The Redmi brand has been growing in prominence. It is the budget friendly sub-brand of Xiaomi, now one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. The company has launched its first smartwatch, sticking to the brand principles with a meagre 299 Yuan price, less than $50.
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Called the Redmi Watch, it is a relatively generic, simple design, with a 1.4-inch rectangular display (which is most likely an LCD panel at this price, not OLED) with curved glass over the edges. The chassis of the device is available in three colours – black, white and blue. The silicon strap is available in black, white, blue, green, and pink.
There is only one button on the device – a single small button on the top right of the device. Most of the operating system is controlled through the touchscreen or on the accompanying Mi Fit app.
It also comes with NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, a heart rate monitor and waterproofing up to 50m. The battery life is claimed to reach 7 days with normal use, which increases up to 12 days in power saving mode. The size of the battery hasn’t been shared by Xiaomi.
The Watch features many of the same fitness tracking features as other similar devices, including “outdoor running, indoor running, outdoor cycling, indoor cycling, walking, swimming in the pool, and free activities.” The heartrate monitor is active all the time, monitoring the changes in real-time for various health alerts. It also includes a sleep tracker, although the lack of details about it makes it sound like it can only track the duration and not the quality of sleep.
There aren’t any details available regarding global availability, but with Xiaomi growing in prominence in South Africa we suspect it may make its way to our shores sometime in 2021.
