Rating: 3.5 / 5

Price: Rs 3,999

The good thing about Redmi watches

  • Affordable as a built-in GPS watch
  • Fairly accurate distance measurement
  • Lightweight and comfortable to wear for a long time
  • Easy to use even for beginners
  • Decent battery life; takes almost a week
  • 5ATM waterproof; floating
  • Choose from a variety of watch faces

What’s wrong with Redmi Watch

  • No SpO2 sensor, continuous heart rate monitoring, or menstrual cycle tracking
  • Tracking of restricted functions and activities
  • The user interface feels bland as there is no animation
  • The screen quality is average. There is no feature to always show or tap to start
  • Sleep tracking is unreliable
  • Pedometers tend to add wrong steps

The new fitness watch from the Redmi brand Xiaomi is designed to fit exactly between the Mi Band 5 and Mi Watch Revolve, but it’s not that simple. This adds a very useful feature that is generally lacking in this price range – built-in GPS, but others found on similarly priced competitors and proprietary (and cheaper) fitness bands. Sacrifice some features of. Now let’s see what the Redmi Watch is and if it suits you.

Redmi watch. Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

Standard design with unique belt connector

The design of the Redmi Watch is pretty standard, with a square screen and a button on the right side. It looks like all other fitness watches in the country, inspired by the design of the Apple Watch. The ivory color variation of this watch looks more noticeable than the black watch received for review. The body is made of plastic, but it is restless and the workmanship is quite good. The plastic body helps keep the weight, including the TPU strap, to just 35 grams. Speaking of bracelets, there isn’t a standard connector so you can’t use a third-party strap on this watch just yet.

The plastic body helps keep the weight, including the TPU strap, to just 35 grams. Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

This watch is very comfortable to wear over a long period of time. You will hardly feel its presence and traditional buckles are always good for a secure fit. The touchscreen display, in combination with the physical buttons on the far right, allows you to browse menus and access various functions of the device. The screen will automatically turn off after a few seconds (or after a time selected in the settings). However, you can’t tap the screen to wake up. You have to press a physical button or move your wrist. There is no permanent display.

Matt display with good readability in bright sunlight

Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

The screen has an automatic brightness adjustment and 6 levels of manual brightness control. Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

The Redmi Watch has a 1.4 inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels. The screen content is quite clear, but the color reproduction and sharpness are not very good. At best, the display can be repaired for a budget watch. There is a thick border around the screen, which is even more noticeable on a bright watch face. The screen is protected by scratch-resistant 2.5D glass and curves nicely towards the edges, adding to the luxury of your watch. There was no mention of the oleophobic coating, but very little dirt was seen on the screen during the testing process.

The screen has an automatic brightness adjustment and 6 levels of manual brightness control. Bringing the brightness closer to the maximum will make it easier to see outdoors. You have to move your wrist to turn on the screen. If that doesn’t work, you can always hit the side button. However, as mentioned above, there is no always-on option and you cannot tap the screen to wake up the clock. To make matters worse, it may take some time for the screen to light up after you twist your wrist and the first movement may not work. You can deactivate the motion-sensitive screen wake function for a certain period of time or activate the sleep mode.

A wide variety of watch faces, but the slots on the watch itself are limited

The Xiaomi Wear app, which requires this watch to sync with your Android or iOS device, gives you access to a wide variety of watch faces. However, you can only save 5 on your Redmi Watch, 2 of which are pre-installed and cannot be deleted. This leaves only 3 slots for the selected watch face. You cannot customize any of the faces you load into your watch through the app, but you can choose from a large collection of faces, including not only analog or digital faces, but faces that display various fitness parameters. However, it takes more than a minute to cast each face from the app to the watch, and it looks a little dull on the watch compared to what is displayed on the phone screen.

Simple but lifeless user interface

Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

The user interface is snappy and generally lag-free, but devoid of any kind of animation, including scrolling. Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

The watch’s user interface is simple, even for beginners. Swipe up on the screen for a quick setting, down to access notifications, swipe left or right to monitor daily goal progress, heart rate monitoring, basic sleep data, music controls. ,Such. The interface is clean and generally lag-free, but there is no animation whatsoever, including scrolling. This can be a little confusing, and at times it feels like nothing is happening, especially while scrolling through the options.

When you press the physical button on the home screen, the app drawer opens and the various functions of the watch are nicely displayed in a grid of small icons. On other screens, press the same button to return to the home screen Companion Xiaomi Wear app is also easy to use and has the information you need. However, given the limited functionality of the Redmi Watch, I don’t think it will fully utilize the app’s potential.

Accurate GPS tracking, but limited functionality overall

GPS is at the heart of this watch, but its overall functionality is quite limited. Activity tracking includes walking, running, cycling (indoor and outdoor), swimming, freestyle training, trekking and cricket. This Redmi Watch does not have an SpO2 sensor to measure blood oxygen saturation. This is very important today. Its application goes beyond on-demand oxygen measurements, and it is an odd decision to exclude them on this device. Some of the things that are missing here in the cheaper Mi Band 5 are stress monitoring, tracking of women’s menstrual cycles, and PAI levels.

What is also missing here is the continuous heart rate measurement. You can have your watch track every 60 seconds, but that happens as often as possible. This watch is water resistant to 5 ATM, so you can wear it in the pool without hesitation (once the pool is safe and functional). The pedometers here are pretty accurate but tend to report the wrong steps. If you walk or run outdoors with GPS enabled, the report is money. It takes 10-15 seconds to get a GPS lock outdoors and your connection will stay strong as long as you’re outdoors.

Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

If you walk or run outdoors with GPS enabled, the report is money. Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

The watch cannot automatically detect your exercise, so you need to select the appropriate exercise to begin with. You also need to stop the exercise when you are done. For example, I switched on freestyle mode and trained several times for 30 minutes. He posted that he forgot to end the session and was sitting for most of the next hour, but the watch was tracking the freestyle practice without notice until he noticed. I think fitness watches will be smarter.

Like most fitness watches, Redmi watches have sleep tracking features. But that is far from accurate. It often confuses total sleep time. Track the amount of light sleep, deep sleep, and wake up time. No information on REM sleep is available here. Sleep scores are assigned based on the amount and quality of sleep, but that also seems a bit inconsistent. As you can see from the screenshots, the longer you sleep (including deeper sleep), the lower your score compared to the significantly worse ones. The sleep tracking on this watch will be unreliable until a software update is available that can fix the problem.

Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

Sleep scores are assigned based on the amount and quality of sleep, but that seems a bit inconsistent. Image: Tech2 / Ameya Dalvi

Other features include call notifications and notifications for apps and services that you want to view. The messages are neatly sorted and the corresponding app icon appears next to them. However, they can only be viewed on the clock screen and cannot be answered through the clock. A course in this segment. Deleting a message from your phone will also not affect your watch notifications. You also need to delete it from the clock screen. There is a music playback control here to manage playback on the paired smartphone, but you cannot save music on this watch.

Good battery life in the segment

Charging station

It takes less than 2 hours to fully charge with the included charger. It’s not bad here either.

Xiaomi is promoting a 10-day battery backup for this watch under optimal conditions, but in the real world, set the heart rate monitoring (HRM) frequency to 1 minute and use GPS for 3 hours. Go a little over 6 days. On other days, one hour a day for other fitness activities and only SMS and email notifications. If you reduce the HRM frequency to 5 minutes, you can probably use it for a week. Not spectacular, but a decent battery life for a fitness watch with GPS. It takes less than 2 hours to fully charge with the included charger. It’s not bad here either.

Price and judgment

The Redmi Watch costs 3,999 rupees in India with a one-year warranty. At this price point, it’s probably the cheapest built-in GPS fitness watch, and if it’s your primary need, this is a great option for you. If GPS is less important, the Amazfit Bip U is a much better alternative that offers more features on the same screen for the same price, such as: B. SpO2 sensor, accurate sleep tracking and stress monitoring.

Alternatively, if the form factor doesn’t matter, you can consider the Mi Band 5. It offers more features and is only 1,500 rupees cheap compared to the Redmi Watch (without GPS). Finally, if you can increase your budget up to 1,000 rupees, Amazfit Bip U Pro has all the features of Bip U along with the built-in GPS.

Inexpensive fitness watch with GPS equipment with limited functionality-Technology News, Firstpost

Source link Inexpensive GPS-equipped fitness watch with limited functionality-Technology News, Firstpost