2024-04-06 05:05:28
Xiaomi’s smart watches have always had a built-in disadvantage – they came with the company’s operating system, which, although it offered a multitude of apps, did not connect to the Google app store and therefore limited the use of the device.
Now Xiaomi is getting things in order: after launching a new operating system for phones, which is expected to slowly reach more of the company’s devices, it is launching a new watch and abandoning its closed system. Hamilton, an importer of Xiaomi products, recently began marketing the Xiaomi Watch 2 (and there is also a Pro model) which is powered by Wear OS – Google’s operating system for smart watches, similar to the one you will find in OnePlus, Samsung watches and also Google’s own Pixel devices, of course.
We took the new model in the basic version for testing, to see what Xiaomi offers.
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The Xiaomi Watch 2 with Google’s system
(with me Smushkowitz)
Round screen and clean design
Similar to some of the competitors, and differently from previous models For its part, Xiaomi chose a round design for the Watch 2, with a 1.43-inch screen. The watch looks massive, weighs around 37g and doesn’t feel heavy, and has the look of a “serious” or “respectable” watch thanks to the aluminum case, but it came with simple plastic (or TPU, if you insist) straps. This is not a problem in terms of their operation, only in terms of appearance, who cares – overall they are comfortable. The screen itself remains clean overall and does not collect fingerprints, a problem that stood out in a previous Xiaomi model.
The design is clean and includes only two buttons on the right side – one to switch between the main screen and the apps screen and the other to open the last app you used. Of course, part of the function of the first button can also be done with the touch of a finger – scroll through the shortcuts on the main screen of the watch and return from the application screen to the normal view.
According to the official data, the watch is water resistant, and there is even an app for washing hands, which shows a reminder to wash with soap and activates a timer for 20 seconds – a reminder of the not-so-cheerful Corona days. The watch is also resistant to a pressure of 5 atmospheres, that is to a depth of 50 meters.
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You can also have conversations
(with me Smushkowitz)
Advanced features and somewhat problematic conversion
To activate the watch and connect it to the phone you will need a Xiaomi application. The initial activation went without any problems, and then you can start playing with the settings – in some cases there is an overlap and you can make adjustments through the watch or through the app on your phone, and there are things that can still only be changed through the app.
In Watch 2 you will find everything you can expect from a smart watch: heart rate measurement, sleep and sports activity monitoring, blood oxygen level testing, Google Wallet, fall detection and contact alert, weather forecast display, notifications from the phone, of course, and much more – But it doesn’t stand on its own, meaning it doesn’t have an eSIM. Save that for the Pro model. It can be used to make calls, as long as it is near the phone.
During a call, you can control the volume, but in a cumbersome, confusing and unintuitive way: you have to click on a three-dot symbol that appears on the side, open the “volume” menu, and then don’t be tempted by the yellow arch that appears on the side and shows the volume, and it looks like you can use it to change in the desired direction , but press + or -.
The watch immediately showed messages from WhatsApp without the need to set up the account, but if you want to answer messages or browse through them, you have to install the application and confirm its use from the phone. It sounds simple and should be, but the connection happened only after 2-3 attempts. Once the app is approved for use, you can use the keyboard to answer. There are also suggestions for pre-prepared answers (“yes”, “no”, “okay”, “I’m on my way”, etc.), the option to record voice messages or use the microphone to dictate text messages. All of these work perfectly fine, and the size of the screen probably limits the keyboard, so it is small and crowded and you have to pay attention to what you are tapping.
You can also control music playback on Spotify from the watch, but the display in the settings menu has been reversed – the button to skip forward appears on the left and the button that returns to the beginning of the song or the one before it appears on the right. It seems like a problem with the conversion to Hebrew, in any case in the Spotify app on the clock the display is fine.
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Caution, the display is flipped
(with me Smushkowitz)
The display is excellent and there is also fast charging
According to Xiaomi, the battery is enough for about 65 hours of use, that is a little less than three days, in practice it was enough for two days and a bit – but it also depends on the nature of the use. If you activate a permanent display of the time (Always On), the battery consumption will be higher, the brightness level affects the number of calls you make from the watch, and more. Warnings on the subject appear in the watch and in the Xiaomi app on the phone – even if you choose advanced and more accurate sleep monitoring, for example, it will affect battery life. In any case, charging is fast: it took 12 minutes to go from 10% to 50% and a little more than half an hour to fully charge.
The screen reaches a brightness of 600 nits, which is enough to see the display even in daylight. On the other hand, the permanent display on the screen is not always strong enough in daylight and you can give it up, both to save battery life, and also because you can simply set the display to turn on automatically when you raise your hand to look at the clock.
Xiaomi’s transition to Wear OS does most of the work: as mentioned, the Watch 2 offers most of the features you would expect from a smart watch (no EKG measurement, for example), with a few things that need to be polished – volume control during a call and the reverse display of Spotify, but they are not really critical.
On the other hand, Xiaomi’s Redmi watch, without Google’s operating system and without an app store, offered a significantly longer battery life, but that’s the price of the upgrade – even in competing watches that use Wear OS, the battery lasts about two days.
The Watch 2 has no real advantages over the competition, not even in terms of price: the basic model costs NIS 1,050 and the Pro version already reaches NIS 1,350. Galaxy watches Samsung’s, for example, which were launched a little less than a year ago, offer similar features and sometimes even a little more, and in some stores the price has already dropped to around NIS 800, which will make it difficult for Xiaomi to compete in this field.
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