We’ve been waiting for this for quite awhile now. The Xiaomi Mi Watch is coming to Malaysia! The latest smartwatch from the Chinese company builds upon the affordable Mi Watch Lite, but as per its name, this is more premium option—as you can immediately tell by the size of its display. Of course, the Mi Watch isn’t exactly a brand new model, having been launched in China back in 2020.
But now, Xiaomi Malaysia has shared the full details, along with where you can pick one up—and when. Here’s everything you need to know.
Price and availability
The Mi Watch will be available to buy in Malaysia from the 20th of January 2021, and you can pick it up from Xiaomi’s official stores on Lazada and Shopee. Of course, you can also pick up the smartwatch at all physical Authorised Mi Stores, as well as official retailers.
Xiaomi Mi Watch – RM469
You also get a couple of colour options to choose from for the watch strap: Black, Orange, Navy Blue, Beige, Olive, and Yellow.
Mi Watch specs and features
Up front, the Mi Watch sports a 1.39″ AMOLED display pushing a resolution of 454×454 pixels. Screen brightness goes up to 450 nits, which should be decent enough for viewing under sunlight, and there are also two physical buttons to help you navigate through menus and the overall interface. One of these functions as a “dedicated sport button”, which will offer 117 fitness modes covering (almost) every sport you can think of.
Xiaomi also says that this is “one of the world’s lightest” smartwatches at 32g without the strap; for some comparison, the Mi Watch Lite—as per its name—weighs in at 21g without the strap. Battery life is one of the strengths that Xiaomi is touting as well, with up to 16 days of battery promised on the Mi Watch. This means that you’ll only need to charge the smartwatch twice a month on average, which is something that you’d expect on a fitness band (with a crappier display and less functionality).
As for the rest of its specs, Xiaomi does not disappoint. For one, you get an optimised PPG heart rate sensor which includes SpO2 tracking. This measures the saturation of oxygen in your blood, and it appears to be the go-to feature for smartwatches these days. Additionally, you get built-in GPS, sleep tracking, and stress tracking.
Among other smart features, the Mi Watch comes with a camera shutter feature that lets you use the smartwatch as a viewfinder for your phone’s camera, and of course, you’ll be able to access messages and notifications directly on your wrist. One thing to note: Amazon Alexa is technically supported on the global model, but we’re told that this functionality will only arrive via an OTA update, sometime in February 2021.
However, Amazon Alexa is not supported in Malaysia at the time of writing, so this would negate the voice assistant on the Mi Watch.
And if you’re looking for a wide range of watch faces to use, Xiaomi promises over 100 watch faces that you can choose from. Finally, the watch is rated at 5ATM for water resistance, which means that you’ll be able to take this on swims (up to 50m of submersion).
So, what do you think? At first glance, the Mi Watch looks like a tantalising proposition in the pseudo-smartwatch space (wearables that look/feel like smartwatches, but without an app store)—SpO2, built-in GPS, and a battery life of up to 16 days. But of course, we’ll have to try it out before we make a more complete judgement. And yes—we’ll be releasing our first impressions on the Mi Watch soon.
In the meantime, let us know what you think about Xiaomi’s latest wearable in the comments section below!
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to include information on Amazon Alexa support in Malaysia.
