Xiaomi has officially launched its new Watch S2 smartwatch in China.
The successor to the Xiaomi Watch S1 will go up against the likes of the Apple Watch SE, Galaxy Watch 5, and Chinese rivals including the Huawei Watch GT 3 and Amazfit GTS 4.
So how does the Watch S2 stack up?
There are 42mm and 46mm versions – which house 1.32-inch and 1.43-inch screens. Both are pretty top-notch 466 x 466 pixels AMOLED displays, so the Watch S2 will certainly be competing in terms of screen quality.
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As we reported when the watch was teased by Xiaomi, there’s a body composition sensor on board.
Users press their fingers on the side buttons, and the Watch S2 will measure fat percentage, skeletal muscle mass, and protein volume.
As expected, the Watch S2 packs in GPS, and there are over 100 sports modes.
And as a health tracker, the optical heart rate sensor also has SpO2 for measuring blood oxygen. Stress and sleep tracking are also central to the health-tracking experience.
Battery life is set to be 12 days for the 46mm model and 7 days for the 42mm. However, this is unlikely to be the case with all the health monitoring features and always on screen, so you can likely half these estimates for heavy use.
The Xiaomi Watch S2 is only available in China for now, but a global release followed shortly after the launch of the Watch S1, so we’re expecting the same here.
The S1 failed to really cut through and lacked unique features, and the price point wasn’t particularly compelling.
Xiaomi has a better chance of getting noticed with its body composition features – which we’ve also seen on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5.
The 42mm starts at CNY 999 (around $143) and the 46mm is CNY 1,099 ($157).
It’s significantly lower than premium rivals, and offers the screen tech and build quality to match. But it’s also a crowded market – so it will be interesting to see whether it captures the imagination.
We will update this story as we get more information on global launches.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.