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5 days battery life

Review: Xiaomi Watch 5 - Superior smartwatch with Wear OS

The combination of a truly smart watch system and good battery life is truly impressive.

Elias Nordling
Published

Google's operating system for watches, Wear OS, is a variant of Android for the smaller format, and you can run both Google's and other apps on the watch in addition to the typical watch functions you expect such as fitness and health and notifications on the wrist. The big problem with the system is that it is a battery guzzler. Samsung's watches with Wear OS typically have a little less than two days of battery life. This means in practice that you have to charge the watch every day, or charge overnight and miss out on the sleep tracking function. At the same time, the system is not as visually impressive or responsive as Apple's Watch OS.

Oneplus (and Oppo) have previously tried to remedy this by giving the watch dual systems, in addition to Wear OS a real-time system that measures your health data but has no other smartwatch functions, but as soon as the screen lights up the watch switches over to the more resource-demanding Wear OS. In this way, they have doubled the battery life, but 3.5 days is honestly not much either.

With the Xiaomi Watch 5, Xiaomi has picked up the idea of dual architecture from Oneplus with the new battery technology with silicon infusion and given the watch a battery of a full 930 mAh, just over double what Samsung has in the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. And for the first time, I thus feel that I have a Wear OS watch that I need to charge just often enough. During the test period, the watch regularly manages just under five and a half days on a charge, and that includes a number of logged workouts during that time.

It's probably not just thanks to new battery technology that they've increased the capacity; the watch is quite large and heavy too. But it's also due to luxurious material choices in the form of steel and sapphire glass. I get used to it quickly. The watch has a standard attachment for straps, so if you don't like the included strap, you can buy a new one almost anywhere.

The screen is large with relatively thin bezels around it and bright enough to be fully readable in daylight. It wakes up quickly with a touch or when I lift the watch, which overall feels fast. This is despite the fact that the smartwatch part is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1, which is starting to get a few years old and in other manufacturers' watches can make them feel a bit slow.

Flexibility with limits

The point of Wear OS in the watch is mainly that you can install apps on the watch. For example, I add Google Keep so that I can tick off the shopping list in the grocery store, and I can add both music streaming services and podcast players. However, the flexibility is not unlimited. When it comes to health and fitness tracking, it's Xiaomi's services and mobile app that apply; you can't, for example, switch to Google's Fitbit or Samsung Health. But you can sync with other services via Google's Health Connect, and Strava has an app for the watch to log runs with their system.

There is nothing wrong with Xiaomi's health measurement either, everything you expect is here, with one exception. Steps are counted, sleep and pulse are measured, and you get information about energy consumption and stress. The health measure that stands out by being absent is heart rate variability (HRV), which is a good measure of both fitness and stress.

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You can of course log different types of workouts and continuously see your pulse, lap time, and more. The watch detects if you take a break and pauses the workout. When I try to train with the watch's built-in GPS and leave the mobile at home, the battery life is not significantly affected. In one hour of outdoor training, two percent of the battery is used.

Other features you can expect from a smartwatch are the ability to tap payments (via Google Pay) and receive notifications on the watch. You choose which app notifications should be forwarded to the watch, and you can respond to notifications by dictating, with emojis, or with a minimal keyboard. At this point, it becomes better to take out the mobile you have with you if you have received notifications. The watch is not sold here in Sweden in any variant with esim.

Gestures with obstacles

The watch has a special sensor to recognise arm movements, and you can control various functions by pinching, snapping your fingers, or tilting the watch. The settings for this are confusing, some gestures you can set, others are preset which is quite unclear. For example, I never manage to take a picture by pinching my fingers twice, and I don't know if I should have activated an additional setting or if it just doesn't detect it. I do manage to get the watch to start a certain app by shaking it twice. But since the function is both capricious and also negatively affects the watch's main advantage, battery life, I turn it off.

Despite the large battery, the watch charges fairly quickly. Ten minutes of charging gives 20 percent, which is enough for a day, and it charges 50 percent in 30 minutes. Then it slows down and full charging takes 1 hour and 20 minutes. The charging is not wireless, so you need the special charging cable, which also does not have USB C at the other end but the old large USB connector, which makes it tricky to find a suitable charger.

The disadvantages of the Xiaomi Watch 5 are small and the advantages are large. It is the first Wear OS watch with really good battery life, and the compromises you get with it are surprisingly few.

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