display, it also offers Smart Always-on-Display as a display trait. Other traits include a water-proof design with up to 5ATM water resistance so you can easily take it underwater or dive into the pool without any hazzle.

The back reveals the charging pins and a PPG heart rate sensor at the center. The 22 mm strap can be easily removed using a quick-release latch behind. It offers a charging dock that can be plugged in a USB charger or any USB port.

You will find a Bluetooth 5.0 LE and GPS, GLONASS for navigation. No Wi-Fi and loudspeakers are available on the watch. The Mi Watch Revolve comes with the Firstbeat Motion feature along with 10 professional sports modes and 110 watch faces.

For the variants, there’s no 42 mm variant available, you only get a 46 mm dial which could be a tad larger for some people, those who have smaller wrists and who have a habit of using smaller dials could simply choose a smaller variant, but sadly Xiaomi doesn’t have one as of now.

The Mi Watch Revolve comes in elegant color variants – Midnight Black which uses the leather finish strap, Neptune Blue, Cosmic Dust Maroon, Space Black, and Astral Olive. The Mi Watch Revolve is priced at Rs 9,999 and it’s for early buyers, the offer will last till Diwali. The actual price for the Mi Watch Revolve will be Rs 10,999 after the offer expires.

Software, Features App Interface

On the software side, the Mi Watch Revolve uses a custom made OS by Xiaomi, and not Google’s WearOS. The smartwatch connects with the smartphone via the Xiaomi Wear app, it pairs using the Bluetooth 5.0 BLE. It doesn’t use the WearOS app obviously since it is based on a custom wearable OS.

A typical smartwatch will let you do everything on the smartwatch itself, such as making calls, showing app notifications, listen to the music, using the voice assistant apart from just the fitness activities. This is possible with the devices powered by Google’s WearOS, take the OPPO Watch for an instance.

And as you know, it doesn’t offer a WearOS interface, it still has a bunch of things to offer, you can view the notifications, receive calls, control the music, find the phone, check the weather, use it as a flashlight, lets you measure the altitude using an altimeter on the Mi Watch Revolve aside from all the health and fitness perks.

As you can see the user interface offers the standard analog watch dial with chronograph style design on its default watch face. It shows you the steps, calories burned, and heart rate right on the homescreen. Other details include the current date, the weather temperature, and the battery percentage.

The Apps button opens the app drawer for the apps installed on the watch and doubles as the Home button. The Sports button, which is also a power button, activates the 10 professional sports modes including outdoor and indoor activities along with built-in GPS.

As you can see the user interface offers the standard analog watch dial with chronograph style design on its default watch face. The Mi Watch Revolve offers a variety of watch faces more than 110 to fit your styles. Changing the watch faces can be done right from the smartwatch by pressing and holding the watch face as well as from the Xiaomi Wear app.

For the health and fitness perks, it uses the Firstbeat Motion algorithm which is the professional analytics for sports activities. Firstbeat is one of the world’s leading providers of physiological data for sports and wellness. You also get continuous heart rate monitoring and it is required to provide essential health statistics from the wearable.

There are a total of 10 professional sports modes that include outdoor running, cycling, trail running, trekking, treadmill, indoor cycling, walking, freestyle workout, pool swimming, and open water swimming. Using them is easy, all you need is to press the Sports mode button and choose the modes you wish to use.

Well, that’s a whole lot of addition to the fitness features in my opinion. The modes are pretty much accurate if you ask, be it walking, running, or any workout, And with that, it appears to be that the Mi Watch Revolve could be among the best fitness tracking devices given the price.

Once paired, you can view all the activity record in the Xiaomi Wear app, the app interface is quite basic, you can view the activity done today or from any past date using the calendar provided in the app. You can view the sync data, battery percentage, customize the Activity interface, and change the permissions for the app notifications and calls.

Things that aren’t available on the watch are the microphone, loudspeaker, local storage for music, Wi-Fi adapter, and an app store for the watch to install apps or watch faces. WearOS-powered smartwatches offer Google Play store that will let you install apps for better user experience. You are limited to what Xiaomi’s user interface has to offer.

You can’t interact with the notifications like replying to the messages or making calls, you will require the phone to answer the calls and reply to the messages, although you can view the text messages at a certain limit on the watch. You also don’t have voice input and loudspeakers, you are only notified via the vibrations available on the watch.

Hardware Performance

Speaking about the specs of the Mi Watch Revolve, it seems to be using some onboard hardware which is unlike the Snapdragon Wear or Exynos chips. It uses an eMMC dedicated internal storage that isn’t usable for adding music or installing apps since the interface isn’t one from the WearOS by Google. Despite the concealed hardware, we haven’t found any performance issues with the smartwatch, it is less likely to lag, and performs well when you interact with the interface, although not highly responsive as you see on high-end smartwatches.

The hardware is quite optimized for battery life, it can offer up to two weeks of battery life which shows the CPU is very power efficient. Smartwatches like the OPPO Watch which is based on the WearOS platform and using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 3100 SoC doesn’t live long enough when it comes to the battery life, however, it has its own perks that separates it from the Mi Watch Revolve such as using the Google Assistant, answering calls directly on watch as well as replying messages from the watch, using the internal storage to store and play music on it, and so on.

Battery Life Charging

For its battery, it packs a 420 mAh Lithium Polymer battery that runs up to 14 days on a single charge. However, if you keep the GPS turned on, it can offer up to 20 hours of continuous usage. Know that if you are using GPS then the battery life will significantly drain.

Although Xiaomi says it runs as much as 14 days, our usage shows it didn’t die early, the battery life is very reliable and works excellent, doesn’t let you down. On average use, you are probably getting about 2 weeks of battery life in one full charge. If you are looking for a smartwatch with outstanding battery life, this is the one you should be considering.

For its charging, there’s a standard charging dock with 2 Pogo pins that can take about 2 hours 30 minutes or less to charge the Mi Watch Revolve from 0% to 100%. This isn’t the fastest charging in its class, we have already seen the OPPO Watch with its Watch VOOC Flash Charging that charges up to 46% in just 15 minutes and 100% in about an hour. You will have to wait a couple of hours if you want to charge the Mi Watch Revolve.

Verdict

For the price of Rs 9,999, the Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve seems to be a good and well-made budget smartwatch, from its elegant metallic matte finish design and large AMOLED display to all the health and fitness perks, the smartwatch proves to be a worthy challenger. It notifies you about calls and messages and offers a bunch of health and fitness features. It is also worth mentioning that the smartwatch offers an outstanding battery life of 14 days which makes it among the best smartwatches that last really long.

With that being said, you can’t make or receive calls as well as interact with the notifications such as replying to the messages, you will require the phone to answer the calls as it doesn’t offer a microphone. You are only notified via the vibrations available on the watch, no loudspeaker. If you want a fully-featured smartwatch, you can opt for a WearOS-powered smartwatch at a higher price.

• Elegant looks and finish
• Extremely light in weight
• The AMOLED display is great
• A chunk of fitness perks to offer
• Uses Firstbeat Motion Algorithm for health statistics
• Notifies about calls and messages
• Built-in GPS Bluetooth 5.0
• Reliable battery life – 14 days
• Value for money
• No third-party apps support, UI could be more intuitive
• Can’t reply or answer calls right from the smartwatch
• Lacks microphone, loudspeakers, and Wi-Fi

Mi Watch Revolve review: Pros outweigh the cons

Chinese technology company Xiaomi recently launched its first ever smartwatch in India – Mi Watch Revolve – at a price of Rs 10,999. Since it’s the company’s first ever offering in India in this category, we were very excited to know if it’s as good as its specifications like AMOLED display and 420mAh battery make it seem. We spent quite some time with the smartwatch and read our Mi Watch Revolve review to know more about it:

Mi Watch Revolve design

Speaking of the design of the Mi Watch Revolve first, there were some things that we liked and some things that could have been better. The smartwatch comes with a circular display that has a black-coloured bezel running around it. The display of the watch is embedded in a metallic dial that has two buttons protruding out on the right side. While the button on the top is the Power key, the other one is for shortcuts. It is worth noticing that Xiaomi‘s offering has a 46mm case so it may look a little chunky to some. We personally liked it because it meant a bigger display for the smartwatch – something that’s always a plus because that means it puts less strain on our eyes.

Coming to the display of Mi Watch Revolve, the smartwatch comes with a 1.39-inch AMOLED screen, and because of its big size, it has more elements on it than most other smartwatches. The screen of the watch is protected by a layer of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. The colours on the display of the smartwatch are bright and the icons are sharp and clear. The display is definitely one among the positive points of the device and it also responses well to touch.

Flip the watch over and you will see the heart rate sensor of the Mi Watch Revolve on the back of its dial. The smartwatch is available in Midnight Black and Chrome Silver colour options and we got the former one for review. According to the company, the straps of the watch are 22mm wide and are made of a rubber-like material that was rather uncomfortable. This was biggest con in terms of the design, but then on the upside, you can change the straps of the smartwatch in case you encounter a problem. We particularly found it hard to sleep with the watch on because of its uncomfortable straps and because it was slightly big in size. It takes a bit of getting used to.

Mi Watch Revolve specifications and performance

The Mi Watch Revolve comes with GPS and GLONASS, which basically means that you can track your footsteps even when the device is not paired to your smartphone. We think that this is a very useful feature, especially in case the battery of your smartphone runs out. The smartwatch weighs 60g when the straps are attached to it and 40g when they are not. It packs a 420mAh battery and is water resistant up to 5ATM. For connectivity, the device comes with Bluetooth 5 LE. It also has an in-built compass which is useful for outdoor activities.

Mi Watch Revolve is compatible with Android 4.4 or iOS 10 and above. Since we use an Android smartphone, we had to download the Xiaomi Wear App to pair our watch to our handset. Another downside of the watch is that while it notifies the user about new messages and incoming calls on their smartphone, it doesn’t have the ability of letting them reply to these. This is quite a thing to consider if you are thinking of buying the smartwatch. Mi Watch Revolve also comes with the Find Phone feature and using this, you can make your smartphone ring loudly. This proves to be useful in situations where you think you have lost your smartphone.

Coming to the performance of Mi Watch Revolve, it worked accurately in terms of counting our steps and the number of times we stood up. Although no smartwatch or fitness tracker can be completely accurate in terms of counting the steps or movement, Xiaomi’s offering does a fairly good job of it. We actually counted our steps every day and then compared our count to the one on the smartwatch, and we never saw too much of a difference between the two numbers, so that’s definitely a plus. However, we couldn’t do the same for distance, as during the time we were using the smartwatch, we were still avoiding the outdoors because of the ongoing pandemic. The device also recorded our BPM and stress level at all times. According to the company, the stress level is calculated on the Mi Revolve smartwatch by recording the heart rate variability and comparing it to the activity intensity data. Sleep tracking is available on the device and it gets segregated in various phases like Deep Sleep, Light Sleep and Awake.

The smartwatch can also record ‘Energy Levels’ and for this, it takes into account a number of other aspects like how much the user has slept, exercised, and how much their stress level has been. There were times when it correctly guessed that we were ‘Exhausted’ or had ‘Moderate’ levels of energy. Although such aspects of a smartwatch can never be taken too seriously, this was surprisingly correct most of the times.

We were notified timely of all the activity on our smartphone that we had opted on the app to be shown on the watch. There wasn’t a noticeable lag during our time with the smartwatch.

Now, let’s talk about the battery of the smartwatch. We would have to be a little vague here and say that the duration of the battery lasts according to how many tasks you make the smartwatch do. If you have only a few notifications synced to the watch and disable the always-on display you can easily get two weeks of battery from the device. Even with a lot of notifications and always-on display enabled, the difference between the duration that the battery lasted was not considerable. So we also consider that to be a big positive.

Verdict

The pros of Mi Watch Revolve outweigh its cons. We liked the display of the device although some may find it a little chunky. The straps are uncomfortable, but can be changed. The battery life is one of the best aspects of the smartwatch and is also reasonably accurate in terms of counting steps. However, the inability to reply to calls and messages might be a downer for a lot of people. Nonetheless, at this price point, Mi Watch Revolve is a very good buy.

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Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve review: A larger Mi Band

2020 has seen Xiaomi try to morph itself from a budget darling to a brand that can hold its own in the mid-premium segment. While the Mi 10 delivered that on the smartphone side of things, Xiaomi has been attempting the same in the connected ecosystem space. The Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve is one such attempt to offer a more premium alternative to the extremely popular Mi Band.

However, can a souped-up fitness tracker be the answer to Wear OS watches like the Oppo Watch? Find out in the Android Authority Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve review.

About this Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve review: I wrote this Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve review after spending a week with the smartwatch. Xiaomi India supplied the device, which was running software version 1.117.

Does the Mi Watch Revolve have a good design?

While many budget smartwatches try to copy the Apple Watch design language, Xiaomi is channeling the analog watch aesthetic in the Mi Watch Revolve.

From the circular design with dial marks along the raised chamfered edge as well as twin pushers on the side, the entire design is supposed to evoke the feeling of using a classic watch with digital innards — to some success.

I’ll address the elephant in the room first. The Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve is absolutely massive. The 46mm case size is the only option, and it looks absolutely gigantic on my wrist.

Women or, for that matter, anyone with slender wrists will find the watch just way too big to discretely blend into their daily wear.

The actual display size is a smaller 1.39 inches. Xiaomi would have done well to trim down the dial marks along the edges of the screen. Those look particularly awkward with digital watch faces anyway.

Talking about the display itself, the AMOLED panel has a sufficiently high resolution and the watch faces — all 110 of them — look fantastic. Peak brightness was adequate and I had no issues looking at the watch under direct sunlight.

The AMOLED panel also affords the Mi Watch Revolve the ability to have an always-on display, which is a handy addition when you just want to view the time. Like standard watch faces, the software offers a number of options for the always-on display. These include both analog and digital options.

Elsewhere, I’m on the fence about the design, and more importantly, the quality of the watch case. If you are into bling, the shiny edge around the case might be to your liking, but I found it to be a bit too loud for my taste.

The build quality is good enough for the price, but I wouldn’t call it premium.

While the chamfered edge around the display appears to be made of plastic, the rest of the body is a mix of brushed aluminum and hard plastics. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a premium build, but it will more than suffice for the price the Mi Watch Revolve commands.

The two pushers, in particular, feel great to use with just the right amount of give. While the one at the top drops you into the app menu, the second pusher can be set as a shortcut key for most watch functions. By default, it is set to bring up the workouts menu.

The rear of the watch is fairly bare-bones with a mild protrusion for the heart rate sensor and charging pins. The included charging cradle uses magnets to align with the watch and can top-off the 420mAh battery in about an hour and a half.

As is often the case, Xiaomi might have been a bit optimistic with its two-week battery life claim. With extensive use of the display, notifications, and a few workouts, I needed to charge up the Mi Watch Revolve on the eighth day of use. This is very good, especially for a watch with an always-on display, but not quite what the company claims.

The included strap on the Mi Watch Revolve was clearly built to a cost, and I’m not a big fan. However, Xiaomi did great by using standard 22mm quick-release straps that can easily be swapped for any watch Band of your choosing.

Overall, Xiaomi has done a pretty good job with the design and construction. While the Oppo Watch definitely feels a bit more premium, it is also a bit more expensive. For the form factor chosen by Xiaomi, the Mi Watch Revolve strikes a good enough balance between build quality and choice of materials.

Size aside, the 40g weight is definitely comfortable enough to keep the watch strapped on for sleep tracking at night. The watch is also waterproof down to 5ATM.

Fitness and health

Fitness tracking on the Mi Watch Revolve is, for the most part, a souped up version of the modes you get on the Mi Band 5.

The watch can record 10 different activities. Those include outdoor running, treadmill running, trail running, indoor and outdoor cycling, trekking, pool and open water swimming, walking, and even freestyle workouts. The built-in GPS ensures that you can go out for a run or cycling with just the watch if you so wish.

Starting an activity is easy enough. Hit the workout shortcut or swipe into the app drawer and tap the workout app. From here, you can select your choice of activity and you’re good to go.

I took the Mi Watch Revolve out for a walk around the block on multiple occasions and the step tracking proved to be pretty consistent with the reading from my Fitbit Ionic. The same goes for the distance measured. However, the Mi Watch Revolve suffers from the same issues plaguing the Fitbit Ionic — it takes forever to latch on to a GPS signal.

In fact, during one workout, I was halfway through a 1.6-kilometer walk by the time the watch latched on to a GPS signal despite the mostly clear sky above.

The Mi Watch Revolve took forever to latch-on to a GPS signal.

Heart rate tracking was generally pretty accurate too. The watch pegged my resting heart rate at 62bpm which is close enough to the 58bpm measured by the Ionic, and within the range of readings from other fitness trackers as well. Similarly, during workouts, the captured heart rate was in line with the reading from the Ionic.

Elsewhere, sleep tracking is the Mi Watch Revolve’s strong suit. I found the watch accurate at capturing exactly when I fell asleep and woke up. It can catch the distribution between light, deep, and REM sleep. It then gives you a sleep score to help you better understand your sleep patterns.

In fact, the Mi Watch Revolve goes a step beyond and captures additional metrics like mental stress and overall energy. For the former, the watch captures heart rate variability when you are sitting still for a long duration of time. Using this data, it is able to estimate if you are relaxed or not, giving you an overall score.

Looking back at the data, it was mildly accurate at pointing out that I wasn’t feeling very relaxed. However, I wouldn’t really trust this data to track my stress levels.

Similarly, the watch now assigns you an energy score. The score is calculated using your overall sleep data, heart rate, workout information, and heart rate variability. During my week with the watch, the reading consistently stayed close to 90% and that definitely couldn’t be true considering I barely got two hours to three hours of sleep each night.

Is the Mi Watch Revolve a good smartwatch?

The Mi Watch Revolve is closer to a fitness tracker than an actual smartwatch in its integration with your smartphone. As such, the watch can indicate notifications, incoming calls, show you the weather, but that’s about it. No, you still can’t reply to text messages.

Navigation around the interface is pretty straight forward. Swiping left jogs you through a range of widgets showing off all the fitness metrics. The pusher on the right drops you into the app drawer from where you can scroll through the interface.

Talking about the interface, the square icons don’t make full use of the round display and seem a bit tacked on.

The Xiaomi Wear app has precious few options to customize your experience outside of downloading from a selection of over 100 watch faces.

Over on the Mi Watch Revolve, you can set a do-not-disturb mode, adjust auto-brightness and raise to wake. Of course, there’s a find my phone function, and you can control music playback on your phone as well. This is all par for the course and works as expected.

The Mi Watch Revolve can track stress and energy levels, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in the results.

There’s no app store on the Mi Watch Revolve, but Xiaomi has tossed in a few apps for features like sleep, stress, and energy scores. These apps display the same data that you’d get in the app on the phone. Elsewhere, there’s an alarm function, stopwatch, and timer. Weirdly enough, the stopwatch can’t be used in the background which is an odd omission. Finally, a torch app lets you convert your watch into, well, a wrist-mounted torch.

Also read: Fitbit Sense review: A work in progress

How’s the Xiaomi Wear app?

The Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve makes use of the new-fangled Xiaomi Wear app. Strewn across three different sections, the app gives you access to device controls, health information, and your personal profile.

The device controls section is pretty bare-bones. It only includes control over notifications, incoming calls, and watch faces. Meanwhile, the profile section is even more basic and just lets you add essential information like your date of birth, height, and weight.

The primary data page takes a widget-like approach and gives you basic information for workouts, steps, heart rate, and more. You can then dive in and take a look at more granular information.

Unfortunately, there is no way to export your data at all which is a definite downside in my books.

Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve specs

Value and competition

The Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve clubs the excellent fitness tracking from the Mi Band with just enough smarts, and a quality construction to offer one of the better Smart watches in its price range.

The Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve isn’t the only option in the price segment. In fact, Huami has been churning out a range of wearables that offer up a variety of case designs, and a similar degree of smartness.

If you prefer a more butch design, the Amazfit T-Rex might be more to your liking. In our review, we found it to be a bit too simplistic with a build that didn’t live up to the price. The Amazfit T-Rex is priced at Rs. 9,999, right alongside the Mi Watch Revolve.

Meanwhile, the Amazfit GTS is a more traditional option that is unapologetic in its design inspiration. However, we found step tracking to be unreliable making it a nonstarter. The Amazfit GTS is priced at Rs. 9,999.

If you are willing to step up your budget, the Oppo Watch is one of the better Wear OS smartwatches. It offers a full-blow connected experience for not much more money. Priced at Rs. 14,990, it requires a higher initial outlay, but the third-party app store and reliable connectivity make the Oppo Watch an excellent option.

Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve review: The verdict

Look, if you want a large screen fitness tracker that offers a wide variety of watch faces and just enough smarts, the Mi Watch Revolve might cut it for you.

Don’t get me wrong — the Mi Watch Revolve is a rather good fitness tracker, but at half the price the Mi Band 5 delivers much of the same capabilities. I’m not sure if the added bits are truly worth the extra cost involved. so when an actual Wear OS smartwatch like the Oppo Watch doesn’t cost that much more money.

There’s not much that’s wrong with the Mi Watch Revolve. In fact, even the pricing isn’t exorbitant at all. However, prospective buyers would be well served by knowing exactly what they are buying — an upgraded fitness tracker, and not a value-priced smartwatch.

Xiaomi’s Mi Watch Revolve is feature-rich, but riddled with bugs

Xiaomi Mi Band has been one of the most popular wearables in India. When its fifth edition launched in the country a few days ago, it evolved from a bare minimum “fitness Band” to a Smart tracker.

Still, it remains a Band, and its functionality was limited to it due to the size and form factor. That’s why, with the Xiaomi Watch Revolve, the company is aiming to lure customers who might want to upgrade for real.

At ₹9,999 (136.46), the Mi Watch Revolve is not exactly cheap. However, it packs a lot of features. I used the watch for over a week, and despite my excitement about its features, I was left disappointed by the implementation.

Design and features

The Mi Watch has a 1.39-inch circular screen with a 454×454 resolution. It covers a huge area of your wrist, and if you’re not a fan of watches with big dials, you won’t like the watch’s size. The watch comes with a rubberized strap, and you can choose from five color options while making the purchase.

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Inside the watch’s bezel, there’s a physical ring with markers indicating time — just like analog watches. I couldn’t figure out why. It reduces the size of the display and cuts into the interface at an awkward angle. If I wanted such markers, I could’ve just chosen a watch face that does that.

The AMOLED display is bright enough in all kinds of lighting conditions. You can choose over 100 watch faces to customize its look. However, you can’t invoke it by double-tapping the screen, and I think that’s kind of odd.

To track fitness activities and movement it has a PPG heart rate sensor, a three-axis acceleration sensor, and a geomagnetic sensor. The company claims it’s using the Firstbeat motion algorithm to track variable heart rate in order to measure movements, energy level, stress, and sleep quality.

The watch has a 420 mAh battery and you can charge the device with its proprietary pogo pin holder.

Performance

The Mi Watch has a ton of features for fitness, but during my usage, it came up short in detecting a lot of stuff.

For example, when I was walking continuously for more than a couple of minutes, the watch tracked my steps well. However, if I moved around my house to get a snack from the kitchen or get a delivery package from my door, the watch often missed counting those steps.

Most of the modern smartwatches nudge you when you’ve sat down for an hour or more. Xiaomi’s new watch also has that function, but I got alerts multiple times to become active minutes after I just sat down.

Steps and activity tracking became more accurate whenever I switched on a workout mode. If you’re going on a run or a walk, the watch tracks your movement as well as your path through its in-built GPS sensor. And it tracked the distance accurately during a few of my outdoor runs and walks.

There are only 10 fixed workout modes. So, if you’re doing CrossFit or HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training), you’d have to rely on the freestyle mode.

The VO2Max algorithm that Xiaomi claims powers a lot of fitness stats for the watch is used by a lot of renowned football and basketball teams around the world. It’ll be nice if the company can add tracking for some sports.

One of the impressive things about the new Xiaomi Watch is its battery life. I’ve been using the watch for more than five days, and I haven’t had to charge it, despite using it for workouts and outdoor activities.

Notification delivery on the watch works as intended. However, you can’t really act on these notifications, like archiving an email from the watch. If you pair the device with an iPhone, you won’t be able to control which app notifications do you want to show up on your wrist.

Who’s it for?

Xiaomi’s Mi Watch Revolve is ideally placed to compete with the Huawei Watch GT 2e Sport Smartwatch priced at ₹11,990 (163.30) and Fossil Sport priced at ₹9,990 (136).

The smartwatch isn’t the ideal gadget if you’re want to train for long-distance running or track every aspect of your fitness accurately. You might be better off with Apple Watch, Fitbit, or Garmin for that. But it provides an upgrade over fitness tracking bands.

The device has excellent battery life and a lot of features. However, it probably needs a firmware upgrade to iron out some tracking bugs.

The Mi Watch Revolve is available in two finishes: black and silver, with five options for straps. You can buy the watch on Mi.com.

Story by Ivan Mehta

Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say Bleh. Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say Bleh.

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