Xiaomi Watch S1 Active Review vs Watch S1 & Mi Watch – What’s the difference between sports-focused watches?

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Xiaomi Mi Watch S1 to be released in December Xiaomi Mi 12 series. It’s now launching globally, and alongside it the new fitness-centric Mi Watch S1 Active.

The Mi Watch S1 has been designed as a more advanced solution compared to the previous Mi Watch, with a steel chassis and sapphire glass. The S1 Active is a lighter, sportier design.

Xiaomi Watch S1 Active vs Watch S1 vs Mi Watch Specifications

I haven’t used a Mi Watch, but the Mi Watch S1 is basically an enlarged version of it, with premium materials including a steel frame and sapphire glass.

Xiaomi Mi Watch S1 Design Comparison

The main difference between the two watches is the overall design and construction. Functionally they are identical, the inactive models have the same number of fitness modes, and they both have multi-system dual-frequency GPS. Likewise, the Active model has all the same smartwatch features, including Bluetooth calling, voice assistant, and NFC payments (depending on region).

Visually, they are very different, with the Active model sporting a sporty all-white design with a metal bezel and TPU strap. The Watch S1 has sapphire glass edge-to-edge, then a black metal frame and black leather strap.

The regular Mi Watch S1 weighs 52 grams, while the S1 Active weighs 36.3 grams. That’s because it uses sapphire glass and a stainless steel case with a leather strap.

A potentially big difference is how the watch is charged. The S1 Active uses a proprietary charger with two small magnetic contacts. The Premium S1 also attaches magnetically to its charger, but it uses QI wireless and will happily charge on any pad wireless charger.

set up

You will need the Xiaomi Mi Fitness / Wear app, which requires you to provide your phone number for registration.

After setting up the app, you can add your device, select the correct model and wait for it to begin the setup process. Then it needs to be updated and synced.

You may need to adjust some settings according to your requirements. Under the Devices tab, you can change settings for several functions. These affect battery life:

• You can change the heart rate polling interval to the standard 10 minutes, you can reduce it to 1m
• I recommend enabling advanced sleep monitoring
• You can enable blood oxygen monitoring only during sleep or throughout the day, and you can change the setting every 10 or 30 minutes. I recommend just sleeping, or turning it off.
• Pressure monitoring is off by default
• You can also adjust idle alerts. I’ve closed this because I’m already very active.

Connect to Strava

since 14^th In March, my application settings were changed. At first, it wasn’t immediately obvious that Strava could connect or how. You have to:

• Go to profile page
• Click the + button in the upper right corner
• select settings,
• Select connected app
• Select Strava and log in and authorize

Now you can clearly see the connected app options by simply clicking on the profile tab.

Currently, there is no other way to export the data correctly, so if you use any other service, you will need to pull the data from Strava.

It would be nice to see other apps integrated, but the inclusion of Strava was a huge selling point for me. It gives the Mi Watch a significant advantage over Huawei and Honor devices that require you to export data using the Health Sync app.

NFC card payment

This is advertised as NFC card payments via Mastercard. Under the Devices tab, there is an option for Mi Pay, which will let you set up a 6-digit punt and you should be able to add your card.

However, I can’t add my card, and I suspect this feature might not be available in the UK yet, or it might just be because the watch I’m using hasn’t officially launched yet.

Apps / Watch OS / Smart Watch Features

Like many affordable smartwatches, this is more of a function watch than a smartwatch. There are no installable apps to speak of; you get what you get. This is good for lower prices and longer battery life.

There’s a section in the app that says you can install apps. Nothing was shown here before, but after a recent update, there are now three apps:

• my tuner
• scientific calculator
• NumPuzzle

Android app is fine. Navigating through all the data is relatively easy, and I like how the workout history is presented. I’m not a big fan of the cartoonish design of the home screen with animated avatars, but that doesn’t make any difference to usability.

No friends and no badges. Fitbit has always had this feature, which is one of the reasons the company has been so successful. Apple Watch has friends and challenges, and Garmin has recently started aggressively expanding social features in its app

motion tracking

Like many smartwatches these days, it can track a ton of different activities. Generally speaking, there is little functional difference between active profiles. This is just one way for you to categorize different activities.

For things like running outdoors, you can set goals and alerts. It’s relatively basic, but instead of time and distance alarms, you can set time, distance, and calorie goals. You can also have the activity automatically pause when you stop it.

It tracks data well enough to rival many other fitness-focused smartwatches. For running, you have calories, pace, average heart rate, steps, cadence.

You can then also spend time in zones based on your HR, and once you’ve done enough outdoor runs, it’ll also give you a VO2Max rating.

The data exported to Strava is basic data only, no rhythm information will be transmitted.

No advanced statistics such as recovery or performance status

I have found that GPS acquisition is slow and can take a few minutes depending on the weather. By comparison, my Garmin Fenix ​​6 Pro typically connects in under 30 seconds. However, once the satellite is locked, the accuracy is fine.

Heart rate accuracy is surprisingly good. On a recent run I would say it outperformed my Garmin and didn’t suffer from the same peaks and troughs.

health characteristics

The general health tracking features are very good and comparable to other brands.

Sleep tracking works fine. I’ve rarely found any wearables for accurate sleep, but this seems to provide comparable results to my Garmin.

Heart rate throughout the day gives you a breakdown of the minimum, maximum average and resting state. Different brands seem to use different RHR values, but the min and max match my Garmin.

Then, you’ll burn calories, standing time, stress, and more.

Battery

Xiaomi says this should last about 12 days with typical usage. I’ve been charging it up since I track a lot of activity and it’s still great. I’m happy with a watch that only needs to be charged once a week.

Price, Availability and Alternatives

At the time of writing, official pricing has not been announced. Amazon Germany has the Mi Watch S1 The Active is priced at 195 euros, or about £165.

then list Mi Watch S1 Black for 243.84 euros or £205.

The smaller Xiaomi Mi Watch has an MSRP of £119 and is currently available from Amazon for under £100. This makes it one of the cheapest options on the market with built-in GPS and the ability to export to Strava.

There’s also the £149 Amazfit GTS 3, which has a similar feature set, including GPS and exporting to multiple health platforms.

The Huawei Watch GT 2 costs around £105, while the premium GT2 Pro costs £165. The new Huawei Watch GT3 is priced between £206 and £219. They’re both great watches, but you’ll need Health Sync to export data to the Huawei Health platform.

For Garmin, your budget is around £120 for the Vivoactive 3, £162 for the Venu SQ, £199 for the Venu or £300 for the Venu 2.

comprehensive

Both Mi Watch S1 watches are excellent, with the S1 being the first attempt at a better solution. They all do everything I personally want from a smartwatch. Phone notifications and motion tracking are exported to Strava. Exercise tracking seems to be accurate, especially GPS and heart rate.

I think I prefer the overall build and design of the Huawei Watch, I prefer the Huawei Health app, but I hate that you have to use a third-party app to export data. It’s hard for me to recommend them to anyone serious about fitness.

I’m obviously very biased towards Strava-enabled smartwatches, or at least proper data export. If that’s not your thing, these are still great watches, but a little less appealing, as it gives you a choice of many other great watches. For example, if the above prices are correct, the Huawei Watch GT 2 and GT 2 Pro are well worth considering as alternatives.