Redmi Watch 3 Active review: light on the wrist and pocket, heavy on features

Published On: August 7, 2023

As per IDC, the smartwatch segment in India has seen a growth of a whopping 179 percent year on year, and the brands making the most noise… apart from Noise, include the likes of Fire – Boltt and Boat. There are quite a few other players in this arena of course, and the competition is intense to say the least. Redmi’s latest salvo comes in the form of the Watch 3 Active, which is trying to differentiate itself by way of core aspects like design and a loaded feature set that includes Bluetooth calling. Let’s take a closer gander.

Table of Contents

Design and display

The Redmi Watch Active 3 follows a conventional, rectangular shape for its dial, but still manages to stand out due to the premium-looking metallic finish. This finish is the result of “Non-Conductive Vacuum Metallization” coating, as per the brand. The construction material is still plastic though, and due to that, the watch is quite lightweight and tips the scales at a mere 42 grams. The available colour options include Platinum grey and Charcoal black.

The right side of the device has a single button that opens the apps list, along with a microphone, while the left side has a speaker located towards the underside. The device is waterproof up to 5ATM and you can take it into the pool or shower without worry.

The rubber strap is matte-finished, and is soft and supple… so you can wear the watch for long periods without any discomfort. The bands utilise a loop and pin fastening mechanism, and quick-release pins to latch onto the watch. However, the straps have a small protrusion at the end which slot into grooves into the sides of the device. The bands can be swapped, and you’d need to buy new ones from Redmi itself, at least till the time compatible third-party options appear on the market. I did manage to install standard 22mm bands on the watch, but the experience was less than ideal and removing them turned out to be a pain.

The large 1.83-inch display is of the LCD variety, bears a resolution of 240 x 280 pixels, and gets sufficiently bright at 450 nits. It’s quite responsive as well, and outputs vibrant colours. Sunlight legibility is fine, but do note that brightness needs to be adjusted manually, and there’s no Always on Display feature as well. You can, however, choose to keep the screen on for up to 20 minutes, at the cost of battery life. Otherwise, there’s Raise to Wake, which works as well as it should. The only niggle here is that the bezels around the display are quite noticeable, especially the chin.

Features

The Redmi Watch 3 Active comes with most health-related and smart features expected from an affordable smartwatch. The smart features include the usual such as app notifications, alarm, timer, music control, find my phone, remote camera shutter, etc.

That said, the headlining feature of the watch has to be Bluetooth calling. The watch works over Bluetooth 5.3, and via the Mi Fitness app that it uses to pair and sync with your smartphone, you can set up 10 favourite contacts for quick dialling, can view call history, and even get a dialler. Call quality is pretty decent too. While it works well in quiet environments, I got the opportunity to try it out in the open in a somewhat noisy area and was able to hear and convey a quick response without issue. The feature can come in handy in scenarios where pulling out your phone from your pocket or bag is inconvenient.

On the health and fitness side, you get features like a step counter, continuous heart rate monitor, SpO2, sleep tracking, female health features, stress monitoring, etc . There’s no auto workout detection, which is a feature that can’t really be expected from an affordable smartwatch like this anyway… but you do get support for over 100 different sports activities. The watch depends on your phone GPS for tracking routes for outdoor activities like running, walking, biking etc.

UI and app connectivity

The operation is swipe-driven, as is the case with most smartwatches. You can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up the quick settings panel while swiping down shows the notifications. Swiping sideways cycles through widgets, while pressing the side button shows all the apps.

The widgets that appear while swiping sideways are quite interesting and work in a similar fashion as Android widgets. Of course, you’re limited by the screen size, but you can choose the layout and add/remove small modules of info as per your whims and fancies — showing stuff like battery level, weather, heart rate, step count, music controls etc.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active uses Mi Fitness as the companion app to pair and sync with a smartphone, and the app is available on both iOS as well as Android. It’s neatly categorised into tabs that show you health data, let you begin workouts, control device settings etc.

The app layout is easy to understand and barely requires any learning curve. You can view trends of your health data, details of your workouts etc. Tap on the device tab to configure settings for the watch. This is where you can download more watch faces, set app notifications, and customise various aspects like widgets, heart rate alerts, sleep mode settings etc. This is also where you can set 10 favourite contacts for quick calling via the watch.

There’s a large selection of watch faces available to download… over 200 different options as per the brand. The watch comes with three watch faces baked in, and these can’t be deleted. A total of five can be accommodated, which means you get only two slots to install the ones you like, and will have to delete either one of these to install one more. Seems a bit cumbersome if you ask me. Hopefully, this is something that can be fixed via a software update.

Usage, performance and battery

The touch display is responsive and there’s no lag or stutter visible while navigating through the various menus and functions on the watch. As far as the health metrics are concerned, they seem fine for the most part, staying within the acceptable margin of error — so no complaints there.

The watch comes bundled with a charging cable that attaches magnetically to the pogo pins on the back of the device. A full charge takes a little less than a couple of hours, and the brand is promising up to 12 days of battery life. I got about 8 days with intermittent usage of a single charge, which is pretty good in my books.

Verdict

While the Redmi Watch 3 Active could do with improvements in a few areas and misses out on a few features (like auto workout detection), it ticks most of the right boxes that make a compelling fitness watch. One look at the price tag is enough to figure out why it’s a compelling purchase. Rs 2,999 for a fitness watch that looks good, is comfortable to wear, covers all the basics in terms of health and fitness features, comes with a useful app, offers a ton of customisation options, and to top it all off, even offers Bluetooth calling that works well… I think that just about sums up the value proposition.