Beauty and brains on a budget

Introduction

Choosing a smart watch is never easy. There is a whole host of choices available, often pitched at a specific type of buyer. 

Want something very rugged? There are options for that. Want something that puts looks above all else? There are plenty of those, too.

If you are less specific about what you want or don’t have a lot of money to spend, the choices suddenly become limited.

Various manufacturers have vied for the spot of the best cheap smartwatch, with Xiaomi’s latest attempt in the form of the Redmi Watch 5. It costs under £/$100, works across Android and iOS, is small and unobtrusive and tries to do everything a smartwatch three times the price can. 

The question, as ever, is whether it succeeds. Is this one of the best budget wearables on the market today? Or is it another budget blower destined for the bin? 

Read on to find out.

Design and Screen

• Aluminium alloy construction
• 2.05 inch OLED panel

It’s often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s the case, then the Redmi Watch 5 is a full-on love letter from Xiaomi to Apple. It isn’t enough to say that it copies the Apple Watch; it wants to be seen as one. 

It sports the same profile, shape, button placement and more. From a pure design perspective, it’s boring and a rip-off. From a usability perspective, it’s a big win.

This is a watch you can forget you’re wearing. It is sufficiently light and thin to fit under all but the tightest of shirt cuffs, and you’ll likely be able to sleep with it on.

It’s built from aluminium alloy, so it isn’t fancy by any metric, nor will it stand out. But none of that is the point. It wants to be the budget smartwatch for people who don’t know which smartwatch they need or want, and from a design perspective, it definitely achieves as much, at least in the budget sphere.

The Watch 5 is also unapologetically a ‘smartwatch,’ which means it doesn’t try to copy any features from the analogue era. The main display is a squircle, and there’s a little crown, though all of it screams ‘Apple’ rather than ‘Rolex’. The bezels are relatively minimal, and the cut-back profile means that although the device doesn’t look expensive, it definitely looks modern.

Coming to the crown, it can’t be accused of being the highest-quality part. However, it has a nice tactile digital click and works well enough for what it was designed to do. As ever, it’s nice to have a way to interact with a watch other than a tiny touchscreen, which is obscured by your fingers during use. It is a little small to use with gloves, however, but that’s a niche complaint.

So the Redmi Watch 5 is something of a design mishmash, halfway between a premium fitness band and an Apple Watch, but it comes out with a design of its own in the process. 

It’s also reasonably rugged and water resistant up to 5ATM of pressure, which means you’ll be able to take it swimming with you, if not diving. However, there’s no listed IP rating, which means that dust may become a problem over time.

Inevitably, there are sacrifices when it comes to hitting a price point. Those don’t seem to have been a concern when it comes to the display.

At 2.05 inches and with a pixel density of 324ppi, it’s enough for, well, smartwatch stuff. It excels at telling the time, tracking workouts, and taking brief glances at information without too much reading.

And getting up to 1500 nits in brightness, it combated direct sunlight without too many issues. Being an AMOLED, it has nice colour and saturation too, with deep inky blacks.

There’s no proper always-on mode, which is a shame, but you can’t have everything. As things stand, the display is more than competent, and the design is practical and pleasant, which is not often said for a budget smartwatch.

Smart Features and Software

• Runs a proprietary operating system
• Comes with built-in apps from Xiaomi
• The companion app is well laid out

One unfortunate truth about smartwatches is that their market is more rigorously segregated than most other types of tech. Got an Apple Watch? You can’t use it on Android. Have an Android Wear device? iPhones are a no-go.

For universal compatibility, a proprietary operating system is the only choice, but that also means compromise.

Android Wear and WatchOS devices have certain features ‘baked-in’, meaning they have access to levels of software that normal devices don’t. This means they can integrate more fully and seamlessly with your chosen device than any third-party option could ever hope to achieve.

So, the Redmi Watch 5 has its own operating system, a relatively lightweight offering primarily skewed, as might be expected, towards fitness options. A swipe up from the bottom shows your fitness activity, a swipe down from the left brings in quick settings, and a swipe down from the top brings down your calendar. 

There’s no way to receive messages, to dictate replies or even select from a list of smart replies like you’d find on Wear OS and watchOS devices. You do have some limited interactions with some apps – on an iPhone, it’s possible to take a phone call through the watch – but this isn’t the same experience as more advanced smartwatches. 

The Redmi Watch 5 is best viewed as a ‘clarified’ smartwatch, providing basic functions well, or as an advanced smart band. That it can’t keep up with the most expensive is immaterial, given that the price remains sub-£/$100. There’s simply very little available on the market that can achieve the same right now.

That said, the software is well laid out, smooth to use and attractively presented. There’s a host of well-made pre-loaded watch faces, including one I particularly liked, which allowed custom photos. It’s a nice touch that is not always available on other devices. A watch is personal and a fashion statement, so being able to make it your own is always a plus.

Sleep and Health Tracking

• Offers blood pressure and oxygen tracking
• Can track sleep

As would be expected of a smartwatch or band of any calibre in 2025, the Redmi Watch 5 offers a host of smart sleep and health tracking features.

There are plenty of auto-modes that cover almost any kind of workout you could imagine, amusingly including chess and board games. Quite how one might work up a sweat during a chess game is best left unanswered.

Onboard the watch, there’s a heart rate sensor that can also track blood oxygen and an accelerometer that can detect if you’ve started a workout. There’s no claim of the advanced accuracy of these sensors, and the metrics tracked are fairly basic. If you need a more comprehensive set of stats to track your workouts, you’d best look at spending a little more.

The great benefit of the watch’s size is that you can really forget that you are wearing it. From sleep to swimming, it will easily fit into your fitness schedule.

You can view statistics either on the watch itself or on the app, which is attractively presented and perhaps a little more sensible and coherent in its execution than some of the other options available from others.

Activity Tracking

• A-GPS tracking
• Multiple sports modes

The Redmi Watch 5 proved to be an effective activity tracker, even if it didn’t reach the lofty heights of some of the competition.

When I started a vigorous walk through the countryside, the included GPS tracked my movements accurately and notified me of milestones achieved. Moreover, it detected that I was starting a workout and automatically prompted me to start tracking.

Those with the most complex workouts, like keen tough mudders or triathletes, will want something more rugged and precise, but for normies looking to track their activities, the Redmi Watch 5 represents a surprisingly cost-effective investment.

Battery Life

• Up to 24-day battery life
• 550mAh cell included

The battery in the Redmi Watch 5, at 550mAh, is a big one. Paired with the frugal processor in the device, the promise of great battery life becomes real.

With light use, checking the time mainly, and no workouts, you’ll absolutely hit the quoted 24-day battery life, with the proviso that the always-on display option isn’t active. With workouts, the always-on display active, and more, you’re likely to go three days before you’ll need to recharge, but that’s to be expected.

The battery life in the Watch 5 is pretty solid, and certainly unexpected in such a budget package.

Should you buy it?