(Pocket-lint) – The Xiaomi Watch S1 Lively is basically a sportier model of Xiaomi’s Watch S1 smartwatch. It is providing just about the identical options albeit in a design that is a a lot better match for train time.
That features assist for the large satellite tv for pc methods to precisely monitor outside exercises, 24/7 coronary heart charge and blood oxygen monitoring, NFC funds and massive battery life, each throughout and after monitoring massive runs.
A sub-£200 price ticket means it is competing within the mid-range smartwatch market, which is as aggressive because it’s ever been. So, does the Watch S1 Lively ship the products?
The Xiaomi Watch S1 Lively is a smartwatch accessible at an excellent value that gives a design and set of options to trace train in a largely dependable trend. Its talents as a smartwatch are good on the entire too, although if you’d like a extra full smartwatch expertise, there are higher choices elsewhere to solid your eye over as an alternative.
- Nice high quality display screen
- Comfy to put on 24/7
- Performs nicely as health tracker
- Sports activities monitoring accuracy not good
- Some smartwatch options not working
- Small app assist
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Design and show
- 46mm chrome steel case
- 1.43-inch AMOLED show
- Silicone and TPU strap choices
- 5ATM waterproof score
Whereas the outside would possibly look just a little totally different, the Lively nonetheless shares a variety of similarities with the Watch S1. It is obtained a 46mm dimension case, it measures in at 11mm thick and is waterproof as much as 50 metres depth.
The steel case of the S1 is swapped for a lighter, glass fibre-reinforced polyamide, which is principally plastic, and there is the decide of both a silicone or a TPU strap. We had the silicone strap to wrap round our wrist and might report no points or pores and skin irritation have been had in our sporting time.
That case holds in place the identical 1.43-inch, 466 x 466 decision AMOLED display screen, which provides the identical expertise by way of responsiveness (good), visibility (good) and provides an always-on show mode that may noticeably eat into the battery life .
Round that show is a skinny black bezel after which a bigger silver bezel that elevates the look of the Lively and breaks up that predominantly plastic look.
There’s two bodily buttons on the best aspect of the case, with the one down under your shortcut to sports activities monitoring and the highest one to get up the show – however you possibly can’t use both to scroll by means of screens.
It has been a snug smartwatch to put on total. It appears like that preferrred dimension and weight for understanding with a powerful high quality touchscreen show and a strap which you could additionally take away if you wish to combine up that look additional.
Health monitoring and smartwatch options
- 117 exercise modes
- Twin-band multi-system GPS
- 24/7 coronary heart charge monitoring
- Amazon Alexa
Just about all the things we have stated in our Xiaomi Watch S1 assessment applies to the Watch S1 Lively in terms of monitoring your health, well being and what it provides in smartwatch phrases. It is a stable expertise total with some room for enchancment.
You could have 117 exercise modes with a portion of these providing metrics outdoors of capturing exercise length and coronary heart charge. A small batch of these exercise profiles assist automated train monitoring too.
Xiaomi contains dual-band, multi-system GPS, which is one thing we’re beginning to see crop up on extra sports activities watches and smartwatches with the goal of enhancing outside train monitoring in problematic areas the place monitoring can undergo. So, close to tall buildings and enormous wooded areas, for instance. Sports activities monitoring typically for the modes we examined in was good. For runs, swims, and indoor exercises like rowing, we have been glad with the info accuracy. Is it the very best we have used? Not fairly. The promised improved outside monitoring accuracy wasn’t spotless and whereas coronary heart charge monitoring for regular paced exercises was dependable on the entire, it struggled in our excessive depth checks.
There’s positives and negatives whenever you’re utilizing it as an exercise tracker. Day by day step counts have been in keeping with step monitoring from a Garmin watch and the Oura Ring 3. Sleep monitoring information was just like the Oura Ring too, notably for the breakdown of sleep phases and sleep length. Steady coronary heart charge monitoring did not appear fairly as much as scratch and tended to put up BPM readings as excessive as 10bpm out from the Oura Ring 3 and a Garmin watch.
There’s blood oxygen monitoring accessible right here too, and whereas the info appears dependable, not a lot is definitely performed with that information past displaying it inside Xiaomi’s companion app. It is a related story for stress monitoring, which can also be accessible right here and powered by means of coronary heart charge variability measurements.
Your whole information lives within the Xiaomi app, however if you wish to share it with Apple Well being and even Strava you possibly can set the watch app to fireplace information to these different platforms.
If you take a break from all issues health and well being associated, the Lively performs as a reliable smartwatch. It is going to dish out notifications in a slick trend, although will not allow you to act on them. There’s music controls which might be nicely optimised to that touchscreen show and together with telephone calling over Bluetooth, Xiaomi additionally provides an emergency mode letting you faucet the underside bodily button thrice to name your emergency contact. Simply be sure to’ve obtained it related to your telephone as nicely.
You may technically make contactless funds through Mastercard, although we struggled to get this characteristic arrange on our watch. You may arrange Amazon Alexa to ask it the standard queries you fireplace at Amazon’s good assistant. The core smartwatch works nicely sufficient however it’s definitely going to be higher match for Android customers regardless of that assist for iPhone customers.
Battery life
- 12 days in typical use
- 24 days in energy saving mode
- 30 hours GPS
The Lively packs a 470mAh capability battery that ought to provide you with 12 days in ‘typical’ use and 24 days whenever you change to a extra restrictive power-saving mode. Xiaomi additionally quotes that whenever you use GPS to trace outside train, you possibly can count on 30 hours of battery life earlier than it wants charging once more.
Primarily based on our testing, it is a watch that may comfortably final per week, however just like the Watch S1, it is advisable to be aware of the options in use to get greater than per week. Sticking the display screen in always-on mode has a noticeable affect on battery life, and options like steady coronary heart charge, stress and blood oxygen monitoring do one thing related. We discovered GPS battery efficiency in need of that quoted 30 hours as nicely, however it ought to nearly cowl a light-weight week’s price of coaching.
The underside line is, you will not have to cost this smartwatch on daily basis and there is not a horrible battery drop-off except you are placing its full gamut of options to common use.
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The Xiaomi Watch S1 Lively provides good worth for cash. It is obtained a pleasant sporty look, respectable sports activities monitoring talents and not-too-shabby battery life besides. It simply does not fairly do fairly sufficient in a different way to choose it over equally priced rivals.
Writing by Michael Sawh. Modifying by Verity Burns.
