Xiaomi Mi Watch Active Revolve: Simplicity defined

Xiaomi has introduced the successor to last year’s Mi Watch Revolve, the Mi Watch Revolve Active. On the feature list front, not a lot has changed and the Watch Revolve Active gets the addition of an SpO2 sensor. That aside, there are a few other changes. We reviewed the Watch Revolve Active and here’s how it stood up to scrutiny.

Moving away from the metal body of its predecessor, the Watch Revolve Active gets a glass fiber-reinforced polyamide shell (sturdier plastic to you and me). This ensures that the weight of the watch is brought down to 32g. As a result, the watch is very comfortable to wear for long durations. The textured TPU is strap is also easy on the skin and you’d barely notice it despite the chunky 22mm width. Speaking of chunky, the watch face itself is rather large and seems out of place on smaller writs like mine. However, that is something that can be excused when you take into account the 3.53cm AMOLED touchscreen, with no bezels to speak of, that happens to plenty sharp and very responsive. It is also very bright, and text on it is perfectly legible even in bright sunlight. The glass of the display curves neatly into the frame of the watch and, on the whole, it is among the better-looking smartwatches in the price range.

Once you start using it, you will realize that this is an uncomplicated smartwatch. The gestures that you’d expect to use on any smartwatch these days is present on the Mi Watch Revolve Active: swipe down for notifications, up for settings and left/right to cycle through the widgets. Xiaomi has included a 100 odd watch faces along but they cannot be customised. However, the given sheer number of faces to choose from, I’d say that you would end up finding the right one for your needs. The uncomplicated UI extends to the companion app as well. The Xiaomi Wear app allows you to customise the widgets that you want to see while in the app. The in-built animations are lag free and the watch rarely struggles. But that is to be expected with Xiaomi’s choice to go with a Real Time Operating System (RTOS). By its very nature, you cannot install additional apps on to the device.

When it comes to the fitness tracking, the Mi Watch Revolve Active is fairly dependable. The readings are reliable and everything from heart-rate monitoring to blood oxygen levels are recorded accurately by the on-board sensors. GPS tracking and step counts are also comparable to the competition. There are a number of activity modes (117 at last count) as well.

You can pick and choose the apps that you want to receive notifications for. While you can see and dismiss notifications, you cannot actively engage with them – you cannot respond to text messages even. Also, you cannot take a call on the Watch Revolve Active.

For the most part, a vast majority of users will be willing to live with the curtailed feature set of the Watch Revolve Active for one major upside – the Watch Revolve Active has a claimed battery life of 2-weeks. On, average I was able to get just as much, if not more, use out of the battery. On the whole, for people on the lookout for a budget friendly smartwatch that is effortless to use, the Watch Active Revolve is a solid option.