Xiaomi Watch 2 review

The Xiaomi Watch 2 is a stylish-looking smartwatch with a round screen, making it look more like a traditional watch, which we liked. With hundreds of workout modes and 5ATM water resistance, the Xiaomi can be worn during all kinds of workouts, including various watersports. It has lots to offer, allowing you to monitor your heart rate, stress levels, blood oxygen, sleep and more. Its limited battery life does let it down, but for a budget smartwatch, it does a lot — if you can navigate its interface.

Although on first use the watch felt difficult to navigate around, once you're used to it, it is very simple with a clear main menu and no frills. You don't get overwhelmed and, with limited customization options, things are kept simple, making it ideal for smartwatch newbies. Plus, we found the stats to be reasonably accurate, so for a budget fitness tracker it performed well.

Overall, the Xiaomi Watch 2 is a good purchase for those wanting to try out a budget fitness tracker but it isn't the best fitness tracker. We loved the more traditional look of this watch and found it incredibly comfortable to wear, day and night. The only downside is the short battery life.

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Xiaomi Watch 2 review

Xiaomi Watch 2: Design

• Large, bright screen with colorful visual displays
• Secure charging dock
• Comfortable, changeable strap

The Xiaomi Watch 2 has a large, round 1.43-inch (3.6 cm) AMOLED display screen and, with the body being made from aluminum alloy, it is super lightweight weighing only 1.3 oz (36.8 g) without the strap. The version we tested had a leather strap, although this is changeable, with a skin-friendly TPU and a recycled braided strap being the other options. We found the strap comfortable to wear but it did tend to slip down our wrist more than when wearing a silicone strap.

The large screen makes it easy to see your workout stats, and although it looks big, it didn't get in the way during workouts or when sleeping. The buttons on the side are flush to the bevel, so they didn't catch on our clothing or rub against the skin during yoga, for example. And the screen remained bright during our swims, allowing us to check our lengths and pace under the bright artificial lighting and even remaining clear underwater.

While the screen is large, the visuals are even better with colors remaining bright during the daylight. With the large screen, workout stats are clear and the screen remains uncluttered. Offering bright visuals and graphs alongside numbers for your workout statistics, the Xiaomi Watch 2 has a great-sized screen to display it all. And while the screen's brightness is a welcome addition during daylight hours, once it is on "Do not disturb" it didn't wake us during sleep.

The touchscreen was generally responsive, but it wasn't as responsive as other smartwatches we've tested. We also found it to be less responsive after swimming, although this was only temporary. We didn't experience much lag overall with this screen.

There are two buttons on the right-hand side. The top button allows you to access the main menu and then locks the screen again. The lower button acts like a "back" button, taking you to the screen you were last on. This means you are reliant on the touchscreen a lot of the time, so its responsiveness is quite important.

We wore this watch for several days at a time before it needed charging (more on that below) and found the screen to cope with smudges and dirt well. The screen itself didn't scratch, but annoyingly, the bezel did chip easily, and we noticed a little dent on the edge.

The Xiaomi Watch 2 is customizable to an extent, allowing you to change the view of the apps and the clock faces. However, unlike other smartwatches we've tested, you can't alter the widgets you see when swiping left or right. Swiping left or right acts like a shortcut to the weather, workout modes, sleep data, heart rate and blood oxygen level. We couldn't find a way to customize which shortcuts you see.

We didn't find the Xiaomi Watch 2 as easy to use as other smartwatches: Some of the functions seemed unintuitive, and the watch felt clunky to navigate around. We did like the top button giving direct access to the main menu, but the layout and functions seemed a bit basic, with swiping left or right offering shortcuts and not much else. However, once you're used to the Xiaomi Watch 2 for a while, it becomes easy and obvious how to use it.

While the main focus is on the workout modes and health monitoring stats, the Xiaomi Watch 2 has extra functions such as cycles, allowing you to monitor your period via the app, sleep monitoring, stress measuring, breathing techniques and more. This watch allows you to gain a better view of your overall health rather than just focusing on workout statistics, and can be an aid in calming your nervous system, which will ultimately benefit your overall health.

We particularly liked the charging dock on this watch. It sits comfortably into a "bed," meaning once connected, it is unlikely to get nudged and stop charging. One thing that did let this watch down was the battery — only lasting two to three days, at a push. However, it was quick to charge from completely flat to full in an hour. Overall, though, the design of this watch was good with little left to be missed.

Xiaomi Watch 2: Performance

• Good accuracy for stats
• Poor battery life
• Not a user-friendly interface

Getting workouts started on the Xiaomi Watch 2 is simple, either by swiping left or right to access the shortcut or, as we preferred, clicking the top button to access the main menu. Once you've found your workout mode from the hundreds available, simply click on it and press 'Go'. It's that easy to get started.

It also has an auto-detect function so if you forget to start a workout, the watch will give you a nudge and suggest what it thinks you might be doing. We tested this a few times when out walking and it guessed right. ]

You can also sync your music to this smartwatch, allowing you to control the soundtrack to your workout through the media player. Unfortunately, when in a workout mode, there isn't a shortcut in that mode to start and stop music. This means you have to navigate to the media player to start and stop music — a good example of what we mean by clunky...

Although there are two perfectly good buttons, to pause or end a workout, you can only swipe right and use the touchscreen. We feel there could have been a more efficient way to do this, by using the buttons.

Despite the clunkiness of the interface, we found the strap comfortable to wear, barely even noticing we had a smartwatch on. The white leather strap looked quite stylish, and more like a normal watch when wearing it day to day. Although incredibly comfortable to wear, we did find the watch tended to slide down our wrist, which can mean some statistics may not be as accurate as they could be.

Saying that, we found the statistics to be quite accurate. We measured our BPM independently and checked this against the readings from this watch and they were close enough. The Xiaomi Watch 2 also captured our walking routes well and measured kilometers travelled pretty accurately.

When used in the swimming pool, the watch captured our lengths, time and stroke perfectly. It also gave us our SWOLF score, number of strokes, pace, calories burnt and meters swam. When tested against another fitness watch at the same time, though, we did notice some of the stats varied.

We tested the watch during various workouts such as walking, Zumba, yoga and swimming, with it always managing to capture the data well. We had a few issues with it due to it being so comfortable to wear during our workouts.

One thing we would note is that it's better to have the TPU strap for swimming than the leather one: This remained damp for hours after our swim and was slightly less comfortable. Be aware that when you end your swim, the watch automatically clears the water from itself, but this results in a loud beeping noise if you have the sound on.

We enjoyed using the extra features on the Xiaomi Watch 2, including the sleep monitoring and stress measuring. While the stress measuring was interesting, we found the scores didn't change much: we were apparently always "mildly stressed" even when our bodies were telling us otherwise. We'd advise using this measure with caution.

The sleep monitoring was pretty accurate and lined up with how we felt we'd slept.

We were left disappointed with the range of breathing exercises available on this watch compared to others we've tested. There is only one option, which sees you breathe in and out for anywhere from one minute to five. We found this was a bit dull and other breathing techniques would make this function more useful.

The real disappointment with this watch is the minimal battery life. We could only get the watch to last for a maximum of three days before it needed charging again. This felt cumbersome — a longer battery life would make this watch far more attractive.

Xiaomi Watch 2: Functionality

• Unobtrusive to wear
• Interface could be more intuitive
• Disappointing battery life

Overall, the Xiaomi Watch 2 performed well for a budget fitness tracker. The large screen allowed the colorful graphics to be seen clearly as well as enabling you to view numerous workout stats with ease. Plus, it was comfortable to wear.

Once you've made your way around the watch, the interface feels okay, but we found it unintuitive to use from the get-go and wish it were less clunky to navigate between screens. Our main disappointment with this watch, though, is the poor battery life. It was frustrating to have to keep charging the watch so often and it felt like it couldn't keep its charge. Even on days when the watch wasn't used excessively, the battery would drop significantly.

We liked that the buttons sat flush on the bezel, meaning there was no danger of accidentally pressing them. As there are two buttons, we do feel they could have been put to better use for navigating your way around the watch. There's potential there to make them more useful.

The Xiaomi Watch 2 performed well, measuring our workout and health stats reasonably accurately, so we don't have much to grumble about on this front. The main things that let this watch down were the poor battery life and the clunkiness of the navigation. Other than that, this is a bargain fitness watch that can perform well across different workouts.

Should you buy the Xiaomi Watch 2?

We enjoyed testing the Xiaomi Watch 2 and, for a budget fitness tracker, it performed well across all of our tests. The health and workout stats were reasonably accurate from what we could tell. While we found navigation around the watch a bit frustrating, the positive is that it's uncomplicated once you know how to navigate around it.

The main menu is clear and there are no frills to this watch, so it would be good for those new to smartwatches or to tracking their fitness. Although we were a little disappointed by the lack of customization available, this might actually be a positive to newbies — it leaves little room to get lost and confused in the options and data. Those looking for a more robust, accurate and fancy smartwatch will probably want to look elsewhere.

Saying this, we found the data that was captured and displayed in numbers and graphs on both the watch and app detailed and interesting. You get a lot of information with every workout, so you won't be shortchanged on that front. With the added features such as cycles, sleep monitoring and blood oxygen levels, you can get a good idea of your overall health and this is a bonus.

If this product isn't for you

If you're a keen sports person and the Xiaomi Watch 2 doesn't feel right, the Garmin Instinct 2 may suit you better: We rated it the best for cycling, swimming and running.

Another option is the Amazfit Balance, coming in at a similar price point to the Xiaomi Watch 2. We voted it the best fitness tracker overall. Similar in design to the Xiaomi Watch 2, the Amazfit Balance offers a much longer battery life.