Tech Advisor

Xiaomi Watch 5 review: Week-long Wear OS

At a glance Expert's Rating Pros Affordable Solid battery life Smooth performance Latest Wear OS features Cons Software is a mixed bag Plain design Watch faces aren’t fantastic Our Verdict The Xiaomi Watch 5 is a solid performer that gives you one of the best battery performances you’ll find on a Wear OS smartwatch at a lower price than rivals. It just doesn’t have the best software experience and its style isn’t very standout. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Xiaomi Watch 5 Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The Xiaomi Watch 5 is Xiaomi’s flagship smartwatch that swaps its own in-house operating system for Google’s Wear OS. Offering an alternative to the Google Pixel Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch, among others, the Watch 5 gives you access to the latest features Wear has to offer, including Google’s Gemini AI assistant. There’s also a raft of Xiaomi’s own features to tap into with an array of gesture controls. Xiaomi also offers some of the best battery life you’ll find on a smartwatch running Google’s OS, with up to a week of longevity and the Watch 5 is cheaper than many rivals at £269.99. Is it worth your hard-earned money, though? I’ve been using it for the last couple of weeks as my main smartwatch to find out. Design & Build Two colour options Stainless steel casing Water resistant up to 50 metres depth The Xiaomi Watch 5 is available in a single 47mm case size, which comes in just two colour options. That’s Juniper Green or Black (pictured). This isn’t one to grab if you like your smartwatch with a bright splash of colour. The Huawei Watch GT Runner 2 or Watch Fit 5 Pro might suit better in that case. Mike Sawh At 12.3mm thick, it’s the same thickness as Google’s Pixel Watch 4 , but not as slim as an Apple Watch Series 11 . You’ve got a case made from stainless steel and that’s matched up with a pretty standard-looking flurorubber strap. I’d say it’s a pretty uniform smartwatch look that does feel well-made, but doesn’t exactly stand out and excite. Xiaomi includes two physical buttons. There’s a crown-style one higher up the case you can twist to scroll through screens. You can also double-press it to get to your most recently used apps. The button further down offers a shortcut to the workout tracking menu. Mike Sawh Around the back is where you’ll find its optical sensor array and the place you’ll need to drop the disc-shaped charging cradle onto when you need to power it back up. The 5ATM water resistance rating means it’s suitable for showering and swimming with it. Just don’t take it diving as it’s not built to handle going further than 50 metres depth. Screen & Audio 1.54.inch AMOLED display Double-sided sapphire glass Built-in microphone and speaker Xiaomi plants a 1.54-inch, 480 x 480 resolution AMOLED touchscreen into that 47mm case, which features a sliver of black bezel so it doesn’t quite reach the edge of the watch case. It’s a perfectly good quality screen, where colour accuracy is strong if a little oversaturated. It’s nicely responsive to swipes and taps and offers good brightness. It hits a peak brightness of 1500 nits. That doesn’t make it the brightest smartwatch display available, but I found it did a good job in more challenging light conditions. Mike Sawh What’s interesting to see is that Xiaomi has decided to include sapphire glass on both the front of the screen and the back of the case. The glass is designed to offer strong scratch resistance and I’ve not seen any appear in my time using it. On the audio front, you will find a microphone and speaker on board. It enables features like Bluetooth calls, use the voice recorder feature to enable the Google Gemini support. I’d say the speaker quality isn’t the best I’ve seen on a smartwatch. Especially in terms of the clarity, where there was some noticeable muffling on calls and when recording voice memos. Software & Features Runs on Wear OS 6.0 NFC for Google Pay payments Range of gesture controls supported The Watch 5 runs on Google’s Wear OS and this is version 6.0 of Google’s operating system. That gives you access to the latest Wear OS updates, which most notably include better integration of Google’s suite of apps and an AI-powered Gemini assistant. Mike Sawh The user interface, however, remains very much Xiaomi’s, from the widgets to the quick settings menu, but it’s not quite a full Google takeover. Where things feel more Google is when you switch the app screen to display as a list and you discover Google’s suite of apps. That’s Google Calendar, Wallet, Maps and the Play Store. While Xiaomi’s own HyperOS operating system has been likeable on the whole, it’s been lacking in the areas that Google’s presence now addresses. That includes Gemini, which has ousted Google Assistant for an AI-powered assistant that’s just a lot more useful. The experience of using Gemini and quizzing it about things is as good as its integration with other Wear OS watches from Samsung and Google. Mike Sawh There are some Xiaomi-centric features, like the workout tracking screen or using it as a remote for Xiaomi TVs if you happen to have one of those too. While there’s a good mix of watch faces available, I think you’ll find better and more stylish selections on rival Wear OS watches. Xiaomi’s also gone big on gesture controls, which many brands don’t offer. They work well in general, while the ability to set up custom gestures does make the additional control system something you’d actually want to make regular use of. There’s also an EMG sensor, which enables an array of gestures that work with features like alarms, calls or accessing Google Wallet. In terms of what’s powering the software, there’s a co-processor setup taking care of that. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 is matched up with a BES2800BP. Like other smartwatches using a co-processor system – such as the OnePlus Watch 3 – the smartwatch looks to the different chips for different tasks to create a more efficient running operating system and make sure you enjoy the best battery life (more on that below). Fitness & Tracking Continuous heart rate and SpO2 tracking Free offline maps Dual-frequency GPS Xiaomi has a pretty extensive array of health and fitness features available. Whether that’s the 150 sports tracking modes you can pick from, the dedicated running courses designed for new runners or the ability to monitor heart rate and SpO2 levels. Like most smartwatches, there’s plenty to tap into. Mike Sawh If you like spending most of your tracking time outdoors, Xiaomi has included the ability to view colour, vector maps and use navigation features that can help you get to where you need to go or get you back home. Getting maps onto the watch needs to be done via a computer or tablet, however. Xiaomi also includes dual-band GPS, which is the most advanced GPS technology currently cropping up on a range of watches. I’ve used it for a range of outdoor runs and data like distance tracking and pace were similar to dedicated sports watches. Mike Sawh Away from fitness, you have features like continuous heart rate and SpO2 monitoring, sleep and stress tracking. The heart rate data has been nicely in line with other reliable devices I wore alongside it. Resting heart rate data is similar, with graphs showing similar places where that heart rate spiked and dropped. During exercise, the PPG sensor held up well against a chest strap heart rate monitor, as well. For sleep tracking, the Watch 5 will assess sleep quality and assign you a sleep animal. It will also track sleep metric staples like sleep duration, sleep stages, and keep tabs on heart rate and blood oxygen levels. I’ve been taking it to bed with two other sleep trackers. For data like sleep duration and light and deep sleep stages, the data matched up nicely. Presentation of data for Xiaomi wearables hasn’t been a strength over the years and that doesn’t change here. The core tracking, though, looks good to make it sleep stats you would want to pay attention to. Battery Life & Charging Up to 6 days battery life Up to 4 days in always-on mode Power-saving mode available The Watch 5 packs a hefty 930mAh capacity battery that Xiaomi says can last up to 6 days in what it calls smart mode. That’s basically making use of its core smartwatch features. When you keep the display on at all times, that number drops to 4 days. There’s also a power saving mode, which turns off features like Wi-Fi and Google Gemini. Doing that gets you up to 18 days of battery. Mike Sawh Everyone’s experience will differ, but we do know that battery life on Wear OS smartwatches has been a problem with many only lasting a day and therefore needing to be charged every night. Things have got better and the Xiaomi Watch 5 is a testament to that. I found I was getting 3-4 days in more intensive use and could absolutely get close to a full week with lighter use. I definitely found myself thinking less about the battery on the Watch 5 than I have when wearing most other Wear OS smartwatches. Charging the watch is done via a proprietary charging cradle. It’s quite a large one that fits over the entirety of the case back. I found it takes just over an hour to get back up to 100% from a fully flat watch. Price & Availability The Xiaomi Watch 5 officially went on sale in March 2026, priced at £269.99. That makes it Xiaomi’s most expensive smartwatch, coming in at £120 more than the Xiaomi Watch S5 . In Wear OS smartwatch terms, that does make it a cheaper buy than the cheapest available Google Pixel Watch 4 model. It’s also more affordable than the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 , too. You can buy it from the official Xiaomi store as well as the likes of Amazon . Check out our list of the best smartwatches for our current top 10 recommendations. Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Should you buy the Xiaomi Watch 5? The Xiaomi Watch 5 offers a more affordable route to the latest that Google’s Wear OS software than rivals from Samsung, OnePlus and Google itself. The hardware is good, the Xiaomi software flourishes are largely welcomed and the battery life performs well in Wear OS terms. Xiaomi also undercuts key rivals for the Watch 5’s price, but there are downsides to consider. The design is plain, it only comes in two colours and at 47mm will be too large for many wrists. The software also isn’t as user-friendly as rivals. The main reason to buy the Xiaomi Watch 5 is if you want similar hardware to the big names but at a lower price.

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