Xiaomi’s new Watch S5 is making a very simple pitch: stop thinking about your smartwatch every night. The 46mm model is launching internationally with a claimed battery life of up to 21 days on light use, and even the more realistic settings still land well above what most rivals manage. The catch, of course, is that Xiaomi is not officially selling it in the U.S., so the people most likely to notice are also the people most likely to be annoyed.
The timing is awkward for Apple and Samsung, whose watches still tend to ask for frequent charging while Xiaomi is selling a much longer leash. That battery headline does come with the usual fine print, but the numbers are still unusually strong for a full-featured smartwatch rather than a stripped-down fitness band.
Watch S5 battery life and pricing
Xiaomi says the 815mAh battery can last up to 21 days under light use, which it defines as:
- Up to 100 messages per day
- Up to six incoming call alerts per day
- Three alarms per day
- 30 minutes of Bluetooth calls per week
- 30 minutes of music playback per week
- 90 minutes of exercise recording
Switch to normal use and the runtime drops to 14 days. Leave the always-on display enabled and Xiaomi says you should expect about 9 days. European pricing is set at €179.99 or €199.99 depending on the color and strap style, which puts it in roughly the $210 to $233 range if you are tempted to import one.
What Xiaomi packed into the Watch S5
Battery life is the headline, but Xiaomi did not ship a bare-bones watch and call it a day. The Watch S5 includes 5-system dual-band GNSS, more than 150 sport modes, heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, and an enhanced cycling mode that can turn a phone into a bike computer. It also adds professional skiing and cycling modes, which is the sort of feature list that quietly reminds pricier competitors that ”premium” does not always mean ”better equipped.”
There are trade-offs. Xiaomi leaves out features such as an EKG sensor and depth gauge functionality, so this is not trying to out-spec the top-end Apple and Samsung models on every front. But for most buyers, the real question is whether they want the extra health extras more than they want to forget their charger at home for nearly three weeks.
How it compares with other long-life smartwatches
Even among watches built around endurance, the Watch S5 stands out. Xiaomi’s own comparison is hard to ignore: the OnePlus Watch 3 is said to last around 3 days, while the Amazfit Active 3 Premium reaches up to 12 days. If you want something closer to ”never charge it,” Garmin’s solar-powered Instinct series starts at $300, but that comes with a very different style and feature set.
The Watch S5 works best with a Xiaomi phone, where ecosystem features are supposed to make daily use smoother, but it can still connect to any smartphone through the Mi Fitness app for more detailed sport tracking and health data storage. The bigger question is not whether Xiaomi built a good watch. It is whether buyers outside China will care enough to import one, or just wait for the usual third-party markup and grumble about it later.