The Mi Watch Revolve is a great choice for anyone who's starting to take fitness more seriously and wants to move past the usual fitness bands. The Mi Watch Revovles uses industry-leading algorithms from FirstBeat Motion, allowing it to deliver incredibly accurate heart rate tracking and consequently, even correct VO2 Max numbers. Thanks to the built-in GPS, you can go on your rides or runs without having to take your smartphone with you. As such, the watch also offers fairly accurate GPS tracking, so you don't need to really worry. The only area where we felt that the otherwise perfect Mi Watch Revolve faltered was sleep tracking. Over the course of our testing, the watch only recorded one night's sleep and that too only a small fraction of it. If sleep tracking isn't critical for you, then the Mi Watch Revolve is a great place to start your fitness journey.
The Mi Watch Revolve is all about taking big swings at big names like FitBit, Garmin and other Android Wear devices. The Mi Watch Revolve isn’t about throwing every possible feature at you, but it does bring the most essential features to the table, along with a few extra that make the watch feel like a really solid value for money proposition. While it's nice to have features and specs to talk about, they’re no good if the watch can’t do what it's advertised to do, which is exactly what we went out and tested.
Mi Watch Revolve Specs
There are a number of things to take note of when it comes to the Mi Watch Revolve. First and foremost, it has a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with a peak brightness of 450 nits. This is to make the content on the screen visible even in harsh daylight, and this feature works just as advertised. The sensors on-board are the usual suspects like a three-axis acceleration sensor, geomagnetic sensor, an ambient light sensor, but most importantly, a PPG heart rate sensor. The heart rate sensor might not sound super exciting, but things become very lucrative when you add to this FirstBeat Motion algorithms. FirstBeat is the company whose algorithms power many renowned wearables, including most of Garmin’s devices. The Mi Watch Revolve uses a number of FirstBeat Motion’s algorithms that allow the watch to calculate things such as VO2-Max, stress levels, energy levels and even better sleep tracking.
Mi Watch Revolve Tracking Features
The Mi Watch Revolve tracks six key activities; all day heart-rate tracking, VO2-Max, Body Energy monitoring, stress monitoring and everyone’s favourite, step counting. Within the work-out segment, the Mi Watch Revolve tracks 10 different kinds of sports. Unlike the Huawei Watch GT2e which tracks more activities you can engage in one lifetime, the Revolve offers ten of the most popular. You can track your runs (indoor or outdoor or on the treadmill), your bike rides, hikes, swims, and even indoor exercises.
Mi Watch Revolve Heart Rate Tracking
I used the Mi Watch Revolve on my left wrist for a lengthy period of time and had my trusty Garmin Instinct on the other. Both watches were tracking my heart rate and other activities throughout the day which included several 5 Km walks, 10 Km bike rides and various flights of stairs. At the end of the day, the Mi Watch Revolve reported a resting heart rate of 92bpm while the Garmin has my resting heart rate pegged at 86bpm. The variance is well within the margin of error, leading me to believe that the Mi Watch Revolve is pretty decent at its all day tracking capabilities.
Mi Watch Revolve Activity Tracking
I particularly tracked my walks and bike rides and right off the bat, one thing that was nice is that the Xiaomi Wear app separates your regular steps from the steps you take on “tracked walks.” Besides that, the steps and distance recorded by the Mi Watch were just a little higher than those reported by the Garmin. The Mi Watch Revolve recorded a total distance walked of 4.29 Km while the Garmin reported 4.1 Km. The average heart-rate reported by the Revolve was 121 beats per minute while the Garmin Instinct reported an average bpm of 125.
Similarly, for my 10K bike rides, the distance reported by the Mi Watch Revolve was a solid 10.2 Km, while the Garmin Instinct reported a dot 10 Km. I measured the distance using a Garmin Edge 500 bike computer and while the Instinct was a lot closer to the actual number, the Mi Watch Revolve was close enough.
Mi Watch Revolve Sleep Tracking
The Mi Watch Revolve was on a roll, checking off all the right boxes, but one area where it faltered notably was sleep tracking. The watch didn't record any sleep activity for the last several days, with the only record being of me sleeping two hours one night.
Mi Watch Revolve Other Features
Now the Mi Watch Revolve allows you to do a lot, but when it comes to smart features, it offers plenty. The watch alerts you to your messages, alarms and you can even accept and reject calls on it. It also alerts you when you’ve been sitting too long and should be moving. These features are pretty standard across most fitness wearables, so you’re not really losing anything. The prompts to get up and move are especially nice and hard to miss due to the strong vibration of the watch.
Mi Watch Revolve Battery Life
The company claims that the Mi Watch Revolve’s 420mAh battery can chug along for up to 2 weeks without needing another charge. While we didn’t quite get that number in our usage, the Revolve did manage to run for 6 days of proper, smartwatch-esque use before needing another charge. The watch takes about an hour and a half to top up completely, which is pretty impressive, when you factor in how long it lasts.
Verdict
The Mi Watch Revolve is a big step up from the casual fitness bands that are available in the market. In that regard, the price on the watch is also much higher than that of such bands. For an introductory price of Rs 9,999 till Diwali (and Rs. 10,999 after). For the feature set it offers, it goes up against the much more expensive offerings like the Huawei Watch GT2e and even the far more expensive Garmin Instinct. While you may not get the kitchen-sink of activity tracking, you do get a watch that uses the best algorithms in the business. The watch itself is fairly stylish and follows the standard watch strap sizes, should you choose to customize your watch. Honestly, for the price and performance, the Mi Watch Revolve is hard to not recommend.
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Swapnil Mathur
Swapnil was Digit's resident camera nerd, (un)official product photographer and the Reviews Editor. Swapnil has moved-on to newer challenges. For any communication related to his stories, please mail us using the email id given here. View Full Profile
