Redmi Watch Move Review: Setting a benchmark for budget smartwatches

“With affordable prices come awful health measurements,” is, unfortunately, the rule in the Indian smartwatch market. While it is possible to get smart-looking smartwatches for extremely affordable prices (some for as low as Rs 1500), these more often than not tend to come with heavy compromises in the parameter measurement (heart rate, step count, etc.) department, leading to allegations that many are actually rebranded devices manufactured in other countries. Xiaomi is looking to change that rule with its first made-in-India smartwatch, the Redmi Watch Move.

Almost a decade ago, Xiaomi triggered the wearable revolution in India by introducing its super affordable Mi Bands, but recent years have seen its wearable strategy seemingly caught between fitness bands and smartwatches. As a result, the brand has lost its leadership position in the segment to other (mostly Indian) brands that offer a wide range of devices at lower prices.

Xiaomi is now trying to win back lost wearable ground with the Redmi Watch Move, which at Rs 1,999 (USD 25), is not only Xiaomi’s most affordable smartwatch (it is well below the Rs 2,599 (USD 30) of the Redmi Watch Active), but comes with a price tag that one sees more often in fitness bands. Will it be enough to knock the current leaders (Noise, Boat, Fire-Boltt, etc.) off their perch in the budget wearable market and mark Xiaomi’s return to wearable supremacy?

Redmi Watch Move Design and Appearance: Clean design, big display…and a crown that actually works

The design of the watch is largely on predictable lines – the front is an all-glass display, the frame is metallic colored and has curved sides, with the right side having the crown in its center, while the top and base have slots where the straps can be inserted. The back is made of soft plastic, which has lights and sensors for measuring different parameters.

Within this predictability, however, two design features stand out. The first is the display. The watch comes with a large 1.85-inch rectangular 2.5D curved AMOLED display, easily one of the biggest and brightest displays we have seen in the segment. And if its size and brightness do not get some attention, the large collection of watch faces on it certainly will – Xiaomi has more than 200 options, and you can even create your own using AI. On the right of this display lies the second most remarkable feature of the watch in design terms – a crown. And while the crown does have its visual appeal, giving the Redmi Watch Move classic watch-like looks, this one actually works and is not just a button. You can rotate the crown and tap it to carry out a number of functions.

The Redmi Watch Move is available in Silver Sprint, Blue Blaze, Black Drift, and Gold Rush, and our review unit was Silver Sprint, which looked smart with a grayish-white colored TPU strap, which comes with a buckle. When it comes to straps, Xiaomi has gone with what it calls a “quick release” strap mechanism on this watch, which means that third-party straps will not work with the watch at the time of launch. Our unit came with a strap in the box, and Xiaomi says that more will be available soon.

At 25 grams (39 grams with the strap), the Redmi Watch Move is relatively lightweight, but it is pretty tough – it has an IP68 rating, which means it can survive for up to half an hour in about 1.5 meters of water. So one can actually go swimming with it. The display and the crown make the Redmi Watch Move stand out in a very crowded segment in design terms. It will not turn heads right away unless you have a particularly spectacular watch face (we recommend Critters), but those who look at it could be excused for thinking it is a much more expensive watch than it actually is.

Redmi Watch Move Specs and features: Packed with features, with claims of accuracy!

The Redmi Watch Move is very feature-rich for its price. That 1.85-inch AMOLED display comes with a very impressive brightness of 600 nits and a resolution of 450 x 390, which gives it a pixel density of 322 ppi, which makes it, in Apple-speak, a retina display. It is an always-on display and if you wish to save some battery, you can also opt to set it to raise to wake which switches the display on when you raise your wrist, or simply tap on the display to wake it, with the option of putting it back to sleep by simply placing one’s palm over it. The crown is pretty full-featured too, allowing you to scroll through apps and menus and also letting you invoke AI with a long press.

The Redmi Watch Move also comes stacked with sensors that let you track various health parameters. The watch does not come with its own GPS (which is a rarity at this price point anyway), but still serves up data on heart rate (including high and low rate alerts), blood oxygen, sleep, and stress, while also doing basics like counting steps, reminding one of the appointments, counting calories and tracking menstrual cycles. It can also track more than 140 sports and, in a very neat touch, can actually auto-track six sports at the time of writing – running, walking, skipping, elliptical walking, cycling, and rowing. While we have seen other smartwatches in the segment offering as much (and in some cases, more), most tend to have erratic readings. Xiaomi claims the Redmi Watch Move has a high degree of accuracy, claiming a health accuracy of 97 percent and a step counting accuracy of 98.5 percent.

On the software front, it runs on Xiaomi’s HyperOS and comes with support for calls (you can even make calls from the watch, using an onscreen keypad), reading messages and sending quick responses, widgets, acting as a camera shutter, controlling music, notifications, weather updates and task reminders, and also for finding the device it is attached to. Finally, it claims 14 days of battery and 5 days with the always-on display switched on and comes with a special magnetic charging cable in the box. The Watch works with iOS as well as Android devices using the Mi Fitness app. All in all, this is a pretty impressive spec and feature lineup for a smartwatch that is priced below Rs 2,000.

Redmi Watch Move Setup and Interface: Smooth as silk

Setting up the Redmi Watch Move is as easy as downloading the Mi Fitness app on your phone, switching on Bluetooth, and then following the instructions (you can scan a barcode on the watch during the installation process to get going). We paired it with the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ and the iPhone 16e, and it worked without any problems on both.

It is when you are setting up the watch that you realize just how smoothly everything falls into place. This is quite rare in other budget devices, which tend to be a little unpredictable on the software side (one asked for our phone number and mail ID and then did not send an OTP to it). On the Redmi Watch Move, setting up the app permissions can take some time and is a little complicated – we wish it could happen right from the watch instead of making us go to the Mi Fitness app and then select different options.

Using the smartwatch is easy. A press of the crown takes you to the app’s screen, where you can scroll through apps using the crown or by just swiping up or down. You can swipe to the left and right from the watch face to access widgets that show information like heart rate, weather, calendar, and other information. Swiping down from the top of the watch face shows notifications (you can set up which apps can send notifications from the Mi Fitness app) while swiping down takes one to quick settings. The crown lets us scroll through menus and information on all apps, which is very impressive. It is a simple setup and works very smoothly with the large display being very good for viewing content – we could actually see graphs of our heart rate, sleeping, and other activities very clearly, and also read text on app notifications easily. Incidentally, we almost never felt the need to go beyond 50 percent brightness on that bright display.

Redmi Watch Move Performance: Impressively accurate measurements with good battery life

But while ease of use and smoothness of operation are among its key strengths, what really makes the Redmi Watch Move special in its segment is the level of accuracy it delivers while measuring health and fitness parameters. Heart rate and blood oxygen readings on the watch were very close to what we got on an Oximeter, and although it did end up counting a few steps extra, it never reached unacceptable levels – we normally ended up with about 50 extra steps every 1000, which is acceptable. Sleep tracking, generally a problem with budget smartwatches, was remarkably accurate once again, and in an interesting quirk, we were also allotted a sleep animal (a shark in our case, indicating we need to sleep more).

The watch also did a decent job in tracking our walks, outdoor runs, and indoor cycling sessions, although the auto-detect version is not enabled by default. The watch comes with support for tracking across more than a hundred sports and seemed to work fine in our cricket session, although we needed some time to understand that ending the tracking needed one to hold the “End” button for a while. It is also curious that the sports tracked include “card and board games,” including chess and checkers, where we honestly did not see any great benefit of the function. Smart functions like app notifications work well on the Watch, with that large display being great for viewing information. However, calling is not the greatest experience unless you are in a relatively silent area. In fact, the volume and vibrations on the watch are a little on the lower side – while they are decent enough for workouts and alerts, we would not suggest depending on them for a waking-up alarm.

In its default settings, the Redmi Watch Move is likely to live up to its promise of a two-week battery life – we got through a week with the battery at 40 percent. Turn on continuous heart rate tracking, advanced sleep monitoring, all-day tracking of blood oxygen, and all-day stress monitoring, and top it all off with an always-on display, and you still end up getting 4-5 days on a single charge, which is very impressive, considering the array of functions it is running. The magnetic charging cable, when connected to Xiaomi’s own 33W charger, charged the watch fully in about 75 minutes, and Xiaomi claims that about ten minutes of charging can get you through two days of usage (provided you turn off most settings, though).

Redmi Watch Move Review Verdict: A no-brainer for anyone wanting a budget smartwatch

The Redmi Watch Move is priced at Rs 1,999, and at that price, it faces no real competition. Yes, there are smartwatches available at that price point, from the likes of Boult, Boat, and Noise, but none of them have the kind of measurement accuracy and software that we have seen on the Redmi Watch Move. It does the basics brilliantly, and is easily the smoothest working and most accurate device in its segment, delivering the sort of performance you expect from higher-priced smartwatches at a price associated with fitness bands. Xiaomi might have adopted a premiumization strategy, but the Redmi Watch Move shows that it has not forgotten its “brilliant basics at a crazy price” approach. A new benchmark has just been set for budget smartwatches.

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