Not that im saying you know if you see me on the street, come up and take all of my possessions, please, but anyway heres my full xiaomi watch s1 review and a bit of a side by side with that active bottle to see exactly what the difference Is and for more on the latest and greatest, please do plug subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers now. One of the major differences between these two small watches is very simply the design. The s1 active is noticeably lighter at just 36 grams versus the regular s1, which weighs a rather hefty 52 grams and thats, because, while the standard xiaomi s1 watch sports a premium stainless steel case, the active replaces this with a lightweight metal frame. But it still seems pretty damn durable, as you would expect from a proper, sporty smartwatch theres, no scratches or chips or markings anywhere. On that case, and despite the fact i have been treating it rather rough youve actually got a choice of three different colors as well. Youve got this lovely white model, which is actually quite rare for small watches these days. You can also pick it up in blue or a more traditional black. Personally, i prefer the very slick, smart design here on the standard xiaomi watch s1, though its definitely got a kind of a night out on town kind of vibe, but it doesnt look out of place. Just you know, on your wrist all day, long, basically, its a design quite reminiscent of the most premium huawei and samsung watchers and yeah definitely very much a fan and again, as you would kind of hope, and expect absolutely no scratches scuffs or other markings anywhere on That stainless steel case, despite a fair bit of rough treatment and here on the regular xiaomi watcher s1, that screen is completely flush with the surface theres, no sticky out bezel action or anything, but thankfully it is constructed from sapphire glass as well.
So super tough, which is good to help prevent scratching so again, no marks or scuffs or anything, despite the fact that this thing has been banged off walls and kitchen counters and all kinds of stuff. Here, on the s1 active you dont get the same. Sapphire glass finish, but it does seem pretty damn tough, all the same again, still no scratches or scuffs, despite the fact that i have treated it pretty awfully to be fair thats all by the fact that you do have bezels that do jut slightly above the surface Of the display just add a bit of extra protection there as well enjoy some text printed onto the bezels here on the s1 active, whereas the standard xiaomi watch s1 its much more simple, traditional finish with just the time markings and even the dual button set up Here on the right edge of the small watches, you got your more traditional sort of dial type finish here on the s1 or as the s1 active sports a flatter button. But in case you were wondering here on the s1, even though those dials do rotate, they dont actually do anything to any of the menus, so youre still using that touch, screen to scroll up and down and both of these xiaomi small, which is support. Your standard 22 mil removable straps as well, so you can swap them out and replace them with something else here on the s1 active. It is your typical silicon finish, which is really nice and comfortable against your skin, even when youre wearing it constantly here on the regular s1 youve got a leather band by default, which again adds to that sort of premium design and again youve got a choice of Colors with both the straps actually youve got blue black or brown here on the leather option on the standard s1, a variety of colors here on the s1 active.
Otherwise, you can just stick your own on now to actually pair up these watches, with your smartphone of choice. Youll have to search for the xiaomi watch app either in the app store on the google play store in the play store its actually listed. As me, fitness, and yet when its downloaded it starts calling itself show me where so yeah go figure, ive got to say, xiaomis done a really good job. With this app. All of the information you could possibly require is right. There neatly presented with a lovely professional vibe. I also like how my avatar has gorgeous astral boy style, hair im definitely uh up for that. Not quite so many bare stains down the front of his shirt. Pairing up super simple, just go to the profile section tap devices and basically you just add another device. There takes literally seconds you can only pair up with the one watch at any one time, so ive been concentrating mostly on the standard xiaomi watch s1. For this review and within the app you can basically tinker around with all of the major settings, so, for instance, you can set up exactly which apps will ping your watch and give you a notification. You can tell you watch exactly how often you want the likes of your heart rate, monitored and your blood oxygen levels knock off those bloody idle alerts, because, frankly, bollocks to them and pretty much, if you hope that something on your watch is customizable chances.
Are it actually is uh surfaces even the aptly out you can have it as a grid or a list, and then, if you dive into the status section, this is where all of your fitness data basically is synced up with your smartphone. So you can see precisely how active youve been or how slovenly, in my case, check out the old stress levels. Mine always seemed to peak around the time when i had to get my daughter ready for school and got ta, say no issues whatsoever with the connectivity either. The watch and the phone stayed paired up absolutely perfectly throughout once, of course, id locked. The app in and set all the permissions and everything so now lets turn our attention to these gorgeous displays and it is an identical 1.43 inch. Amoled screen on both the xiaomi watch s1 and the s1 active got the same 326 pixel per inch resolution. So nice crisp visuals tiny text comes through nice and legible, wide viewing angles. So you can surreptitiously tell the time with just a casual glance at your wrist, without making it too obvious and pleasingly punchy vibrant in your face colors, as you can see right there as well. Now, if you jump on into the display settings, you will see, you do actually have auto brightness on both of these watches as well, which id highly recommend to tick in, because then it can boost the brightness when youre out and about and then lower it right Down again, when youre indoors just help preserve the battery life a bit, you got five levels of brightness and on that maxed out brightness level, 450 nits of power.
So you can clearly see what is going on even on a sunshiny day. I did actually test out these watches in barcelona, where the sun does occasionally shine. Unlike the grey drizzly uk and one of the benefits of an amoled screen, is you do get an always on display option on there as well, very handy? Indeed, if you want to be constantly waking up your smartwatch just to check what the bloody time is and that can also be scheduled as well, so it knocks off at night, youve got a handful of watch faces pre installed on both the watch s1 and the S1, active theyre, basically identical youve, got a good mix of analog and digital efforts. Some sporty type affairs with all of your health stats right there on the main screen. I do really like how youve got the same sort of living wallpaper as you get on those xiaomi small watches as well, which really come to life when you wake your watch up, got ta say, though, with this one active, it does tend to kill the battery Life a bit quicker, so i tend to uh to avoid it, unfortunately, and if you do find yourself getting bored of those pre installed, watch faces will never fear just dive back into the xiaomi. Wear app and youll find watch faces there in the profile section. It shows you all the faces youve got installed on the watch. You can also jump to the online section and gets more downloaded.
Youve got over 200 to choose from again a great variety between analog and digital. Some very rt40 stylistic options and the watch faces are actually arranged into different categories: to make life a little bit easier if youre looking for a specific sort of vibe and if youre not really a fan of any of those, you can actually create your own watch. Face using any photo on your phone, either analog or digital lets go for an analog effort. You can actually create a bit of a slideshow using up to eight different images. Its very simple stuff just scale the image and drag it to where you need. It then, once youve got all the images you want, you can also choose the style, so basically what widget you want to appear at the bottom there be it a steps, counter the weather, battery life and then finally hit apply and that will get uploaded and thankfully The syncing process is super super quick and then darshi blows. A different persona based watch face every time. I wake up my watch now. The actual watch ui again feels pretty streamlined nice and slick, easy access to all of the main features and again quite similar. If youre used to wear os and huawei watches and the like, the main difference is that youll actually be swiping up the screen in order to access your settings, menu and swiping down the screen to access your notifications, which is kind of backwards, uh compared with weather West and basically every other smartwatch, so it took me several days to actually get used to this arrangement, not sure why xiaomi has done it this way, but again, youve got access to all these sort of main settings right here on the smartwatch, as well as your Main toggles so, for instance, either do not disturb night mode turn your watch into a torch, which is very handy when you need a piss in the middle of the night.
And then, if you swipe left and right, you will access your widget pages and you can fully customize these within the mobile app to set them up exactly how you want them. Ive got mine set up. So the first page is fitness. Widgets, like heart rate, stress levels, general stats, the next page youve got battery weather and media controls, yeah jump on into that xiaomi wear app, and this is fully customizable. So you can change orders. You can completely get rid of some of the widgets. If you want just by dragging them down to the bottom here and at any point, you can add a new page of widgets if you want and youve got a good little selection here, a variety of sort of mostly health related stuff, but some other bits as Well, including timers, stopwatches and, of course, youve got your small widgets and your big widgets, and i just really love how you can fit multiple widgets onto a single piece, youre not flicking over and over and over again to get to the bits that you want. As for those two physical buttons, well, the top button is used to wake up the watch and also to access your apps menu either as a grid, or a list got lots of stuff packed on here by default, including all your stuff, you would expect all the Health related shenanigans, youve got your media controls again stopwatches timers and check out the pressure levels.
If you happen to be doing a bit of mountain, climbing youve got to find my phone feature. If you have to mislay that and youve also got a camera. Shutter button feature, so you can use your watch to take photos with your phone remotely well thats, another keeper. As for the bottom button, where you can customize this to basically load up any app that you like, though, by default, it is set to the exercise tracking. Now both of these xiaomi small watches boast a built in speaker and a microphone as well, so you can actually take calls via the watch if you happen to have left your phone somewhere and youre like oh somebodys ringing. This is best not used on a busy high street or some other crowded area. However, because it youll look like a bit of a prick answering your call on your smart watch and b, the mic quality isnt, fantastic, so itll be picking up everything else going on around you and likewise, as far as the speaker goes theres any little smartwatch speakers Youll be sort of pressing your arm up against your ear, trying to hear whats going on both the xiaomi watch s1 and the s1 active will also offer amazon alexa voice assistant support, although unfortunately, that time i was testing and reviewing these small watches. I, before the official uk launch this feature didnt seem to have actually been set up. There was no way of activating it via the mobile app.
Likewise, i didnt have a chance to test out the mobile payments as well both of these small, which should accept mastercard uh, so you can just basically tap and pay and then bugger off right out of there, nice and easy, but again, unfortunately, so far in the Uk that doesnt seem to be set up via the mobile app, so ill, try and test that once the launch has happened and these features have been integrated. Now, if you are a massive fitness fan, you do a lot of uh pound of the pavement lots of trips down the gym, all that sort of stuff. Well, you dont have to get the s1 active. You cant just get the standard xiaomi watch s1, because this boasts the exact same fitness features. Youve got your 24 7 heart rate monitoring using a ppg sensor, 24, 7, sp or 2 as well. Youve also got tracking for 117 different kinds of exercise. This is just a small selection of the fitness modes on here. Right now, you can add and remove them either via the watch or via the mobile app, and this covers pretty much anything i could possibly think human beings would do to stay fit. I mean youve even got stuff on here like stretching, which i just thought was like a warm up. If you can just get away with doing a warm up every day, then job done wall bowl, no idea. What that is, that sounds fun like they even have bobsleigh, so yeah job done and the xiaomi watch s1, and that s1 active can also auto detect when you are just having a bit of a stroll out and about as well just gives you a little thing Saying hey, you have detected youre walking.
Do you want to track this and i thought thats generally a pretty reliable feature. Youve got dual band multi system, gps, built in glonass, galileo, bds qss, all that good stuff, and i found the location tracking was impressively accurate when youre out and about walking running whatever youre doing. You can check back your routes via the mobile app as well as checking out all of your stats, such as your cadence kilometer, by clump to breakdowns when youre, hiking or jogging, including elevation changes. All kinds of stuff. Now lets finish up. This review of the xiaomi watch s1 and the s1 active with the squinter the battery life and both of these smart watches support a 470 milliamp battery in xiaomi reckons youll get around 12 days of use with typical usage, but i found that certainly, if youve got All of the features active, including that always on display the 24 7 heart rate and sp02 tracking, all that good stuff youre actually going to get more like four to five days of use from a full charge and, to be perfectly honest, thats a very respectable result. Indeed, because, basically, where os watchers tend to die within a day or two, you know the samsung galaxy watches generally youll get two days out of those if youre lucky, so the xiaomi watch is more comparable to the huawei watchers youll tend to get. You know the best part of a week out of a single charge, which is great.
Obviously, if youve gone away for a long weekend or something it means you dont have to worry about packing the charger speaking of which the xiaomi watch s1 actually supports wireless charging and you do get a wireless charging. Dock bundle there in the box as well. Just in case, you dont have a smartphone with reverse wireless charging, for instance, and its got a type c port on it as well. So nice and easy you dont, need to take any other cables with you. Just take your smartphone charger with you, bang that on there job done, unfortunately, the xiaomi watch s1 active does not support wireless charging. Youve got a more traditional, a smartwatch dock right here with the connecting pins. As you can see, then its got the attached, cable and everything as well. So you will need to remember to take that away with you if you are going on any long trips and that right in a nutshell, is the xiaomi watch s1 and the s1 active, and i got ta say i am definitely a fan. At least youve got an option whether youre a more sporty type. You prefer this sort of design or whether you just want a really nice slick premium, looking smartwatch to rival the likes of the samsungs and the huaweis, the ui is very slick and fully featured im. Just hoping that that alexa and the master cards tap and pay support comes in really soon, but certainly if you want a fully featured smart watch with strong battery life, then give it a go so yeah that is the xiaomi watch s1 and the s1 active.
Definitely let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Please do bulk subscribe and dig that notifications bell for more on the latest and greatest deck. Ive just covered the fresh new xiaomi 12 series – smartphones right here as well so check those out and have yourselves a bloody, wonderful rest of the week.l5Hknx1MOI8
