Gadget review
Redmi Watch 5 delivers on basics, but lacks a smart edge
Great screen and battery, but the limited OS holds it back from greatness.
Top Line:
The Redmi Watch 5 delivers features that are now standard in smartwatches—but they’re still not guaranteed at this price point. It has long battery life, seamless phone pairing, and a bright, readable screen.
All of that is good—but in 2025, it might not be enough. The inability to install external apps limits its usefulness, and the operating system feels a bit behind the times.
At around $150, expectations should be tempered. Still, it’s time Xiaomi brought more modern flexibility to its budget watch line.
Details:
Some say timing is everything—and while that may not be entirely true, it clearly plays a significant role in life. A product that once seemed new, cheap, or advanced just a few months or a year ago can quickly become ordinary.
Take, for example, a smartwatch that tracks your sleep, physical activity, blood oxygen levels, and more. It displays the information clearly in an app on your phone, offers tips for improvement, and costs just $150. Not long ago, this would have sounded impressive. Today, however, those features are considered standard.
Xiaomi recently launched the Redmi Watch 5, a new version of its affordable smartwatch. We took it for a test run to see how it holds up and how it compares to the competition.
A bigger and brighter screen
The Redmi Watch 5 features a relatively large 2.1-inch screen, but it doesn’t feel heavy or bulky on the wrist. As a budget-friendly device, its design is modest: basic but not cheap-looking, and the strap is simple yet comfortable.
The screen isn’t just larger than previous models—it also boasts an upgraded brightness of up to 1,500 nits, making it readable even in direct sunlight. You can choose to keep the screen always on, though this will drain the battery faster.
On the right side is a single multi-functional button. It powers on the screen (unless you’ve enabled gesture-based activation), toggles between the app screen and main display, and can also be rotated to scroll. This allows you to navigate between screens or scroll through apps—though all these actions can also be done via the touchscreen.
Not just a smartwatch—a fitness tool
According to Xiaomi, the Redmi Watch 5 is a smart sports watch—not just a smartwatch. Its capabilities are reminiscent of Xiaomi’s fitness bands and those of competitors. The key difference is the integration of Xiaomi’s HyperOS, which offers basic functionality with a few extras, but no app store for downloading third-party apps.
The watch connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and shows notifications from various apps. However, its interactivity is limited—you can read WhatsApp messages, for instance, but can’t reply or initiate new messages like you can with smartwatches running Google’s Wear OS.
On the other hand, the watch does include a dialer that lets you call any number (note: it lacks symbols like asterisks or hyphens, which may be needed for certain call centers), and there’s also a contacts app. In older models, some calls were routed to the watch by default—this time, that issue didn’t occur. Calls I did choose to answer through the watch sounded good on both ends.
Health and fitness tracking
The Redmi Watch 5 includes tools for tracking sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, stress, steps, and more. Naturally, it’s not a medical-grade device. While using it, I also tested the Samsung Ring, and discrepancies appeared between the two—especially in step counts (where the Ring seemed to inflate the numbers) and in how sleep data was segmented.
No room for add-ons
Xiaomi still clutters the app screen with standalone apps that could easily be menus within a single app, though it’s less bloated than in previous versions. For example, there’s a "workout" app with an "outdoor running" option, and a separate "running" app as well—it’s probably just a shortcut, but also an attempt to make up for the lack of third-party app support.
Similarly, there are separate apps for "workout history" and "workout status," plus individual icons for a timer, stopwatch, and world clock—these could have been consolidated.
That said, there are some useful tools too: remote camera control (tap the watch to take a photo), phone locator, voice recorder, music control, weather updates, and more.
Xiaomi Fitness app: A helpful companion
To manage the watch, you’ll need to install the Xiaomi Fitness app. It lets you choose your watch face, track all your data, compare it with other users, and—importantly—read explanations about what the data means, along with personalized recommendations. Instead of guessing or Googling, the information is clearly laid out for you.
One small glitch: the watch occasionally switched to "Do Not Disturb" mode on its own, preventing notifications from coming through. It even triggered the same mode on the phone. While there’s a workaround, it was mildly frustrating.
Stellar battery life
Battery life is one of the Redmi Watch 5’s biggest strengths. Xiaomi claims it can last up to 24 days, depending on usage. In our testing, the watch easily ran for two weeks, with around 20% battery still remaining. Charging isn’t especially fast, but you only need to do it every couple of weeks. A 50% charge takes about 30 minutes, and a full charge takes roughly an hour.
