Xiaomi Watch S1 evaluate: Elegant design meets inelegant software program

The Xiaomi Watch S1 represents essentially the most feature-rich smartwatch the corporate has ever launched. It’s large, stunning, and has lots of options patrons will respect. However, when it comes proper right down to it, is it well worth the cash? Find out in our Xiaomi Watch S1 evaluate.

• Xiaomi Watch S1: €229 / $269
• Xiaomi Watch S1 Active: €169 / $199

The Watch S1 is now the flagship smartwatch from Xiaomi. With its chrome steel building, leather-based strap, sapphire glass masking, and big, AMOLED show, there’s no query that this can be a premium product. It additionally has a chic, minimalist design that ought to match with all of your outfits, from a enterprise swimsuit to denims and a t-shirt. You can select between a black or silver case.

Flanking the perimeters of the Watch S1 are two buttons. A press of the highest button launches your app selector whereas a press of the underside button launches your train selector. Neither of the buttons helps rotational navigation or customization.

The Watch S1 additionally has an oft-neglected characteristic of smartwatches: wi-fi charging. It comes with a wi-fi charging pad within the field (simply large enough to assist the watch) however you should use the charging pads you already personal as an alternative in the event you like. You may cost the watch utilizing a smartphone if it helps reverse wi-fi charging. Using the included pad, it takes a bit over an hour to cost the watch.

Xiaomi’s personal MIUI Watch software program powers the wearable and it’s suitable with Android telephones and iPhones. In order to arrange the Watch S1, you’ll want to attach it to an Android or iOS smartphone working Xiaomi’s Mi Fitness app.

Check out: Xiaomi purchaser’s information

Health options embrace coronary heart price, SpO2, and sleep monitoring. In the instances of coronary heart price and SpO2 monitoring, you’ll be able to select to auto-track these all day on the expense of battery life. You may select how usually you need these tracks to happen, which provides you a level of finer management relating to balancing energy consumption and monitoring accuracy. The watch additionally options onboard dual-band GPS and over 100 train modes. You can management whether or not or not the watch auto-detects your workouts, however this, as soon as once more, sucks up extra battery.

Alongside the Xiaomi Watch S1, the corporate additionally launched the Watch S1 Active. This mannequin removes the sapphire glass, wi-fi charging, chrome steel body, and included leather-based band. It retains the identical well being options, although, making it best for people who find themselves principally thinking about health monitoring. We examined solely the common Xiaomi Watch S1 for this evaluate.

Xiaomi has confirmed that the Watch S1 collection will roll out in chosen European areas beginning in March 2022 however has not revealed plans for US availability (though it introduced pricing in USD). We’ll replace this evaluate as we all know extra.

By far one of the best characteristic of the Watch S1 is the best way it appears to be like. As quickly as you maintain it, you recognize it’s high-quality {hardware}. It has weight, feels extremely sturdy, and the chrome steel building simply screams “premium.” Likewise, its monumental AMOLED show is a pleasure to make use of. Everything regarded crisp in my testing, and navigating round with swipes and faucets was a breeze. I by no means observed any software program lag, glitches, or different efficiency issues, both.

I used to be additionally blown away by the haptics. You can choose whether or not you need vibrations to be “Default” or “Strong,” and the latter setting is inconceivable to disregard when it slams into your wrist. Likewise, the speaker can emit a tone when there’s a brand new notification, and it will get very loud. The Watch S1 additionally helps receiving cellphone calls proper out of your wrist, and the speaker works high quality for that (in addition to that tiny speaker can, anyway). You can’t make calls out of your wrist, although, solely obtain them.

The Watch S1 has terrific battery life. I averaged about 20% loss every day, and that’s with fixed coronary heart price/SpO2 monitoring, a every day exercise, haptics on Strong, superior sleep-tracking switched on, and the always-on show completely activated. If you took some or all these issues away, you may very simply get every week out of this watch.

Health-tracking options listed below are plentiful, too. There are tons of train modes with even obscure issues similar to sq. dancing and auto racing. Overall, coronary heart price monitoring is satisfactory. Check out my coronary heart price information from the Xiaomi Watch S1 as in comparison with my Wahoo Tickr X chest strap throughout a 20-minute bike journey:

As you’ll be able to see, the watch took a bit time to get correct. By two minutes in, although, it just about locked in with the chest strap, though there are some notable spots through which the watch struggled to maintain up.

The Watch S1 additionally has onboard GPS. Overall, this fared fairly properly with it precisely monitoring the fundamentals of my route. However, you’ll be able to see that it struggled to remain correct as soon as I went right into a tree-covered space (the correct purple line is the Wahoo Tickr X):

Obviously, no smartwatch is prone to be nearly as good as a chest strap relating to health monitoring. With that in thoughts, the Watch S1 does a high quality sufficient job for informal train.

For a flagship smartwatch, there’s loads the Xiaomi Watch S1 can’t do in any respect or can’t do very properly. The most obtrusive issues revolve round receiving and dealing with smartphone notifications. First, you haven’t any high quality management over your notifications: they’re both on or off for any specific app. This means a notification that falls into the “Silent” part of your notification drawer on an Android cellphone will nonetheless ring in your wrist. Additionally, you’ll want to manually flip notifications for every app on/off utilizing the linked Xiaomi Mi Fitness cellphone app. Frustratingly, there’s no “Select All” button right here both, so you’ll want to manually toggle each app in your cellphone.

Another downside with the best way MIUI Watch handles notifications is that what you do in your watch/cellphone doesn’t sync. In different phrases, if I swipe away a notification on the watch, it doesn’t vanish from my cellphone. You can also’t reply to notifications on the watch. There is not any keyboard and no assist of voice-to-text, so meaning no making cellphone calls, no composing textual content messages. Basically, your watch rapidly turns into one other technique to pile on notification fatigue.

During our evaluate interval, there was no voice assistant assist on the Watch S1. Interestingly, after I took the be careful of the field, it had Amazon Alexa built-in, however it didn’t work. A software program replace arrived the subsequent day that eliminated Alexa fully. Xiaomi says Alexa assist will ultimately work for customers who purchase the watch however gave no specific timeframe. Likewise, I used to be not in a position to take a look at NFC funds (carried out by Xiaomi Pay) as this characteristic was inactive for my area. However, Xiaomi Pay is locked solely to MasterCard, so even when it did work, it could be fairly limiting.

On prime of this, there are only a few watch apps accessible and a fairly restricted choice of watch faces — and the truth that the aspect buttons can’t be custom-made is an actual drag. You can also’t swap the measurements of the watch from Metric to Imperial (though Xiaomi did say it’s working to assist this). The approach well being information is offered each on the watch itself and within the Mi Fitness app is fairly clunky with every particular person metric (coronary heart price, steps, SpO2, sleep, and many others.) offered as one particular person stat with no overarching examination of these stats mixed. Thankfully, one factor concerning the software program that’s good is you’ll be able to export your well being information to the much more succesful third-party apps (e.g. Strava).

Finally, I encountered a very complicated bug. After taking the be careful of the field and doing nothing to it apart from charging it up and getting it linked, it sounded an alarm at 7:00 AM the subsequent day. There was no alarm set on the watch and none set within the Mi Fitness app. It occurred once more the subsequent morning, even after looking out by the watch looking for the place this alarm was coming from. Xiaomi informed me it didn’t know why this was occurring. My principle is that it hooked into my Fitbit Sense by some means since that does have an alarm set throughout that point interval. However, how the watch would do this can be a thriller, particularly because the Sense isn’t scheduled to go off at 7:00 AM particularly, however moderately someday between 7:00 and seven:30 AM based mostly on my sleep patterns.

Although well being monitoring is fairly correct general, sleep monitoring was not throughout my checks. As one instance, my Fitbit Sense recorded me as having seven hours and 26 minutes of sleep whereas the Watch S1 recorded a whopping eight hours and 40 minutes. The Watch S1 thought I fell asleep as quickly as I received in mattress and recorded practically half-hour of sunshine sleep for that interval. The Fitbit Sense, in the meantime, understood that I used to be awake and slowly headed in the direction of mild sleep by that half-hour, which is far more correct.

Likewise, the Fitbit Sense recorded me waking up a number of instances all through the night time. The Watch S1 solely recorded one time through which I wakened, which is certainly not correct.

To be honest, the Watch S1 did have days through which it was extra correct than this. What I simply described is a day through which it was wildly off-base. Still, I’d not classify the Xiaomi Watch S1 as a dependable sleep tracker. I additionally discovered the massive watch to be cumbersome for sleep on the whole, however your opinion may differ on that.

The Xiaomi Watch S1 is a beautiful timepiece. However, its magnificence is just skin-deep. Once you begin utilizing the watch, you notice it could’t do many of the belongings you need a smartwatch to do. You can’t reply to notifications, there’s no voice assistant but, and the watch doesn’t combine together with your smartphone very properly. In the top, it finally ends up being a really giant, stunning health tracker.

Normally, I’d say that if that’s what you need, you can purchase this. However, with the Xiaomi Watch S1 Active present for a a lot cheaper price, anybody considering of getting this principally for the sake of well being monitoring ought to simply purchase that.

Check out: Your information to one of the best vogue smartwatches

If you need a watch that appears like this however does all of the belongings you want and don’t thoughts paying the premium to get it, you need a Galaxy Watch 4 Classic ($349). Granted, that watch is lacking Google Assistant assist (nonetheless!), in order that downside would nonetheless be there. However, no less than you may management and reply to notifications, acquire entry to a wealth of apps and watch faces, and nonetheless have the health options you want.

Conversely, if you need a watch that prizes perform over type, the Fitbit Versa 3 ($229) is even cheaper than the Watch S1. It has full notification syncing, the flexibility to answer notifications utilizing your voice, Google Assistant and Alexa assist, NFC funds that aren’t tied solely to MasterCard and work within the US, and correct well being and sleep monitoring. It doesn’t look as good, however it’ll do much more.

It’s an actual disgrace the Xiaomi Watch S1 isn’t extra highly effective. With its timeless beauty and unbelievable battery life, Xiaomi would have a real trade disruptor if its software program was as much as snuff.