Redmi Watch 3 Active Review

The pricing and positioning of the Apple Watch lineup make it seem ambitious and perhaps a tad too expensive for many of us, but what it has done is make smartwatches more desirable overall. The result of this has been a thriving budget smartwatch segment, fueled by several brands leveraging their expertise in smartphones and Bluetooth connectivity to offer capable wearable tech at reasonable prices. This includes Xiaomi, which recently launched the Redmi Watch 3 Active, a health-focused smartwatch priced at Rs. 2,999.

My previous experience with budget smartwatches hasn’t been great when it comes to fitness tracking; affordable devices are generally best used for core functionality such as notification mirroring and watch face customizability. It’s worth seeing if the Redmi Watch 3 Active can live up to its name and perform well as a fitness and health tracker, apart from fulfilling the requirements for a budget smartwatch. Find out in this review whether the Redmi Watch 3 Active is worth the price.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active has heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring, along with step tracking and more

Redmi Watch 3 Active Design and Specifications

The budget smartwatch segment is more about offering as many features as possible while keeping the price low. As such, design and form factors in this space tend to be a little straightforward, and the Redmi Watch 3 Active sticks to this simple and straightforward look. The lack of any distinguishing elements and logos means that you can’t really tell that this is a Redmi product. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you, but I personally found the look to be a little too bland and plain.

That said, it’s functional, and some might even find it beautiful as the glossy exterior transitions into the 1.83-inch color display. There are thick bezels around the edges of the display, but if you’re using a black watch face you won’t really notice them and the front looks pretty uniform unless you look closely. There’s just a single button on the right side of the watch, which controls power, opens the app drawer, and wakes the screen.

Handily, the screen can also be activated using the lift-to-wake gesture (turning your wrist to look towards you, as you would normally look at a watch), or by double-tapping the screen. You can quickly turn it off by covering the screen with your palm, or have screen timeout put the Redmi Watch 3 Active into standby after a pre-determined time.

The underside of the Redmi Watch 3 Active features the only logo on the device, just above the optical sensors that track heart rate and blood oxygen. Below that are the contact points where the magnetic charging port clips into, with the other end plugging into a USB Type-A port, though there’s no power adapter included with the device. The removable and replaceable straps can also be unclipped from the underside of the smartwatch.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active comes in two color options: Charcoal Black and Platinum Grey. The review sample that was sent to me is the former, but the latter perhaps looks a little better and more distinctive. The standard strap is pretty comfortable and it’s also fully waterproof, which goes well with the 5ATM water-resistance of the smartwatch itself. For connectivity, the Redmi Watch 3 Active makes use of Bluetooth 5.3, with support for Bluetooth calling when paired with your smartphone. Of course, there’s also a built-in speaker and microphone to make this work.

There is only one button on the Redmi Watch 3 Active, which allows you to control power and other functions

Redmi Watch 3 Active Software, Interface & App

Compatibility with both smartphone operating systems (and sometimes even within the Android ecosystem) isn’t a given for budget smartwatches, but the Redmi Watch 3 Active delivers in this regard. The device works with the Mi Fitness app, which is available for both Android and iOS, and supports the smartwatch on both platforms.

For my review, I had the Mi Fitness app installed on a OnePlus 9 Pro (Review), paired with the Redmi Watch 3 Active. The app uses Bluetooth to manage the connection between the smartwatch and smartphone, and also creates the link for voice calls and syncs notifications between the two devices. Fitness and health data collected on the watch is pushed to the app to also provide better insights and analytics.

The app itself is cleanly laid out, with widgets for activity, sleep, steps, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and more. You can also start workouts from the app, and outdoor workouts appear to integrate maps into the tracking, but this relies on your phone for location; the watch itself does not support location tracking. Device settings and basic tools are easily customized, and overall it’s a simple but functional and adequately featured app for the device itself.

As with any decent smartwatch, the Redmi Watch 3 Active has plenty of watch faces to choose from. In addition to the three default options, there’s a fairly large list of downloadable options, which are sorted somewhat randomly. If you see something you like, you can download it to the smartwatch via the app, and you can save up to two additional watch faces beyond the three default choices, which you can delete and replace as often as you like. While many of them were too weird for my taste, there were a few decent choices that I did enjoy.

The Mi Fitness app, available for iOS and Android, works with the Redmi Watch 3 Active

Redmi Watch 3 Active Performance & Battery Life

Pretty much every smartwatch, regardless of price, offers basic fitness tracking. However, the accuracy and usability of this can be a matter of luck on budget devices, though the Redmi Watch 3 Active hopes to distinguish itself as a fitness-friendly option given that ‘Active’ moniker.

The reality, however, is largely in line with the rest of the budget smartwatch market, and the Redmi Watch 3 Active doesn’t deliver significantly more than its claims. While there are over 100 tracking and sports modes with supposedly tailored tracking performance, most of these are niche, and it’s difficult to say whether the tracking data is accurate.

For my review, I stuck to tracking the basics: steps, heart rate, and blood oxygen. In our 1,000-step test, the Redmi Watch Active measured about 1,060 steps when I manually counted 1,000, which suggests a 6 percent error rate. This is fairly comparable to what other smartwatches in this price range offer, and a bit of a departure from the much more accurate step tracking data that higher-end devices are capable of.

Heart rate monitoring is equally iffy, especially when I tried to take a reading while walking around; the numbers were often too low or jumped around wildly. Standing still or sitting with my arm steady was pretty much the only way to get a halfway accurate heart rate reading, and the same even went for the blood oxygen reading, both of which I benchmarked against the Apple Watch Series 7 for a gauge of accuracy.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active is 5ATM water resistant

Sleep tracking was extremely basic, only seeming passable in terms of actual time spent asleep, while the details of sleep tracking didn’t really feel granular or accurate enough. Overall, health tracking like this may give users a general idea of ​​what’s going on, but it’s far too spotty to rely on for anything major. Overall, performance on the Redmi Watch 3 Active is decent, with the basic UI and apps largely working as expected. The display, while not as sharp and pretty to look at as some of the competition in this segment (which use OLED displays), is bright and entirely satisfactory for the price.

I was able to use the smartwatch for about seven days on a single charge, throughout the day, including while exercising and occasionally sleeping. You can extend the battery life a bit if you turn off the always-on connectivity for calls and generally don’t take too many calls on the Redmi Watch 3 Active itself.

If this is something you plan on using, it’s easy enough to enable it via the Bluetooth settings. Handily, even with the connection active, answering a call on your paired smartphone rather than the watch will result in audio being routed to the correct device, and the Redmi Watch 3 Active will only wake up for calls if you actually answer the call on the smartwatch itself. Call quality is workable for short conversations in half-silent environments. For longer calls or in noisy environments, you’ll find it a bit too soft and irritating to use, and will likely want to switch to your smartphone or actual earbuds.

Pronunciation

While the Redmi Watch 3 Active is positioned as a fitness-focused smartwatch, its actual fitness performance isn’t much to brag about. That doesn’t mean it’s not a smartwatch at all, though; it’s a capable budget wearable that handles functions like notifications and calls fairly well. Beyond that, it looks and feels good, has a decent display and software, and can last for around seven days on a single charge.

So, there’s not much to complain about here, but there’s also not much that really sets the Redmi Watch 3 Active apart. Consider this if you want a new affordable smartwatch under Rs. 3,000, especially for the reliability and longevity you’d expect from a device from the Xiaomi stable.