Redmi Watch 5 Lite Review: Lite on your wrist and pocket, but not on features or performance

Pros:

Good build quality with 5ATM water resistance

Lightweight and comfortable around the wrist

Large, high-res AMOLED display

Very good battery backup

Reliable health and fitness tracking

Built-in GPS, Bluetooth calling

Snappy and lag-free UI, simple and useful companion app

Great pricing

Cons

Default strap can be a handful to fasten and unfasten

AOD is a battery hog

Rating: 4.3/5

Price: Rs 3,399

The model name and the price tag of the Redmi Watch 5 Lite are highly misleading. The Lite suffix often denotes cut corners or absence of certain features. I would like to state it upfront that Xiaomi has done this watch a disservice by using that suffix despite it packing every feature that one expects from a fitness watch priced under Rs 5,000, and some more. Ironically, there’s a Redmi Watch 5 Active which is actually the ‘lite’ variant, and the Active suffix would have gone well with this one. But it is what it is.

Nomenclature aside, the Redmi Watch 5 Lite boasts of features like a sharp AMOLED display, 5ATM water resistance, built-in GPS, Bluetooth calling and more for an asking price lower than Rs 3,500. That potentially makes it a segment defining model. But we have seen in the past that an extensive feature list doesn’t always translate into great performance. Is this Redmi watch indeed a lite variant or a heavyweight of this segment? Let’s find out.

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Generic design, but good build quality and comfortable to wear

The Redmi Watch 5 Lite’s design is pretty standard with a rectangular dial and an elongated physical button along the edge. The build quality is good and so is the finish with no rough edges or unevenness. The NCVM (plastic) frame is glossy but the black variant we got for review did not attract any smudge marks; at least they weren’t conspicuous. The display is completely flat but blends well into the frame.

The watch is quite light (less than 30 grams without straps) and is comfortable to wear for long hours, and the silicone straps don’t cause sweating or skin irritation. However, fastening and unfastening them can be a chore. The locking mechanism is slightly different from the standard buckle and hoop option, and the strap goes under the other strap. Not something we haven’t seen before but the mechanism seems a bit stiff here; probably a faulty strap. Anyway, if you don’t like it, you can replace them with any third party 22 mm straps.

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Large and sharp AMOLED display with slots for six watch faces

This Redmi watch has a sizable and vibrant 1.96-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 410 x 502 pixels. That translates into a 332 ppi pixel density, making the display sharp enough to read content on. It is perfectly legible at 50% brightness when indoors and needs to be pushed upwards of 80% under bright sunlight. There is no auto brightness adjustment here due to lack of an ambient light sensor, something we do not expect in this budget.

There is no mention of any scratch resistant glass or oleophobic coating either in the spec-sheet, but the screen remains completely scratch-free after a few weeks of use. Also, I barely had to wipe it during testing as it doesn’t attract fingerprints or smudge marks. You can flick your wrist to turn the screen on or press the physical button; both work well. You can even opt for ‘double tap to wake’ from the settings. Covering the screen turns it off. You can turn off the flick gesture during your sleep hours or when in a dark room like a theatre.

The watch comes bundled with a handful of watch faces and you get access to a lot more through the Mi Fitness app that you need to install and sync this watch with before using it. The watch face collection is pretty decent and the transfer is fairly brisk. You can store up to three watch faces of your choosing on the watch along with the three preloaded ones.

Snappy user interface and a clean and easy-to-use companion app

As I mentioned, you need to download the Mi Fitness app and sync your device with it over Bluetooth. The setup takes a few minutes but is fairly smooth. While the app gives you access to watch faces and further breakdown/reports of the health metrics and workout data, you can access a lot of it on the watch itself. For instance, you can view the details of your workouts or breakup of sleep data on the watch screen without having to open the app, which is great.

The UI is simple, fluid, lag-free and quite peppy with nice use of colours. It is easy to comprehend even for a novice. You can swipe down on the home screen for notifications, swipe up for quick settings and swipe left or right to browse through various widgets like daily goals progress, heart rate, sleep or stress data and more. The physical button acts as a shortcut for all the watch functions and also doubles up as a home button from any screen.

You can change the presentation style of the watch functions from a list to text-free icons, and also edit the widgets from the watch itself. We quite liked the customisation on offer on this watch if one is willing to explore. The Mi Fitness app is another big plus. It is one of the easiest to use companion apps with a clean layout and UI. All the health and fitness cards are neatly arranged on the home screen displaying the synopsis of the respective function.

Tapping them gives you further details of the health parameter or workout. They display your heart rate, stress, blood oxygen levels, sleep data, steps count, workout details and more. It also gives you a vitality score and suggests a tentative recovery time after a workout. Even better, for those interested, this Redmi watch allows you to export the captured data to popular fitness apps like Google Fit/ Health Connect or Strava.

Generally reliable health and fitness tracking

The Redmi Watch 5 Lite has sensors that can monitor various health parameters like heart rate, blood oxygen, stress levels and sleep, and some of them round the clock if you choose to. The SpO2 readings take about 20 seconds and are generally a point below a clinical oximeter, which is perfectly acceptable. All day oxygen and stress measurements are also available. While the former can drain your battery, the latter is extremely power efficient here.

Sleep tracking works well. The overall sleep duration from the time I fell asleep till I was up seemed correct. It tracks the quantum of light sleep, deep sleep, REM periods and awake time. Strangely, REM is disabled by default and needs to be enabled from the watch settings. The breakup of sleep stages is available on the watch itself, while the app gives you a deeper analysis of your sleep and a couple of suggestions to improve it if necessary.

This watch claims to track 150 different workouts that include your usual indoor and outdoor walking, running, cycling, swimming, free training and their variations along with popular sports like badminton and cricket. It has a built-in GPS module that is compliant with 5 popular systems - GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou and QZSS to track your outdoor activities. It takes about a minute to get a GPS lock, and post that the link stays strong as long as you stay outdoors. The distance tracking is on the money.

The pedometer does a pretty good job too and the step count is fairly accurate. The tracking begins shortly after you start moving and it does not add false steps, which is great to see in this segment. The watch does add to the steps count while doing fairly static weight training in the gym after choosing the Freestyle workout mode on the watch; something I have noticed on a majority of budget fitness watches.

This Redmi watch is 5ATM water resistant and can be worn for a swim without a worry. While a lot of fitness data can be checked on the watch screen, more details are available in the Mi Fitness app with a daily, weekly and monthly breakdown of various activities you indulged in. You also get basic guided breathing exercises on the watch, which can help you calm down and lower stress levels. Menstrual tracking is also available and so are sedentary reminders.

There’s Bluetooth calling and some more tidbits

Like most watches these days, the Redmi Watch 5 Lite also supports Bluetooth calling function, wherein you can make and receive calls from the watch itself as long as it is synced with a smartphone with an active connection. The built-in speaker and mic do a decent job when indoors, but the speaker isn’t loud enough when outdoors or in noisy areas. The call quality is acceptable in quieter areas and it gets the job done, but it’s best to stick to your phone or Bluetooth earphones for calling. It will also prolong the watch’s battery reserves.

You can also choose to receive notifications and messages from various apps installed on your synced phone or tablet on the watch screen. The messages are perfectly legible but one cannot reply from the watch. In addition, there are a bunch of utility apps preloaded on the watch like a calendar, alarm, stopwatch, weather updates, music control and a few more. You can store up to 10 contacts on the watch for calling them quickly.

Impressive battery backup as long as you keep AOD off

The Redmi Watch 5 Lite has impressive battery backup under normal load as long as you do not turn on Always-on Display (AOD). The company claims a battery life of 18 days on a single charge under typical usage. Your mileage will vary depending on your usage pattern and the features you turn on. With AOD on and with 30 minutes of daily calling from the watch, it barely lasted for 4 to 5 days. Without AOD and with minimal calling, the battery life was threefold.

During our test run simulating a real-world usage scenario with continuous heart rate and stress monitoring turned on, 3 hours of total GPS usage, live tracking of five hour-long indoor workouts, two SpO2 readings daily, sleep tracking for a week, notifications limited to email and SMS and under 5 minutes of daily calling, the watch’s 470 mAh battery lasted close to two weeks, which is quite impressive. An hour of GPS usage takes abouts 7 points off the battery. The watch charges fully in 90 minutes with the bundled magnetic pin charging cable.

Price and verdict: Incredible value for money

Now comes the best part. The Redmi Watch 5 Lite is priced at just Rs 3,399 in India with a one year warranty, which is incredible for what it offers and its performance. At that price, you get a swim-proof fitness watch with a large and sharp AMOLED display, built-in GPS, reliable health and fitness tracking, useful companion app, Bluetooth calling and very good battery backup. Now you know why I was ranting about the Lite moniker at the start!

As for competition, there’s very little at this price point, but if you are willing to spend about a thousand more, there are a couple of options to consider. You have the Honor Choice Watch that has similar features including a large AMOLED display, Bluetooth calling, built-in GPS and competent battery backup. If you prefer a round dial, then the new Lava Prowatch X is a good option too. Stay tuned for its full review coming up soon. But all things considered, the Redmi Watch 5 Lite sets the bar in this segment and is hard to beat at the moment.