It’s no secret that battery endurance has always been the Achilles’ heel of Wear OS smartwatches, so when Xiaomi announced its Watch 5 with a massive 930mAh Silicon-carbon (Si-C) battery, we were instantly intrigued. With claims of up to 6 days of regular use, which extends to 18 days in power save mode, Watch 5 offers the longest runtimes of any smartwatch running Android on the wrist.
Alongside the lofty battery claims, Xiaomi also outfitted the Watch 5 with a big 1.54” AMOLED touchscreen protected by sapphire glass and a premium stainless-steel casing. This is also the first smartwatch we’ve tested with a muscle-reading EMG sensor, which opens up an array of gesture-based controls.
Xiaomi Watch 5 specifications:
- Dimensions: 47 x 47 x 12.3 mm
- Build: Sapphire crystal glass, stainless steel frame (316L)
- Weight (without strap): 56 grams
- Straps: Detachable 22mm straps, 135-205mm adjustable length
- Display: 1.54” AMOLED touchscreen, 480 x 480 px resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, 1,500 nits max brightness, Always-On Display (AOD), Sapphire Glass, Mohs level 9
- Chipsets: Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 (4nm), BES2800 co-processor (6nm).
- Memory: 32GB internal; 2GB RAM
- Operating Systems: Google Wear OS 6, Xiaomi Vela OS
- Features: 5ATM rating (50m depth), Real-time heart rate monitor, 24/7 Blood Oxygen level monitor, Sleep tracking, Stress monitoring, Sports tracking, Step Counter, Meditation, Notifications, Idle Alert, Phone Finder, Weather Forecast, Music and Camera Control, Alarm, Stopwatch, linear vibration motor
- Sports Modes: Outdoor Run, Indoor Run, Outdoor Walk, Cycling, Hiking, Pool Swimming, Jump rope, Freestyle (150+ more in Mi Fitness app)
- Sensors: Optical heart rate sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Ambient light sensor, Electronic compass sensor, Barometer sensor, IMU sensor, EMG sensor
- Connectivity: Compatible with Android 6.0+, Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 2.4GHz, NFC, dual-band L1+L5 GNSS, microphone and speakers
- Battery: 930mAh Si-C
- Colors: Black, Juniper Green
We’ve been putting the Watch 5 through its paces and are finally ready to share our findings.
Table of Contents:
Design
Xiaomi Watch 5 leans into the traditional watch aesthetic with a fairly understated design. But one thing was immediately noticeable as soon as I strapped it on my wrist – it’s a substantial unit. My daily driver Huawei Watch Fit 3 instantly felt like a toy compared to the Watch 5.
At 56 grams (without the strap), Xiaomi’s flagship watch is even heavier than the Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro, which was my last encounter with a larger-sized wrist wearable. Once you get used to its dimensions, Watch 5 does not disappoint as the substantial weight and size come with the reassuring feeling of a premium, well-built device.
The shiny stainless-steel casing also adds to the premium vibe and is nicely complemented by the rotating crown button, which features a textured surface and tactile clicks. The programmable shortcut key below it also brings a firm click, which launches the workout app by default.
The 1.54” AMOLED touchscreen on the Watch 5 offers great viewing angles with a sharp and vibrant output and thin enough bezels. It’s protected by a sapphire glass layer, which is also used on the back side, where we have the sensors. It also brings thousands of watch face options with varied designs and lots of free options, with most also offering AOD functionalities.
The unboxing experience is pretty uneventful with the in-box contents boiling down to a two-pin magnetic charging puck, which ends in a USB-A connection. We feel like it’s time for Xiaomi to address that last part by either offering a modular puck like on the OnePlus Watch 3 or by implementing a USB-C connector at the end.
Watch 5 comes with a standard 22mm silicone strap, which you can easily swap out for any other design. Our review unit sports the Juniper green hue and it has a nice textured pattern.
Software and Features
Like recent Oppo and OnePlus flagship smartwatches, Xiaomi Watch 5 takes a dual chipset and dual operating system approach to extend its running time. You get the yesteryear flagship Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 chip, which, even though several years old at this point, is still a mighty capable SoC for a wrist wearable. Xiaomi paired it with the tried and tested BES2800 co-processor, which takes over when you’re dealing with less intensive tasks.
It’s important to note that Watch 5 also uses a secondary real-time operating system (RTOS) that complements Google’s Wear OS 6. Enabling the Power saver mode shuts off Wear OS and all of its third-party apps and leaves you with Xiaomi’s barebones Vela OS.
The latter still provides the basic smartwatch experience, including health tracking and a smaller list of proprietary apps, while greatly extending battery life. By the way switching back to Smart mode forces the watch to reboot so you’ll be left with a few minutes of downtime when toggling between these two.
Wear OS is still arguably the most feature-rich wrist wearable operating system around. You’ll feel right at home coming from an Android phone, with all of your favorite apps being just a download away from the Play Store. There is the age-old limitation of not having iOS support on board, but it’s the same way on the other side, with Apple Watches not wanting to play nice with Android phones.
Outside of ecosystem discourse, Wear OS 6 features Google’s Material 3 Expressive design with system-wide color-theming, improved touch optimization, new tile designs and native integration with Google Gemini. The setup process on the Watch 5 involves downloading Xiaomi’s Mi Fitness app on your Android phone and pairing the Watch 5 alongside your Google account while also consenting to a long list of permissions before you can get going.
From then on, you’re pretty much free to use the Watch 5 as you see fit.
Wanna watch NBA highlights from YouTube on your wrist? Go ahead.
Read up on the latest tech news and compare specs on GSMArena? No problem.
Play mini-games? You’re free to do all that and even more. To use the cliché “the possibilities are endless”, and Wear OS certainly feels like a fun experience if you’ve been using less capable smartwatches.
For the most part, Wear OS is great, though it does run into some stutters if you open more intensive apps. We noticed such instances when loading YouTube videos via the Samsung Internet Browser or navigating more complex web pages with lots of media. It goes without saying that this type of usage is also taxing on battery life.
Xiaomi Watch 5 is also the first smartwatch on the market with an electromyography (EMG) sensor. It can detect muscle activity inside your hand and capture nerve signals from your fingers to control certain aspects of the UI via pinching your index and thumb fingers.
You can dismiss notifications, answer calls, turn off alarms or take pictures on your connected smartphone all without physically touching the watch or digital crown. We should note that your hand needs to be parallel to your chest while performing these gestures, and as you can expect, there are more than a few times when the watch did not register input.
Alongside the pinch gestures, Watch 5 also supports finger snaps, wrist shakes and rotations and you are free to assign any of these gestures as shortcuts to launch any app on the watch, including third-party ones. This is quite useful for those instances when your hands are dirty, though we’re sure some users will just see this feature as a gimmick and never actually turn it on.
Xiaomi Watch 5 is also able to make and take calls from your paired phone via Bluetooth, but Xiaomi is not offering cellular connectivity option outside of China so you’ll need to keep your phone nearby. Call quality is pretty good for a watch, with people on the other end reporting clear reception of my voice.
Thanks to the onboard NFC, Watch 5 is also good for contact payments and can also store compatible transit cards via Google Wallet. We’re glad to report that we had no connectivity issues between the watch and the paired Android phone during the review period.
Health and activity tracking
Health tracking
Like any modern smartwatch, Xiaomi Watch 5 comes with a comprehensive suite of health tracking features. Heart rate, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), sleep and stress tracking are all present and Xiaomi is also offering a one-tap comprehensive health check.
This 60-second assessment factors in heart rate, blood oxygen, stress levels, sleep duration, sleep heart rate, and sleep SpO2 for a fast and easy assessment of your general well-being. Cross-comparing the health data readings with competing smartwatches shows consistent results. It should be noted that these are nothing more than general health insights and not medical-grade assessments.
In terms of sleep tracking, Watch 5 performed better than previous smartwatches with more accurate go-to-sleep and wake-up times. Watch 5 also caught instances of waking up during the night, which was a problem on previous Xiaomi Watch models. You also get access to the usual sleep breakdown of REM, deep and light sleep stages.
Xiaomi is also offering a sleep improvement plan developed alongside the World Sleep Society, Asian Society of Sleep Medicine and Chinese Sleep Research Society. It will help guide you to improve your sleep in 21 days, by nudging you to set specific bedtime and wake-up goals and offering tips on how to get better rest.
Activity tracking
Watch 5 offers no shortage of data for sports tracking. Xiaomi is boasting new professional algorithms for running, cycling, and hiking. Runners will find general metrics like pace, heart rate, elevation, and details on running dynamics. Workouts are also complemented by values for training intensity, VO2 Max, and suggested recovery time. Sadly, there’s no heart rate variability (HRV) option.
In our testing, Watch 5 provides accurate data for workout intensity, heart rate and calories burned in casual gym sessions, treadmill runs and bicycle rides. Serious athletes will still want dedicated gear like a chest heart rate monitor and a Garmin watch. The dual-band GPS receiver on the Watch 5 tends to struggle with accuracy in crowded city spaces, but does a better job at plotting routes in open areas.
You are also free to load up offline maps, which is great for hikes, and thanks to Wear OS, your favorites like AllTrails and Strava are just a click away directly on the watch.
Battery life
The one spec that jumps out at you with the Xiaomi Watch 5 is its huge 930mAh battery. It’s a Xiaomi Surge battery with stacked-cell technology, which allows Xiaomi to fill irregular shapes (like round smartwatches) while also incorporating 10% Silicon-carbon content.
And the results are pretty impressive.
With the Watch 5 set to Smart mode and running Wear OS 6 with auto brightness, constant Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, notifications, all-day health tracking (including sleep), we got 5 full days of usage before it finally gave up on day 6 at around 11 AM.
That’s with constant tinkering, three 60-minute gym workouts and pushing the watch to its limit throughout the day. And if you don’t need third-party apps and just want notifications alongside health and activity tracking, then you can realistically extend the total run time to over two weeks with the power saver mode.
Verdict
Xiaomi Watch 5 isn’t trying to be the flashiest smartwatch on the market and instead focuses on getting the fundamentals right while also delivering class-leading battery life.
You get a premium build, sharp display, smooth performance, and a full-featured Wear OS 6 experience. But what truly sets it apart is the battery endurance, which has always been a drawback on Wear OS watches. Watch 5’s massive 930mAh Si-C battery is capable of lasting an entire 5-day work week between chargers, which is a meaningful improvement over competitors.
It’s not perfect. Our international version does not offer cellular connectivity nor does it bring ECG or HRV tracking. The charger feels outdated and there’s no wireless charging option which you’d expect from a flagship smartwatch. And perhaps the biggest drawback is the size, which is definitely not for everyone’s wrist.
But these are relatively minor drawbacks in the grand scheme of things. At €276/£238 currently on Amazon, Xiaomi Watch 5 is an easy recommendation if you’re looking for a new Wear OS 6 smartwatch with outstanding battery endurance.
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