The Redmi Watch has been announced alongside the new Redmi Note 9 series of smartphones as the first smartwatch from Xiaomi's Redmi brand, packing a low price and some eye-catching features.
One such feature is its 230mAh battery, which apparently lasts for seven days with normal use, or up to 12 days if you enable the power-saving mode. Juicing it back up again is said to take around two hours.
The Redmi Watch also has a 1.4-inch color LCD touchscreen with a 320 x 320 resolution, plus it's waterproof to depths of 50 meters, and includes NFC, a heart rate monitor, and Bluetooth 5.0.
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Beyond the heart rate monitor there's also a selection of exercise tracking modes, plus sleep tracking and a breathing exercise.
The Redmi Watch works with both iPhones and Android handsets, and you can also control music that’s being played on your phone. Other features include an alarm clock, a timer, a stopwatch, weather reports, a flashlight, a compass, call and message alerts, activity reminders, and high-heart-rate alerts.
It comes in black, blue and white color options for the body, and there's also a choice of five silicone straps, with black, blue, white, pink, and green on offer.
There's a single button on the right edge of the Redmi Watch, and the wearable weighs just 35g and has a thickness of 10.9mm. All in all it's not a bad look considering the low price.
Xiaomi has previously launched the Redmi Smart Band fitness tracker, so the Redmi Watch is a smarter alternative, but at just 269 Chinese yuan (around $40 / £30 / AU$55 / Rs 3,000 – although prices in markets outside China won't necessarily be in line with those conversions) it's still cheaper than many fitness trackers.
So far it's only been announced for China, where it will go on sale from December 1, but it's entirely possible the Redmi Watch will get a global launch at some point. If and when it does though it might get a different name, as a very similar wearable called the Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite has been spotted on an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) listing.
The Redmi Watch would have to pass through the FCC before being sold in the US, so it's very likely we'll see it there at least in some form.
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