If spending $400 on an Apple Watch Series 6 is well beyond what you can afford, how about a budget smartwatch option that costs just $45 instead? That's what Xiaomi's brand Redmi is offering Chinese consumers next week.
As GSMArena reports, on Dec. 1 the Redmi Watch is set to launch in China for $45. There's even a launch offer dropping the price down to just $40. In return, your're getting a smartwatch that weighs 35 grams and uses a 1.4-inch 320-by-320 pixel touch screen display. Redmi is promising over 120 watch faces to choose between using the Mi Fit app on your phone linked to the watch via Bluetooth 5.0 BLE.
Considering how cheap it is, the Redmi Watch sounds very impressive. It's waterproof to 50 meters and offers seven day battery life, but you can push it to 12 days in a special power-saving mode. Charging the watch only takes two hours. Meanwhile, it will do everything you'd expect of a fitness band: heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, multiple fitness tracking options, and that often unmentioned feature of telling the time. The watch will be available in three color variants (black, white, blue) and five silicone strap colors are available at launch (black, white, blue, pink, and green).
If this sounds like your perfect smartwatch, there's potentially good news about a launch outside of China. Last month, an FCC listing appeared for a Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite, which looks to have the exact same spec and feature set of the Redmi Watch. Apple could therefore have some new competition on the US market very soon at a price point that's sure to make it extremely popular.