XiaomiBudget
Xiaomi entered wearables with the Mi Band 1 in 2014; its Watch S3, Smart Band 8 and Mi Watch Lite lines make it the world's best-selling fitness band producer in the $30-150 price band.
Xiaomi has quietly become one of the most sensible names in affordable wearables. From the pocket-money Smart Band to the Wear OS Watch 2 Pro, the range covers almost any buyer who wants serious health tracking without spending serious money.
Xiaomi Corporation was founded on 6 April 2010 in Beijing by Lei Jun and a group of partners. The company made its name in smartphones, then stepped into wearables in 2014 with the original Mi Band, a cheap, all-day fitness tracker that sold by the tens of millions. Everything since has followed that template: hardware built around sensor accuracy and battery efficiency rather than horological tradition, all of it tied into the HyperOS interface and the Mi Fitness app so the watch talks to your phone, your home devices and, more recently, the company's cars.
The current line-up makes sense once you see it as four tiers. At the bottom sits the Xiaomi Smart Band 9, a fitness band with a 1.62-inch AMOLED screen, a 233mAh battery good for around 21 days, heart rate and SpO2 tracking but no GPS, for roughly £35. A step up, the Redmi Watch 5 brings a large 2.07-inch AMOLED, a 550mAh cell rated up to 24 days and HyperOS 2, with the Bluetooth version starting near £70. The proper watch tier opens with the Xiaomi Watch S4, a 1.43-inch AMOLED with built-in multi-band GPS at around £110; a China-only 15th Anniversary Edition runs Xiaomi's own Xring T1 chip with an integrated 4G modem. For anyone who wants full Wear OS, the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 Watch 2 Pro starts at around £160 in its Bluetooth form.
From a buyer's standpoint, the logic is refreshingly clear: these are tools, not investments. There is effectively no secondary market, because each new generation pushes the last one's value off a cliff, so buy for what you need today rather than resale. Two things matter most before you commit. First, the ecosystem: you get the best experience on Android, ideally a Xiaomi phone, while iPhone owners lose some health and eSIM functionality. Second, GPS: the band family has none, so if you run or hike outdoors untethered from your phone, you need a watch, at minimum the Watch S4.
The Xiaomi Watch 5, launched in China in December 2025 and rolled out globally on Wear OS 6 in early 2026, shows where the brand is heading. It pairs a dual-chip Snapdragon W5 and BES2800 design with double-sided sapphire crystal, an ECG and Xiaomi's first EMG sensor, claiming up to six days in performance mode and eighteen in power saving, at roughly £255 in the UK. If this is your first Xiaomi, my advice is simple: choose the Redmi Watch 5 for daily tracking and marathon battery, the Watch S4 if you want real GPS sport tracking, and the Watch 2 Pro only if you want the older Wear OS app catalogue on a stainless case.
