Xiaomi Watch S3 Review - Did They Lie?

this is the xiaomi watch S3 and it's xiaomi's latest attempt at trying to cram in as many premium features as they can at a low price now in this watch xiaomi are promising things like an aluminium bodybuild a large color touchscreen 15 days battery life claim 98% average heart rate accuracy and even dualband gnss tracking I mean that kind of technology is normally reserved for more expensive sports watches so I've been using the xiaomi watch S3 for the last few weeks and in this video I'll review its design test out its 15 days battery life

claim compare its average heart rate accuracy against an ECG chest strap talk about what's not so good about it till it's on the watch itself what's good about it is a koala and much much more to try and find out if xiaomi have actually delivered on all of those premium features in this watch or if this is just a gimmicky and overhyped Bluetooth accessory now looking at the Des design of the xiaomi watch S3 the first thing that came to my mind when I unboxed it was the word chunky I mean this thing is big

and it feels Hefty to wear daytoday now the reason for that is the large battery in this watch I mean it doesn't feel cheap to hold and touch at all the aluminum body in fact feels really nice and smooth now the display is a nice and colorful AMOLED touchcreen it measures 1.43 in in diameter and and it's been really amazing to use Outdoors as well as indoors the resolution of the display is fine it's 326 PPI and there are some bright screens such as the weather screen here where you can see some low resolution imagery

but it's absolutely fine for day-to-day use the xiaomi say that the display here is made of corings Gorilla Glass but there's nothing online saying what version or specification of Gorilla Glass is being used here so the durability of the screen is a bit questionable but for me overall daytoday it's been absolutely fine and the color options are quite interesting and xiaomi have made a big deal about the bezel which can be removed and interchanged with different colored bezels um you can also remove the bands and change them out to different colors basically creating a combination

that you love now I do have a gripe about this bezel so you can remove it by twisting it anticlockwise like that and it's come off and the first time I did that I put it back into place um and ever since I've done that this bezel starts rattling whenever the watch vibrates it's really not a nice sound to hear it's quite annoying so every time this vibrates when I receive notifications or if my alarm goes off in the morning it makes an annoying rattling sound so that's something to keep in mind with regards durability

now let's talk about the user interface of the watch S3 and I did mention that it's a touchscreen so it's really nice and quick to whiz around the user interface um and then there's two buttons on the right hand side of the watch now the touch input and software speed has been really really good and xiaomi's Hyper OS running this UI is just buty smooth and the colors animations and text work really well on this watch oh and the watch faces here are actually really good compared to some of the other brands that I've been

seeing on this channel now I love the colors design and the gradients with these watch faces and as I said there's quite a lot of options to choose from you can spend absolute ages there's just so many good variants here let's talk about smart functionalities and xiaomi has actually managed to cram in quite a lot of smart features in the watch S3 so you can receive notifications from your phone see receive and even make phone calls from this watch and I mean this watch actually has a keypad speaker and mic that you can use to

speak to others but this is still teing the calls from your phone over Bluetooth and it doesn't have LTE options as such um now there's also something called as xiaomi pay using which you can load your credit or debit cards onto the watch S3 uh and then use the watch outside when you're shopping without having to use your phone or your actual credit or debit card so that's really nice to see now there's loads of apps available on this watch there's even things like a compass a voice recorder a barometer ultimeter and there's just boatloads

of other stuff here oh and I did mention Amazon's Alexa so if I press the long press the top button here and say can you remind me to ask everyone to subscribe to my channel what's it saying oh uh at 10 p.m. so it's set up a reminder now to ask you to subscribe to my channel the only thing is that you don't get voice feedback from Alexa through the speakers it's only text on the screen oh and the other thing is there's no Maps navigation or turn BYT navigation available on the watch S3 but

xiaomi have actually pre-loaded all of the apps that they advertise on the watch S3 by default you don't have to FF around with the Mi fitness app and upload each app individually onto the watch so that's really nice to see okay so let's talk about activities and all the things that the watch S3 can track from a health and fitness perspective um there's 150 different activities and you've got all the usual stuff like running elliptical trainer weightlifting yoga Etc but there's also some rather weird stuff here um that you'd normally never expect as an activity

in a watch so you've got things like board games and card games M strange anyway I do think that you'll likely find all of the activities that you're after in the watch S3 now in addition to activities the watch S3 can track your sleep all day blood oxygen levels stress levels as well as training load which gives a status of overall intensity of your training activities speaking of sleep tracking the watch S3 gives a fair amount of feedback and information on the watch itself and you can get things like the duration of sleep the time

spent in each sleep stage average resting heart rate spo2 levels and Trends over the last few days and the Mi fitness app goes a step further than this and it shows things like an overall sleep score and a bit more granular detail on the sleep cycle and also a breathing score but more importantly the me fitness app after say the first 7 to 10 days of recorded sleep assigns you a sleep animal and that actually opens up even more detail and Insight so now you can see things like your sleep schedule naps stress levels and

it even recommends an ideal schedule to get the best sleep possible um and that's really good to see here because Fitbit is actually the company that came out with this whole sleep animal thing few years ago and they then lock that behind a pay wall and you actually have to pay roughly $10 or £10 per month to unlock that level of insight so it's really good to see that xiaomi have provided that for free to all of its users using the watch S3 okay so let's talk about the heart rate accuracy of the optical heart

rate sensor on the watch S3 and I've been testing this out for cycling outdoor running as well as strength training at the gym and to compare my readings I've been using polar's h10 chest trp which uses ECG technology to record and Benchmark my heart rate readings and for cycling which is one of the easiest activities for a watch like this to record the average accuracy has actually been 9 8% and there's a really good match in the Peaks as well as troughs between the watch S3 as well as my polar h0 chest strap now for

outdoor running there's a bit more movement of the arm and the wrist but it's still one of the easier activities for a watch like this to track and record now overall the watch S3 had an average accuracy of just over 98% now strength training is a bit tricky for all sorts of wrist based variables because there's quite a lot of wrist movements and flexions between the muscles as well as the watch now the watch S3 didn't do really well it scored around 93% for strength training and there's quite a lot of random readings as you

can see on this heart rate chart now one of the standard features in the watch S3 for me is a dual band gnss tracking which can latch onto five satellite systems and looking at the map here the blue route is the route that I actually ran and the red route is what the watch S3 recorded and the location tracking is just about okay there are some errant location tracks in urban areas where there wasn't much tree coverage or buildings at all and this is just a bit bizarre to see for a watch with dual band

technology for location tracking um the performance under tree coverage was just about okay as well now overall I am a bit disappointed with the location tracking on the watch S3 given its dual band technology okay so let's talk about the Mi fitness app here and the interface is quite clean and minimal but it still shows you all the health metrics measured by the watch S3 in a bit more detail um you can also customize these tiles and show you exactly the ones that you are interested in now looking at activities in a bit more detail

the app presents quite a lot of performance metrics really well in these colorful charts and for running for example there's actually a really good amount of information so there's things like GPS route of course and there's even things like training effect and training lows which is really impressive to see at this price point um you can also start a workout from the app if you want to and the device tab here is where you can find things like watch faces and some more settings specific to the watch S3 um the profile is where most of

the account settings live okay so let's talk about battery life of the watch S3 and xiaomi claimed that this watch can last for up to 15 days on a single charge now I'm always suspicious of manufacturer claims because watches like these are tested under really strict conditions but for me um when I test variables I test as if it were my own daily driver and in the case of the watch S3 um the battery drain was around 3% every night when I had blood oxygen monitoring on as well as sleep tracking on and it lost

around 3% for activities which included a mixture of strength trading at the gym as well as long running sessions Outdoors now overall the watch S3 last for exactly 8 and 1/2 days and that's with fairly heavy usage now that's not quite the 15 days claimed by xiaomi but I feel like like if you turn some of the features like blood oxygen level monitoring stress tracking as well as respiration tracking off you could get quite a lot more out of this watch now I find it quite bizarre that xiaomi made such a big deal about the

15 days battery claim but couldn't even put a software option in this watch to monitor blood oxygen levels only during the night to save some battery during the day and that actually brings me onto some of the Annoying features of the watch S3 now the watch S3 can receive not notifications from all of the apps on your phone but if you receive messages there's no option here to reply to any of the text messages or even WhatsApp messages um not even preset messages that you can set up in the Mi fitness app which is actually

a feature available on almost all fitness trackers and watches these days shomi have also advertised something known as quick gestures where if you rotate your wrist or shake your wrist horizontally with the watch um this watch should perform a preset function but it's an absolute joke I just couldn't get this thing to work at all I couldn't even complete the entire setup so if you've bought the watch S3 or any other xiaomi watch that has this function please let me know in the comment section below how you manage to do it because I just can't

get it to work now if you like taking your wash to the shower just like I do unfortunately the watch S3 doesn't have any IP rating for water or dust resistance and although xiaomi say that the watch S3 can be used for certain shallow water depth activities they then ask users to to remove the watch before going for a hot shower or for a steam session and that the water resistance can deteriorate over time it's not all negative though here are some cool features about the xiaomi watch S3 now in addition to providing some really

detailed insights around your nightly sleep and even assigning you a sleep animal the watch S3 can also detect shorter naps which means that the cumulative sleep Trends and data will be a bit more accurate than a watch or a fitness tracker that can't detect naps at all not talked about the variety of watch faces available on the watch S3 but some of these watch faces aren't just static backgrounds they actually have active tiles just like were based SmartWatches so for example on this one if I tap on the running icon here there you go it

actually opens up the workouts section here which I think is really cool to see in this price range now the xiaomi watch S3 keeps track of something known as a Vitality score and it uses that to assess the positive impact of x exercise as well as activities on your health and achieving a score of 100 can have a significant positive impact on your health so has xiaomi really delivered on all of those premium features that they promised or is this just another Bluetooth accessory now I think that xiaomi have delivered on most of the premium

features that they promised um I do have some minor niggles that I've covered in this video but overall I feel like this watch is in somewhat of a strange category um it does all the fitness tracking well it's not a sports watch like a Garin or polar but yet it's not a full-blown Smartwatch like a Samsung Galaxy watch or an Apple Watch which leads me to recommend this to someone who's looking for a really good Fitness tracking device with a large and colorful touchscreen and a battery that can last for more than 8 days I

mean if you asked me whether to buy this watch or the Fitbit charge 6 this thing is a no-brainer I mean the Fitbit CH 6 can't even track location properly and this thing costs less than the chge 6 has dual band technology and is more accurate in location tracking than the charge six all right I just wanted to say thanks to all of the viewers and subscribers of this channel you watching these videos definitely make experiments with variables like this so much worth it and for all the new viewers don't be shy from tapping on

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