Xiaomi Watch 5 review – We waited a long time. Was it worth it?

Tags: Review | Xiaomi | Smart

12.3.2026

Xiaomi Watch 5 aren’t just the next generation in line, but clear proof that Xiaomi wants to compete with the very best Wear OS smartwatches.

Lately it felt like Xiaomi had been asleep at the wheel in the smartwatch segment... That’s exactly the sentence I might have said at the start of 2026. I probably even did, but I can’t remember everything, can I.

So why am I circling back to the start of the year? Because I was clearly wrong. Yes, I’m slightly excused by the fact I didn’t expect Xiaomi to come out with the Watch 5, which has:

• a case made entirely of stainless steel
• sapphire crystal
• a bezel only 2.6 mm wide
• a really nice 1.54" AMOLED display
• a brand-new EMG sensor for gesture control
• the Wear OS operating system
• 6-day battery life
• multi-band GPS reception

And if you’re starting this article with an iPhone in your pocket, be aware that Wear OS smartwatches cannot be paired with iOS phones.

I had to get an Android phone for this, and as a long-time Apple user I really had to hold myself back from putting “unfortunately” in front of that “had to”.

No notes on design... except for the charger

As Xiaomi already showed with the Watch S4, they really get design, and they’ve doubled down with the Watch 5.

Just look at it – a 316L stainless steel case throughout (yet the weight without the strap is just 56 g), sapphire crystal, pleasing curves...

What adds the most in my opinion is the display-to-body ratio. It’s a lovely 78% and the bezel (borders, if you will) is just 2.6 mm. Generally, the less “black nothing” around the display, the more modern a watch looks to me.

With such a thin bezel—basically none at all—there’s no option for interchangeable bezels this time, unlike the already-mentioned Watch S4. Do I miss it? Honestly, not really; the Watch 5 simply looks better. It does keep the same, and in my view very versatile, 47 mm case size and 5 ATM water resistance.

As for wearability, I didn’t really find any flaws. They went with a very comfortable silicone strap (22 mm width) and, thank heavens, a standard metal buckle. No tucking one strap end under the other—just a good old classic. Yes, I’m old-school, but sometimes manufacturers try so hard to be innovative that you end up with pinched skin from a hyper-modern clasp. Xiaomi skipped that, and I think they did the right thing.

I could sing the strap even more praises. Not only is the inner side really pleasant to the touch, the outer has an interesting texture that gives it a slightly fabric-like feel.

While we’re on the good stuff, the caseback is sapphire too. That’s great! This is exactly the area that begs for scratches, so it’s nice that nearly unscratchable sapphire stands in the way. On the other hand, scratches here are in a nearly invisible spot. Still, during a potential resale, every scratch counts.

Where I am a bit worried about scratches—and the spot really invites them—is the space between the lugs. If you’re unsure what kind of strap attachment the watch has, just look there, because it literally acts like a mirror. Yes, this area is the only glossy part, and I’m afraid it could pick up scratches over time, which are most visible on polished surfaces.

I don’t want to sound like a nitpicker who always has to find something wrong, but I will point out one negative. Every little crease on the watch just begs for dust or a bit of grime. Xiaomi even leans into it a bit—there’s a slight groove around the bezel, a recess around the sensor, a textured strap…

I’ve been testing smartwatches for almost six years now and usually manage to return them in really good shape. With this Xiaomi, not so much. I noticed it when I went to shoot photos. Good lighting always shows the truth—fingerprints, smudges, dirt. I tried, but no luck.

So if you’re wondering why the photos look the way they do, I’d answer in English this time: I tried my best.

A display that flies

The Xiaomi Watch 5 are without a doubt the snappiest watches from this Chinese brand. Everything happens on a 1.54" AMOLED touchscreen with 480 x 480 px resolution and up to 1500 nits of peak brightness.

To be honest, 1500 nits is fine, but I might have expected a bit more. The competition, sometimes even cheaper, simply offers higher numbers. I think this ties into battery life—if someone was regularly blasting 3000 nits, only one thing would burn out: the battery.

The watch uses the first-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor, which older Pixel Watch generations used as well (as far as I know, the second and third). The latest Pixel Watch 4 uses the second, improved generation of this processor. Which I get. Business is business, and Google is too big a giant to let just anyone use the same-grade chip. Or there are factors I don’t see. Maybe cost?

Before the positives, I’m slightly disappointed by the auto-brightness. It often happened that I was using the watch and the display suddenly dropped brightness dramatically and I couldn’t see a thing. Or it even went completely black for a moment. My guess is the system might not be perfectly tuned yet, since I’m testing the watch pre-release.

Controls are very simple. One crown, one button. The crown opens the menu and scrolls. Pressing it again always takes you back to the home screen. The lower button opens a configurable shortcut; by default you get training recommendations for the day with the option to start them. Swipe down on the home screen to open the notification center. Swipe up for the control center with various toggles and modes. Left and right swipes move through configurable widgets for sleep, heart rate, daily activity, etc.

Sensors led by EMG

Look, I’ll start with the two most important sensors—the GPS receiver and the heart-rate sensor.

This time GPS is multi-band and uses several constellations, but honestly it feels a bit shaky. When I compare it to the Tactix 7 PRO released back in 2022, that one’s track recording seems much more assured.

Pink – Xiaomi Watch 5, purple – Garmin Tactix 7 PRO

I’d love to give you a heart-rate comparison too, but for some reason exporting HR data isn’t possible. Still, on a 10 km run the Polar Verity Sense measured an average of 134 bpm, while the Xiaomi Watch 5 measured 136 bpm. During the run I had a few moments where Xiaomi was about 10 bpm higher, but it seemed like brief hiccups.

15.6.2021
Heart rate sensor – everything about it and how can it help you

For Xiaomi, the EMG sensor is completely new, letting you control the watch without touching it. You assign an action to a certain hand movement (e.g., double open palm). I have one issue though—I couldn’t find the feature in the watch. Again, this may be related to pre-release firmware. I’ll update the article. :)

The ambient light sensor is a bit wild too; it kind of does its own thing. Sometimes even in dim light it drops brightness and I can’t see a thing. Other times the display flickers to black and I see absolutely nothing for a moment.

The rest of the sensor suite includes a pulse oximeter, accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass.

Xiaomi Watch 5 fix Wear OS’s biggest weakness

Look, a competitor launches alongside this model—the Amazfit Active 3. Why mention it? It has a 365 mAh battery. The Xiaomi Watch 5 offers 930 mAh. And yet the Amazfit Active 3 lasts longer—12 days. It nicely shows how power-hungry Wear OS is. Despite such capacity, the Xiaomi has “only” 6 days of battery life. And why the quotes?

Compared to other operating systems like HarmonyOS (Huawei) or HyperOS (Xiaomi on other models), it’s actually relatively short. But in the context of other Wear OS smartwatches, it’s a very solid result.

It’s also great that you know exactly what’s draining your battery. Just open Battery usage in settings and you’ll see in detail which function took how much. And I mean down to hundredths. I literally saw that the alarm “ate” 0.01%.

I was also surprised that the stated 6 days is actually more of an understatement. Battery life usually depends on how you use the watch. I charged it, used it normally for two days, did a one-hour run and an hour and a half at the gym… And I still had 72% battery with an estimate of another 5 days and 18 hours? That’s great. I did have heart-rate set to automatic (not every minute), and sleep monitoring wasn’t advanced. When I enabled advanced sleep monitoring and HR every minute, over 17 hours I lost almost 30%, with two workouts in between.

What’s your spirit animal?

If Xiaomi excels at something, it’s visualization.

Open the Mi Fitness app and you’re greeted by a three-color arc representing your daily activity—active calories, steps, and minutes of movement. And it doesn’t stop there. Calories burned are also visualized as food. So when I walked to the train in the morning, I successfully burned 107 active calories, which equaled three cookies. The app didn’t tell me whether I could top them back up though. Shame.

Below daily activity on the main page you’ll also find details on sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen, stress, vitality score, and a Checkup. If you have compatible accessories, you’ll also see weight or blood pressure.

Sleep is something Xiaomi really has down. You don’t just get sleep stages (REM, deep, light), but more detailed assessments of continuity, physical and mental recovery, and breathing rate analysis. It’s not just numbers and charts either. At the bottom you also get a written evaluation of your “sleep performance” with concrete tips. For instance, sleep was decent, but you fell asleep too late, so you got fewer deep stages.

28.1.2026
How smartwatches can help you sleep better

The icing on the cake is the Sleep Animal. Based on your sleep patterns, Xiaomi matches you with an animal with a similar rhythm (like an owl, koala, penguin, or shark). Normally I’d dismiss such gimmicks, but I had a period when two colleagues wore Xiaomi bands, and I feel like every day they talked about nothing but their Sleep Animal. It just shows how effective gamification can be.

As for stress, SpO2, and heart-rate measurements, I won’t dissect these too much. Numbers, averages, graphs... you know the drill. To be honest, I get the sense resting heart rate readings are a bit inflated. Xiaomi shows my average at around 55, while in reality I’m typically about 10 bpm lower. Minor stuff. If you want the most accurate resting HR, you’ll likely choose a smartwatch that measures every second throughout the day.

I really like the Health snapshot. I praised something similar on Whoop, because for health tracking it’s one of the simplest paths. You don’t have to obsessively check every single metric—this feature just monitors whether everything is within normal range. If it’s not, you get an alert.

What I do miss is heart-rate variability. Releasing a watch today that doesn’t provide HRV in milliseconds and instead hides it in a 0–100 stress scale doesn’t seem particularly wise.

Xiaomi will make you a better runner (at least in the app)

The Xiaomi Watch 5 offer over 150 sport profiles, many of which can be detected automatically. I mostly lift and run. Here’s what run tracking looks like, for example.

You’ll learn everything about pace, heart rate, elevation, and also running dynamics. There’s no shortage of info on how the activity impacts broader training metrics either—training effect (aerobic/anaerobic fitness), VO₂ Max, recovery time, or vitality score.

8.4.2021
What is VO2 max?

The last metric used to be called PAI and it’s one of my favorites. You earn points based on the length and intensity of activity, and if you keep them around 100 (it looks at the last 7 days), Xiaomi says it can have a significantly positive impact on your health. I like it mainly because it adds a bit of healthy self-competition.

A chapter of its own is the Running Performance Index, which factors in several running components (aerobic and anaerobic performance, strength, endurance, etc.). Xiaomi calculated 67.8 for me (thank you), but besides being told I’m an elite athlete, I only learned I should be training more than six times a week and logging more than a marathon in training distance.

What bothers me a bit is a mismatch between the watch and the app. On the watch my running index is 72.1.

And how exactly does Xiaomi make me a better runner? According to the watch’s predictions, I’ll run a marathon in 2:40. I wasn’t aware of that, but the watch evidently is.

If someone asked me whether the Xiaomi Watch 5 are for truly dedicated athletes, I’d probably say no. They’re fine for the average active person, but a sports and tech enthusiast might start to feel constrained. I’m missing things like training plans, more sophisticated daily workout suggestions (they’re there, but very basic), and some sport metrics like GAP or more granular GPS settings, etc.

Wear OS unlocks broad, truly smart possibilities for Xiaomi Watch 5

As every psychologist says—communication is key. And that’s exactly where Wear OS shines. When a notification arrives you have plenty of ways to respond—dictate a reply (speech-to-text works very well and even handles swear words), peck it out on a tiny keyboard, “like” the message, or reply with an emoji.

You can also talk to the Gemini voice assistant, which will tell you the weather, set an alarm, or start music. The possibilities are basically endless—provided you give it access to the needed apps.

Speaking of music, Wear OS includes Google Play, so you can download practically any streaming app, save playlists directly to the watch, browse libraries, and more. And that’s really Wear OS’s biggest strength—apps. You’ll find thousands on Google Play, and if something’s missing on the watch, you just install it.

The watch also includes Google Maps, so you can browse the map, get directions to the nearest café, or read reviews. There are actually two map datasets here. Google’s require an internet connection, but during workouts you can use offline maps. They’re installed via the mobile app—choose a specific region, tap download, wait a moment, and you’re done.

I may have taken some wind out of the Watch 5’s sails earlier when I said they’re not ideal for hardcore sports use. But in smart features they excel. NFC payments, phone calls, detailed weather, practically unlimited installable apps… And everything works smoothly.

I will note one minor blemish—the remote camera shutter. I was a bit disappointed it doesn’t stream the phone’s viewfinder. On the other hand, Android is used by dozens of manufacturers, so ensuring flawless compatibility across all brands would be pretty complex.

So was it worth it?

Only two things really bothered me about this watch—which doesn’t happen often—missing HRV and auto-brightness. The latter really does whatever it wants, and it’s annoying. Two features are also apparently supposed to be here with similar names—EMG and ECG. No matter how I looked, I couldn’t find either. As I wrote earlier, I’m testing the watch pre-release, so it’s quite possible these features will appear later. I’ll update the review.

To answer the main question—these are great smartwatches in my book. They look fantastic and work very well. I just struggle a bit with the fact that the aforementioned Pixel Watch 4 costs only a little more and offers a newer Wear OS and a better processor.

What the Pixel doesn’t have is a premium design. The Xiaomi Watch 5 have sapphire crystal, an all-metal case… They simply look elegant. And that’s not something I’d necessarily say about the Pixel Watch.

Photo credits:

• studio shots – Hodinky 365 photographers
• screenshots – Mi Fitness app