introduction
The best way to compete in the premium smartwatch market is to stick to Google’s Wear OS (or be an Apple Watch), or so Xiaomi thought when designing the Watch 2 Pro. The move opens up the Play Store and all its apps, while the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 platform – a big 4nm step up from the S1 Pro – takes things to the next level. The chipset is a rarity among Wear OS watches outside of the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5.
The switch to a proper operating system also means that the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro lasts around two days, while the battery life of the watch it replaces was measured in weeks. This is a major disadvantage that the additional intelligence must justify. But let’s recalibrate for a moment: the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro will now compete with the most powerful Wear OS watches: Galaxy Watch6 and Watch5, the just-announced Pixel Watch 2, and the Fossils and Skagens of the world.
To set itself apart, Xiaomi has integrated dual-band GPS into the Watch 2 Pro, making it a much better tracker than its single-band peers. The other differentiator is the nearly 500 mAh battery, which Xiaomi says will last up to 65 hours.
Xiaomi’s watch has the tools but it also has style and starts from just €270. If that’s not enough for you to seriously consider the Watch 2 Pro, read on to find out more.
Design and build quality
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro is a classic looking watch. It is available in black with a black fluoro rubber strap or silver with a brown leather strap. Both models feature a stainless steel case with a black top bezel and a textured “Parisian nail” side. The silver model is decidedly more interesting due to the contrasting black bezel.
There are three buttons on the right of the watch. The top and bottom are recessed, while the crown in the center faces outwards. It is a rotating crown with a very smooth range of motion. There is a small knurled ring at the base of the crown to help your finger find purchase. It’s a well thought out design with attention to detail.
The top button always opens the workouts screen. The bottom button brings up the last open app with a press, launches Google Pay with a double press, and opens the shutdown menu with a long press. The crown opens and closes the app grid with a press and summons Google Assistant with a long press. You can also wake up Assistant with a voice command.
We have the black model and it is a fingerprint magnet. The silver model appears shinier but we imagine it will hide stains better.
The display is a 1.43-inch AMOLED with 466x466px resolution and maximum brightness of 600 nits. It’s a lovely thing to look at with the typical punchy colors and superb contrast of an OLED. The glass is slightly recessed under the bezel of the case, which means it is harder to scratch. And this is important, given that unlike the S1 Pro the Watch 2 Pro does not have sapphire glass.
The dial plays a huge role in the design of the watch. There are 23 watch faces to choose from and thousands of third-party options in the Google Play Store. Xiaomi’s custom faces are high quality and customizable – you’re sure to find something you like.
The case comes with standard double lug straps on both sides with 22mm width. This is by far the most popular standard for this size of watch and means that all your standard straps will work and you have a wide choice of third-party options at your disposal. Xiaomi offers additional straps in 3 materials and 4 colors.
The fluorinated rubber watch strap is very soft to the touch and has great elasticity. It lacks a bit of solidity and could be heavier, though. The buckle seems of quality.
The vibration motor of the Watch 2 Pro is very powerful. This is both a positive and a negative: it’s a bit jarring at times, and we wish we had a granular slider to control the strength of the vibration. The rotating crown has nice subtle tactile feedback.
The bottom of the watch contains all the sensors – optical heart rate, skin temperature, and the new bioelectrical impedance analysis sensor – something only Samsung has so far offered on a watch. The bottom is also where you’ll find the two pins for the proprietary charger. We’d prefer a universal wireless charging puck, but even worse: The Watch 2 Pro’s charger requires the Watch to be facing a certain way, which isn’t convenient for bedside use.
Wear the operating system
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro ships with Wear OS 3.5, the penultimate version of the operating system. Currently, only Samsung’s latest smartwatches run Wear OS 4, though with the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 platform, it’s safe to say the Watch 2 Pro will eventually receive the update.
The move to Google’s wearable operating system means that the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro has access to the entire library of watch apps, including YouTube, Spotify, Google Maps, Google Pay and many more. This is the most powerful wearable operating system outside of Watch OS.
You also get Google Assistant with voice or button activation. This is the full Assistant experience: you can ask the Assistant anything, turn on the flashlight, make the phone ring, or what not.
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro is controlled via gestures, as is normal in these things. Swipe on both sides of the dial for the different widgets you have. A swipe from the bottom opens the toggles (although a swipe from the top would have been more natural), while a swipe from the top lowers the notifications. Press the crown to open apps, which by default are arranged in a honeycomb grid, but you can also opt for list view with the name next to the icon.
Google Pay is a great advantage of Wear OS. Setup is simple: download the Google Wallet app and register your payment card. Please note that your card issuer must support Google Pay. From there you double-click the button below and pay. One downside to Google Pay is that it requires the watch to have a passcode. Smartwatches don’t yet have face or fingerprint scanning capabilities, and tapping a small virtual number pad while on the move is a tedious task.
You can control some aspects of Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro on your phone. Similar to what Samsung does, Xiaomi requires you to have its own custom app: Mi Fitness. It aggregates all your health and workout data and has a section dedicated to the watch you’re using.
You can change most things from your phone, including your watch face, accounts, and apps, as well as change your fitness and health tracking settings. Where the app disappoints is the lack of any kind of backup and restore functionality. If you need to change phones, you’ll need to reset your watch and set it up again.
Notification management is excellent on the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro. You can choose which apps can send notifications, and you can respond with the usual set of options: send an emoji, as a message, send a voice message, and even type a reply on a small QWERTY keyboard right there on your wrist.
Fitness and health tracking
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro is an excellent all-round tracker for both fitness and health. Supports over 150 sports modes with detailed analysis and coaching tips. Dual-band GPS uses both the wider L1 band and the faster, more precise L5 band to provide tracking accuracy within the gauge.
In practice, it takes about a full half minute for the GPS to lock once you start an outdoor run. You can still run during this time, but it’s best to wait to get a more accurate reading.
We ran some meticulous tests on the GPS: We ran to see how accurately it measured our speed, then stopped abruptly to see how quickly it recognized that we had stopped. It was very quick to record all the changes. Then we checked our movements on the map and found the Watch 2 Pro to be very accurate.
The watch is also water resistant up to 5 ATM, so it’s good for swimming.
Get a very detailed rundown of your workout in Mi Fitness. The app provides you with all the basic information such as distance, time, pace, heart beats per minute, highs and lows, as well as your overall steps. Get altitude data and a detailed analysis of your heart rate during your run: light, hard, aerobic, anaerobic and your maximum VO₂ time.
Sleep tracking is also very detailed. The watch tracks your sleep cycles – Deep, Light, REM – and gives you a breakdown of your awake time. All of these are highlighted with additional information: whether your deep sleep is sufficient, whether your light sleep or wakefulness is too high. The watch will integrate monitoring with data on your breathing and blood oxygen throughout the night.
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro is the first watch compatible with Samsung’s Galaxy Watch series and offers a bioelectrical impedance sensor. You need to start a reading, touch both buttons with your index and middle fingers and hold still. The watch then gives you a breakdown of your body into fat, water, salt and protein percentages and tells you your muscle mass and fat mass in kilograms. You also get your overall BMI number.
This reviewer’s BMI measurement on the watch matched the number on his Withings Body+ smart scale, but it’s only based on the weight and height you entered. The body fat reading was higher on the smartwatch than on the scale, although these types of analysis attempts are inherently inaccurate. They can be used to track your progress if you can get readings on similar hydration levels.
There is also in-depth menstrual cycle tracking, all-day blood oxygen monitoring, and breathing exercises.
We could debate whether a smartwatch is accurate enough in its dimensions to compete with professional fitness and health tracking tools. But the idea is to pack as much useful data into as nice and functional a package as possible.
Thanks to dual-band GPS and the selection of high-level sensors, Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro is a perfect daily companion for those who care about well-being.
Battery life
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro has a 495 mAh battery, 70 mAh more than the Galaxy Watch6 Classic and very rarely beaten: last year’s Watch5 Pro has a 590 mAh battery, while the TicWatch 5 Pro has a 628 mAh. Interestingly, the TicWatch 5 Pro claims the same 65 hours of battery life as the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro.
We didn’t get the above promised two days, but we did get two full days of heavy use. That means wearing the Watch 2 Pro all day with the always-on display enabled, notifications on, a workout in the evening, a full night’s sleep tracking, and then a run in the morning. The watch was charged at midday with approximately 26% battery remaining.
This is solid performance for a Wear OS smartwatch, but it’s nowhere near what a proprietary OS smartwatch like the Huawei Watch GT 4 can do.
Conclusion
We like the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro. It’s a good-looking smartwatch, if a little boring in the black color we have. Get the silver model for a little more style and maybe grab a few straps and you have a nice watch.
Xiaomi’s move to Wear OS and the 4nm Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 means the Watch 2 Pro is responsive, intelligent, complete and future-proof. It’s also competitive against Mobvoi’s main rivals, Samsung and Huawei (Apple Watch fans live in their own world and don’t care about round watches).
But the biggest attraction of the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro is its price. The price starts at €270 for the Bluetooth model and goes up to €330 if you want LTE. Compare it with the €449 and €499 of the Galaxy Watch6 Classic or with the €360 price of the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 and you will see how competitive the Xiaomi smartwatch is. Now Huawei throws a spanner in the works with the €270 Watch GT 4, but it lacks the Wear OS.
The Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro makes perfect sense for the complete package, elegant design and very reasonable asking price. There’s nothing it can’t do and it gets our recommendation.
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