Hands-on with the first EMG smartwatch: Xiaomi Watch 5 is back in the Wear OS fold

Xiaomi just held a rather large and lengthy new product announcement event. While the peak of the show was the unveiling of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and its modified Leica Leitzphone version, Xiaomi actually dropped a lot of products for its ever-evolving ecosystem.

Among them was a new Xiaomi Watch. It comes with a pretty sleek design and a couple of new cool features, like an electromyography sensor, long battery life, and a return to Wear OS — Google’s “Android for smartwatches”, Gemini included.

OK, so what does it do?

It’s the first smartwatch that has an EMG sensor — electromyography is used to read the interactions between your nerves and your muscles by measuring the electrical activity of the body.



This feature is used for control gestures with the hand — the Xiaomi Watch 5 can read “pinch” gestures for a more hands-free approach (double-pinch to cancel a call, for example). Yes, the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch 8 do this, too, but Xiaomi’s implementation should, in theory, be more sensitive to the gesture.

In fact, it allows a lot more — the settings screen showed us that it can read pinch, rubbing two fingers together, wrist flicks and writs shakes. Getting the latter two to work reliably is a bit of a challenge still, so I’m going to give myself some time with that.

For fitness, it may also help the watch understand when your muscles are getting tired, and how long of a recovery you might need afterwards. Though, we witnessed no such implementation for the time being.



At its core, it’s a smartwatch that will enhance the user experience from your smartphone. Delivering notifications and calls, of course. Then, there are the health features which are still tied to the Xiaomi Health app, instead of the Fitbit app that Google’s Pixel Watches use.

Said health features include heart rate measurements, ECG, blood oxygen measurements, stress levels, even VO2 Max. The app supports a huge amount of fitness tracking modes, from the cycling and running exercises to yoga, dance, darts, and frisbee.

There’s a combined “Checkup” app, which will follow all of your readings, including sleep quality and HR during sleep and give you some more in-depth data.

On Google’s side, you get the return of the Google Wallet, Google Maps, and Gemini right on the watch. Plus, a richer app system thanks to the Play Store. It even worked as a remote shutter button for my camera, even though I did not pair it to a Xiaomi smartphone. However, it didn’t show me a remote viewfinder, just the shutter button.

Does it look good?

It is a pretty good-looking smartwatch. It’s kind of on the big side, with its 1.54-inch screen, but it’s not too bulky or “tall”. The case is made of stainless steel polished to a shine, and both its front and back are sandwiched with sapphire glass for — hopefully — better scratch resistance.

Since it’s a Wear OS watch, it uses two buttons on the side — one is the app menu button, but also acts like a digital crown when you rotate it. The one below is your shortcut button to send you straight into a workout menu.



There are a lot of watchfaces to pick from, and I have to say — I liked more than a few of them, a lot looked inoffensive, and just a few select ones made me go “ew”.

The battery life

Xiaomi’s Watch 3S used to run on the proprietary HyperOS, which was leaner and provided longer battery endurance. The new switch to Wear OS is sure to take a toll on that, as it has the Google services to sync to, the Gemini Assistant, and so forth.

Yet, Xiaomi says the Watch 5 with Wear OS can last up to 6 days. With endurance mode on, it’d even last 18, Xiaomi says. We have yet to test any of those claims.

Price and availability

The Xiaomi Watch 5 launches immediately in Europe for the price of €299. No word on a launch in the States and we figure it’s not going there.