Mi Watch: Xiaomi's large smartwatch (not only) for athletes

The Mi Watch is one of the three wrist wearables that Xiaomi currently offers. Besides the Mi Band 5 fitness tracker, there's a second smartwatch in the form of the Mi Watch Lite.

Not only does the Mi Watch differ from the smaller Mi Watch Lite that features an Apple Watch design with its rounded shape, but it also has better features. The Mi Watch, for example, has an AMOLED with always-on mode, whereas the TFT display of the Mi Watch Lite inevitably dims when it's inactive. In addition, the Mi Watch Lite's touchscreen responded sluggishly at times. In contrast, the Mi Watch always responds to inputs immediately.

With a high-quality GPS chip and more than 100 sports modes, the Mi Watch has a clear advantage for athletes compared with the Lite version. Like Huawei and Samsung, Xiaomi also relies on the recognized technology from Firstbeat for training analysis.

Users who log their workouts with a smartwatch usually also want to synchronize them with Apple Health or Google Fit. The Mi Watch revealed inconsistent behavior here, depending on whether you connect it to an Android smartphone or an iPhone: While Xiaomi's iOS app syncs vitals with Apple Health, the connection to Google Fit was not possible on Android. Our review of the Mi Watch shows how much information is provided by the training logs of the Xiaomi app in contrast.