Redmi Watch Move review
The Redmi Watch Move is Xiaomi's latest smartwatch. It's the most affordable model in the company's lineup in markets such as India, which also includes the Redmi Watch 5 Active and the oddly named Redmi Watch 5 Lite, which is the most expensive one.
The Redmi Watch Move makes some big claims despite its incredibly low price tag of INR 1,999 (~$23). Xiaomi claims that this model offers the best heart rate monitoring accuracy, the best step counter accuracy, the best display, and the best battery life in the segment.
We will get to those, but let's first start with the design. As with seemingly every smartwatch Xiaomi makes these days, the Redmi Watch Move design is heavily inspired by the Apple Watch. Everything from the curvature of the glass, the corners of the display, the edges of the watch body, and even the shape of the strap are near-identical to that of Apple's designs.
This always results in the same awkward conversation of someone asking you what Apple Watch model you are wearing, followed by the embarrassing admission that it isn't actually an Apple Watch but merely a pretender that costs over twenty times less. I'm sure for some people this might be a pro rather than a con; after all, imitation luxury watches have existed for as long as luxury watches. But if that's not your jam then you might be disappointed.
The straps are color-matched with the watch, and you can pick from one of four different color options. The straps have an Apple Watch Sport Band-style design, but with a buckle instead of a stud. They also have a very convenient release mechanism that requires pressing a button, and the strap detaches from the watch effortlessly.
Being a budget device, the Redmi Watch Move body is made entirely out of plastic. You still get an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.
A new addition to the Redmi Watch design is the rotating crown on the side, which, of course, can also be pressed as a button. I didn't find the rotating feature particularly useful as the dial is rather stiff and difficult to move. It also only just scrolls through the contents of the screen, which you could do very easily using the touchscreen.
Moving on to the display, the Redmi Watch Move has a 1.85-inch AMOLED display with a 390 x 450 resolution and 60Hz refresh rate. The display is excellent with bright, vibrant colors and great viewing angles. The high resolution makes text and watch faces look super smooth and the brightness is adequate outdoors. The display does have sizable bezels of about 3mm all around but most watch faces help hide this pretty well.
Unfortunately, there is an issue with the display, and that is the lack of automatic brightness. The panel can get quite bright, but you have to adjust the brightness manually. You can get by with a medium brightness that is still visible outdoors and doesn't blind you at night but it's far from ideal.
The display supports always-on mode, which is handy. The watch also responds well to twists of the wrist to check the time. However, on our unit, the display would sometimes turn on even if the wrist wasn't rotated and I often found myself walking around with a fully lit panel. This is most likely a calibration issue with the accelerometer and could be fixed with a software update.
The watch has a built-in speaker and a microphone. The speaker gets loud enough for notifications and calls and can even tickle you a little with its reverberations.
The HyperOS software on the Redmi Watch Move is quite good. The UI on the watch is well laid out and easy to use. The same can also be said of the Mi Fitness app for Android and iOS, although the annoyance of making and logging into an account remains.
The app offers a ton of watch faces for you to use; Xiaomi claims there are more than 200. There are a lot of good ones in there and you should find at least something that takes your fancy. Some watch faces also come with their own AOD mode, although most just use the default one.
The Redmi Watch Move is super quick to download and enable a new watch face from the app, with the entire process often taking under two seconds. However, the watch can only store two additional watch faces over the four that come pre-installed, and you cannot remove those four to make space. This makes going through all those 200+ watch faces a chore, as you have to immediately remove the one you just set to make space for the next one.
Mi Fitness
One of the four pre-installed watch faces is AI-generated, which is part of the limited AI functionality on this watch. You can speak a prompt and the watch will generate an image for you to use. The process is a bit slow and you can't just cycle through them as it will only generate one image at a time and you have to redo the prompt if you want more options.
Despite that, I was having fun generating some images until I hit the 30-free trials limit, after which the watch told me to get a $2.5 ($2 for a limited time) monthly subscription if I wanted to keep generating more images. It's also not a Xiaomi subscription, but rather to some company called AI Zone that does the image generation.
The same company also handles the other AI feature, which is AI Q&A. This is a limited version of an AI chatbot that more or less works like Siri as you can only ask it one question at a time. It's also not very good because I asked it the time in a particular city and it told me it can't do that, which is really helpful coming from a watch.
The Redmi Watch Move does not have Alexa like Xiaomi's more expensive watches. If that's something you find yourself using a lot then this won't be the watch for you.
Then there are all the fitness features. The Redmi Watch Move has built-in heart rate monitoring along with a blood oxygen sensor. Using the data from both, it can also track other things, such as your stress, vitality, and sleep. Xiaomi claims that the heart rate monitoring is 97% accurate, the highest in its class. There's no easy way to verify that other than strapping myself to an ECG machine so I will take Xiaomi's word for it.
Finally, you get your usual plethora of activities that can be tracked, 140+ in this case with auto-detection for six, including outdoor running, walking, outdoor cycling, rowing, elliptical, and jump rope. The only thing missing from that list is swimming, which the watch will not track for some reason.
The Redmi Watch Move does not have built-in GPS so it relies on your phone to provide location information. This means you need to have your phone on you to use the location tracking features.
Xiaomi claims a battery life of 14 days. After about a week of use, I still had about 54% battery left, so I'd say that claim seems to be accurate. The charger is just a thin USB cable that attaches magnetically to the back of the watch.
All things considered, I think Redmi Watch Move is fantastic for the price. INR 1,999 is very low for the features and functionality on offer here. I was impressed with the display, the software, the battery life, and the range of fitness-tracking features. It lacks a few things like GPS and Alexa that Xiaomi's more expensive models offer, and the design is far too derivative to be taken seriously. But if you can look past those things then this is exceptionally good value.
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