In recent times, India’s smartwatch market is becoming more popular and Amazfit, Huawei (Honor), GQQii controls most of the market share. But two of the hottest smartphone manufacturers would not want to miss the opportunity, and both Xiaomi and Realme announced their smartwatches here in India.
Xiaomi released its first smartwatch in the premium 10K segment, the Mi Watch Revolve. It is just a rebranded Xiaomi Mi Watch Color which is available overseas for quite some time.
But Xiaomi is very slow to announce its ecosystem products in India. They take time to optimize fully, research, localize the product, and look for the perfect time to release the product.
But unlike Xiaomi, Realme does everything at a fast pace. Most of their ecosystem products will be half-baked at launch, and they usually get improved by continued OTA updates.
Realme Watch S Pro is not their first smartwatch. They have previously released Realme fitness band to compete against Mi band, then released their first budget-oriented realme watch and now two new smartwatches into the portfolio, the RealMe Watch S and Watch S Pro. Like I previously said, the brand releases a product that ticks all the boxes on paper but has a few performance issues. Which then get sorted out by a steady flow of software updates. We saw that happen with the brand’s previous attempts and will see it yet again with its new smartwatches.
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Realme Watch S Pro vs Mi Watch Revolve
Realme released Realme Watch S Pro as a direct competitor to Xiaomi’s Mi watch S Pro, and that is exactly what we are going to do here, to find which is the best between the two.
Build and Design
Realme Watch S Pro and Mi Watch Revolve have different approaches to the watch design. Due to this, the watch design has a considerable role in the final purchase decision. We didn’t mean one has better build quality or looks to the other. Both of them are well-built and nice-looking watches. But they are suited for a different type of consumer.
Mi Watch Revolve follows a simple, classy, and minimalist approach and easily blends in a skew of regular watches. It will be hard to distinguish from a traditional watch with an analogue watch face. So you can wear Mi Watch Revolve to any occasion with any outfit. Realme Watch S Pro is more sporty looking and inspired by Huawei/Honor watch design. But design is a personal preference, so I couldn’t take any side here, even though I am more into Mi Watch Revolve design.
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| Mi Watch Revolve |
In terms of built, Mi Watch Revolve comes with an Aluminium (they say premium metallic) frame with Gorilla Glass 3 as protection. The Glass stays a little lower to the metallic frame, so it helps to avoid scratches. Compared to this, Realme Watch S Pro comes with a Stainless steel frame which offers more durability but gives some extra heft to the watch. The front Glass stays slightly higher from the metal frame, and there is more chance to get scratches on display. To avoid that it also has Gorilla Glass 3, but quite frankly, Gorilla Glass 3 is not good at preventing scratches.
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| Realme Watch S Pro |
These watches come with two buttons on the right, one for waking up and switching off the display and another for accessing your fitness and workout menu. The Marking on display on both watches is very similar too. These watches come in only one size, 46mm, which is large and helps us more information in a single glance.
People with slender wrists feel these watches are bulky and gigantic. So for such folks, it is better to stay away from these. These watches come with standard 22mm quick-release straps, so we can rely on third-party straps and use other 22mm straps without any issue. Also, both of these companies offer various strap options too.
Xiaomi offers four silicon straps and one black leather option. You get a Neptune Blue strap with chrome silver and black strap with a midnight black color variant out of the box. In Realme Watch S Pro, Realme offers three silicon, three vegan leather and one black stainless steel strap. The Realme watch S Pro only comes in a black color option with a black color strap.
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| Mi Watch Revolve Straps |
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| Realme Watch S Pro Straps |
The strap’s quality coming with Mi Watch revolve is slightly better than one that comes with Realme Watch S Pro. These watches offer 5ATM water resistance, which means up to 50 meters in 10 minutes.
Display
Even though both manufacturers did not specify where they sourced the display from, it is very likely to sport the same display on both smartwatches, and it is not a bad thing. Because the 1.39 inch AMOLED display on both smartwatches is excellent with punchy colors, deep black, great details, good sunlight legibility, etc. I don’t think anyone will complain about its display quality. If you are into specs, both displays come with 454×454 pixels resolution and 326 pixels per inch.
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| Realme Watch S Pro Display |
These watches also offer Auto brightness along with five manual brightness levels, and the Auto-Brightness is working like a charm in both of them.
Watch Faces
Watch faces have a massive impact on the absolute beauty of a smartwatch. Both of these smartwatches offer Always-on Display(AOD) functionality. So both of them have regular, and AOD watch faces. In the case of regular watch faces, Mi Watch Revolve offers 110+ stock watch faces. Some of them are excellent, The rest of the watch faces are copies or recolors of one another, and most of them are too kiddish.
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| Mi Watch Revolve Watch Faces and AOD(Always-on Display) |
In Realme Watch S Pro, we have a similar number of (100+) stock watch faces, but none of them is great or excellent. They are ranging from below average to above average segment. But realme allows us to set custom watch faces, maybe that will be the wrong statement, it is more like we can change the wallpaper of the stock watch faces. Xiaomi Mi band 5 and Mi band 4 offer custom watches, so I don’t know what happened with Xiaomi here.
In case AOD watch faces realme smartwatch is very limited to one or two. But Xiaomi offers some good AOD watch faces, a plus point for Xiaomi in that department.
User Interface
These smartwatches are non-wear OS smartwatches, so they come with their custom User Interface. As I said earlier, I haven’t used both of these smartwatches, but from what I read or heard, the Xiaomi user interface is more optimized, less buggy, lag-free, and looks slightly better too.
In Realme Watch S Pro, even though the processor is somewhat more capable, we see occasional lags, lack of optimization around the UI. Still, it is quite common for Realme’s new ecosystem products. Realme always releases half-baked/cooked products and makes them fully cooked through OTA updates. They have already done it with their realme band, realme watch and with other products. Compared to this, Xiaomi typically releases fully baked/cooked products so that one or two optimization OTA updates, but they will release feature updates frequently. Also, Xiaomi’s UI is significantly related to Xiaomi-backed Amazfit smartwatches UI. Even though the design of the UI is different, everything is placed similarly.
These Smartwatches do not handle notifications well, and it is a similar story with Amazfit smartwatches too. They do not support any reply option, but that is not why I am complaining. I hate how they show the notifications. It is precisely similar to how you will see notifications on your phone lock screen. It means if one person sends a message, they will show the full message, but if the person sends multiple messages, these watches only show “you have x number of unread messages,” which need to be changed, right?
Both watches offer a “raise to wake” function, and it works perfectly on Xiaomi but is a little hit and miss in Realme. Also, in Realme Watch S Pro, always-on display mode watch faces on it do not sync with the ones on the watch itself – hopefully, the update will change these issues.
Smart Function and Features.
Realme Watch S Pro and Mi Watch Revolve are not smart enough to justify their price tag even though there is “smart” in their names because they are precisely a smart band glorified into a premium watch body. These smartwatches offer a similar set of features as Mi band 5 with a four-times price tag.
These two smartwatches offer many similar features and some key differentiating features too. After we explain these, we will dig more into how they perform, how accurate they are, and write about features missing from these smartwatches.
Common Features.
Smartwatches have fitness-oriented features and smart features like notifications, alarms, etc. In terms of smart features, they offer Auto-Brightness, Always-on-Display, Manage Calls, Notifications, Control Music, Find My Phone, Weather, Flashlight, Stopwatch, Timer, Idle Alert, Alarm, Smart Lock, DND, etc.
In Terms of Fitness oriented features, they offer No. of steps, sleep analysis, calories used, Heart Rate Monitoring, Breathing Exercise, GPS, multiple sports modes.
Differentiating features
Realme Watch S Pro can track 15 sports, but Mi Watch Revolve is limited to 10. But there is a catch in it. Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve comes with the Firstbeat Motion algorithm, a standard seen in core fitness-oriented smartwatches or fitness bands.
Firstbeat motion algorithm improves or increases the accuracy of tracking. Let me answer that more realistically, that algorithm is not designed to improve or perform better or give a more accurate result. Still, the whole idea of the algorithm is to provide more in-depth details of your tracking. It analyses your heart rate better and gives VO2 max, body energy, body oxygen utilization, stress management, and heart rate variation with very high accuracy.
But Realme Watch S Pro lacks such an algorithm, so these features are missing from it. But it has a Blood Oxygen Monitor(SPO2), which is quite handy for Covid times, but Mi Watch Revolve this quite an important feature.
Another difference is that the Mi watch revolver has an Altimeter, which can provide altitude(height climbed). Realme Watch S Pro offers some smart features like Water Drinking reminders, Camera Control, and AIoT Control. But this can be enabled by Xiaomi through OTA updates any time if they want it.
VO2 Max
This is the defining measure of cardiorespiratory health and overall fitness. VO2 Max is defined as the maximum oxygen consumed at maximum effort
Body Energy Monitoring
Estimate the energy gained and lost throughout the day and plan your body resources better. Energy is measured using a combination of sleep, workouts, daily activities & heart rate variability.
Stress Management
The algorithm studies your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) to accurately determine your stress levels throughout the day and negate the physical effects of workouts on your score.
Heart Rate Variability
This monitors the intervals between consecutive heartbeats to generate information on your heart health and opens a window to various other fitness indicators and vitals.
Tracking Accuracy?
In terms of fitness tracking accuracy, Mi Watch Revolve is as good as Huawei/Honor Smartwatches or Amazfit’s new GTR 2 or GTS 2. But in the case of Realme Watch S Pro, it couldn’t match the accuracy of watches mentioned above, but it is on par with many budget smartwatches or Amazfit GTR or GTS priced very similar to Watch S Pro.
But both watches couldn’t track daytime naps, and, unfortunately, the MI Band 5, which cost Rs. 2500, can do it without any issues. Maybe future OTA updates will resolve it. Similarly, the blood oxygen measure in Realme Watch S Pro seemed slightly on the higher side.
What Features Missing from this?
These smartwatches have no speaker or microphone. So they didn’t support Bluetooth calls. Due to the same reason, there is voice assistant support too. At this price, Competition doesn’t do it, so they don’t do it either.
Also, there is no built-in storage in these smartwatches, which means you can’t store songs and connect some Bluetooth earphones to stream them. But remember, by adding 1000 Rupees more, and we will get a smartwatch with all of these functions (Huawei watch GT 2e)
Battery Life and Charging
These smartwatches are claimed to last up to 14 days. But this will heavily depend upon your use scenario, and if you are using “Always on Display”, it will have a considerable impact on battery life.
Likewise, if you use GPS functionality, it will also drain up your battery more. But for most folks, these watches will easily last up to 1 week or more. Technically these smartwatches come with a 420mAh battery and take around 2 hours to charge fully.
Connectivity and Companion APP
These watches connect to Android devices or IOS devices through Bluetooth 5.0. Xiaomi has a companion app called Xiaomi wear in Android and Xiaomi wear lite in IOS. Realme watch S Pro connects to the android through the Realme Link app, But it doesn’t support IOS connectivity yet, but it is expected to arrive in the coming days. Both of these companion apps are well designed and work as they intended to.
Pricing and Availability
Realme Watch S Pro is priced at Rs.9999 and is available for sale in Flipkart and realme.com.
Mi Watch Revolve is selling for Rs. 10,999 at Amazon and mi.com.
Should you consider these in the skew of other smartwatches?
As many of you know, there are different types of smartwatches and fitness bands out there. In which, Mi Watch Revolve and Realme Watch S Pro fall into the same category. So before we decide which is the best one between the two, you need to be sure it is the right category/type of smartwatches you need.
- If you are looking for full-fledged smartwatches with many fitness and smartwatches with or without LTE connectivity(can work independently), you should go for Apple Watches or wear OS watches or even Samsung gear watches. The main disadvantage of these watches will be 1-2 day battery life.
- Suppose you are looking for premium smartwatches with good battery life(1-2 weeks) with music storage, Bluetooth calls, etc.. In that case, you should spend a little more and pick smartwatches like Huawei Watch GT 2, Huawei Watch GT2e, Honor Magic Watch 2, Amazfit GTR 2, Amazfit GTS 2, etc.
- If you are very serious about fitness tracking and its accuracy, you should go for fitness-oriented smartwatches for fitness brands from Fitbit, Garmin, etc.
- If you are not interested in the in-depth of your tracking and only want to know the basic number of steps, sleep data these smartwatches are not for you, this will be just a glorified smart band in the dial of a watch.
- If you are somewhat serious about your tracking but not about your smartwatches’ premium-ness (metal finish, AMOLED display) watches like Amazfit GTS 2 mini, Realme Watch S will be more apt for you.
- If you are interested in square watches, you can easily stay away from them.
So the Mi Watch Revolve and Realme Watch S Pro are for people who care about their watch’s design, quality of the display and interested in the in-depth details of your tracking and should not care about functions like Bluetooth calls or storage. Then these two should be at the top of your priority.
Realme Watch S Pro vs Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve: Verdict
In between them, we think Mi Watch Revolve has an extra benefit for its higher price tag with more accurate and in-depth fitness tracking, well-optimized software and User Interface with one the best-looking design in any smartwatches out there. With its simple, classy and minimalist design, you can wear it with any outfit to any occasion. But the lack of SPO2 is a slight downgrade, especially the amount of oxygen in your blood is an essential factor in these covid times.
On Contrast, Realme Watch S Pro still offers good value for money with Sporty looking design and capability to measure SPO2. But currently, the watch is still slightly undercooked. But with some OTA updates Realme can easily step up its game, until then both the Mi Watch Revolve and Amazfit GTR/GTS have a clear lead over it as they feel like more finished products.
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