Redmi Watch Move review: A budget smartwatch that isn't low on features, fitness or comfort

The new Redmi Watch Move is the company's brand new offering in the entry-level smartwatch space with a price tag of ₹1,999. The watch promises to deliver quite a few features and the looks, but does it pack enough to justify those? Let's try and find out.

 

The watch is made of plastic and doesn't feel cheap or irritating to wear along for a day. I won't blame you for saying it resembles a lot like the Apple Watch's look – it is what it is. You get a 1.85-inch AMOLED display with not-so-thick bezels around it. The right side has the crown button and mic while the left side carries a speaker. The sides curve towards the back that house both the charging pins and ejection pins for both sides of the strap, which are conveniently replaceable like many other smartwatches. You get a TPU strap with Black Drift, Blue Blaze, Silver Sprint and Gold Rush colour options with the watch. It's an IP68 dust and water-resistant watch and weighs just under 40grams (including the strap).

 

You can use the crown button to navigate inside the UI or go back to the home screen, long press it to bring up the AI screen, or further press it longer to bring up system power options. The button feels nice and responsive similar to the rest of the body.

 

The 1.85-inch (390x450 resolution) curved AMOLED display is bright and responsive for outdoor usage and has decent viewing angles and sharpness for viewing notifications, doing quick replies once in a while or checking fitness scores.

 

You get SpO2, heart rate monitor as well as an accelerometer alongside blood oxygen meter. The watch counted steps quite accurately - giving close readings to a high-end smartwatch on a consistent enough basis. The heart rate is decent for a once in a while reading but I wouldn't say you can completely rely on it if that's something very critical for your use case. You can enable 'auto detect' that supports seven different activities so the watch can automatically detect when you are doing any of those activities. Overall, there's support for over 140 activities as per the company and includes pretty much all common outdoor workout types that you might be engaging in.

 

 There's also 'Vitality score' that gives you a weekly progress report for the complete activities and workouts done by you and it's quite a nice thing - you can check it to keep a tab on your progress. Running on Xiaomi's HyperOS for smartwatches, the Watch Move is generally snappy and smooth in operation and rarely showed any stuttering when moving between notifications, playing music, or answering calls (the mic and speaker are decent enough for indoor use for calls). The rotating crown, if you prefer for navigating, is also generally responsive and doesn't feel like a bottleneck.

 

With always-on enabled, the Redmi Watch Move can last around four days and when disabled, it can go over 10 days comfortably, depending on how actively you use it for tracking stuff.

 

All in all, the Redmi Watch Move is a good contender for a budget smartwatch that isn't low on features, fitness or comfort. It also has great battery life with a responsive OS that offers great value for the price point, if you are okay with its looks since the material and finish are not bad at all.

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