Xiaomi Redmi Watch 6 NFC Review

The Redmi Watch 6 NFC is Xiaomi doing what Xiaomi does best at the budget end: squeezing genuinely good hardware into a watch that costs a fraction of a flagship. A 2.07in AMOLED panel, a refined aluminium body and close to two weeks of battery make it an easy recommendation on paper.

There is one significant asterisk, and it sits in the product's own name.

At 46.45 x 40.03 x 9.94 mm and around 31 g without the strap, this is a large-faced watch that manages not to look or feel oversized, even on a slim wrist. The sub-10 mm thickness is what does it — the watch reads as a flat tile rather than a puck, and it is comfortable enough to forget you are wearing it, including overnight.

The chassis is aluminium alloy and genuinely well made: firm, solid and pleasant in the hand. Against an Apple Watch or a Galaxy Watch Ultra you would notice the difference in materials, but at this price the finish is well beyond expectations.

The standout physical detail is the stainless steel rotating crown on the right-hand side. It turns smoothly and returns haptic feedback with each step through the menus, and it feels nothing like the flimsy controls that usually appear on watches at this level.

The strap is the weak point. The supplied TPU band is fine for exercise and sweat but tends to cling to the skin in heat. More irritating is the fitting: rather than a universal 20 or 22 mm standard, Xiaomi persists with a proprietary press-fit attachment, so changing style means buying Xiaomi-specific straps rather than any band you like.

The 2.07in square AMOLED runs at 432 x 514 pixels, or 324 ppi, with a 60 Hz refresh rate and an 82 per cent screen-to-body ratio. Peak brightness is quoted at 2,000 nits, with 1,500 nits in high-brightness mode.

In full sun it is excellent — sharp, with the vivid colour Xiaomi favours. The 60 Hz refresh matters more than the number suggests, because it is part of what makes turning that crown feel responsive rather than laggy.

Two complaints. The automatic brightness sensor does not adapt well to abrupt changes in light, such as walking from a bright street into a dark room. And adjusting brightness manually is tedious: there is no quick swipe-down shortcut, so each change means going into the system settings.

The watch runs HyperOS 3. This is an RTOS — a closed real-time system rather than a full smartwatch OS — and while Xiaomi has adapted it impressively, the underlying limitation is always present. Navigation, animations and the app drawer are fluid and satisfying, without quite matching a powerful Wear OS device.

The Mi Fitness companion app has matured well. Setup is straightforward, and the app actively guides you through the phone's battery restrictions to avoid background disconnection problems. Data is presented cleanly in square cards under a Health tab, and the sleep section is a particular strength, laying out phases clearly and adding recommendations.

Then there is the problem. The NFC in the name does not deliver usable contactless payment. Payments are restricted to third-party services such as Curve rather than working natively, which for most buyers means the headline feature is effectively unavailable. Given that the NFC model costs meaningfully more than the standard version, that matters a great deal.

The closed system brings further limits: notifications cannot be replied to and display inconsistently depending on the app, third-party applications such as Spotify cannot be installed, and there is no voice assistant.

Sensors cover heart rate with blood oxygen measurement, an accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor and compass. Positioning uses GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou and QZSS. The watch is rated to 5 ATM and, in a nice touch borrowed from more expensive models, plays a series of tones through its speaker to expel water afterwards.

Heart-rate performance is solid for the segment, with a caveat. At steady pace, average heart rate and calorie figures track closely against reference devices. Under a sudden acceleration, though, the sensor lags by 10 to 15 seconds before the effort registers on screen. It is a competent monitor, but not a tool for anyone training to heart-rate zones.

Background health monitoring is better. Sleep measurement is realistic and accurate about when sleep begins and ends. Blood oxygen and stress graphs in Mi Fitness behave sensibly, without absurd spikes while sitting still or unexplained overnight drops, which suggests the algorithms are well tuned. More than 150 sport modes are available.

This is where the watch beats every full-OS rival. The 550 mAh cell delivered a little over 12 days on a single charge in use, against manufacturer figures of up to 24 days light, 12 days normal and 7 days intensive.

That real-world figure was helped by switching Bluetooth off at home, but the underlying efficiency is excellent regardless. This is a watch you can take away for a fortnight and genuinely leave the cable at home.

Always-on display is available and does increase drain noticeably, though not dramatically — and as with any AMOLED, the cost depends on how busy the watch face is. Charging from empty takes roughly two hours over a proprietary magnetic cable. That is not fast, but when charging happens twice a month it hardly matters.

In the UK the NFC model is listed on Amazon UK at £104.99 and is in stock at the time of writing, under model number M2560W1.

Be careful which version you buy: Amazon UK also sells a standard Redmi Watch 6 at £84.99 under model number M2523W1, which is a different item. Given the payment limitation described above, the £20 premium for the NFC variant is difficult to justify for most buyers.

Judged as a long-lasting, comfortable, good-looking watch that tracks health competently, the Redmi Watch 6 NFC is among the best options in its class — arguably the pick of the RTOS-based watches on value. The display is excellent, the crown is a delight, the build punches above its price and the battery life is in a different league from anything running a full operating system.

The limitations are not defects so much as consequences of that closed software: read-only notifications, no third-party apps, no assistant. If those suit you, this watch will please you enormously.

The exception is the NFC branding, which is far harder to forgive, because it is the one thing the more expensive model exists to provide. Anyone who genuinely wants to pay from their wrist should either accept relying on a third-party service such as Curve, or buy a Wear OS watch — which during sale periods can close much of the price gap. Anyone who does not care about contactless payment should simply buy the cheaper standard model and pocket the difference.