Xiaomi's first full-featured smart watch sells for $120

Smart watches have had a tough time of late with much of the novel sheen having already worn off. Until now, Xiaomi has largely avoided the market, preferring to tackle the wearables space with low-cost activity trackers. This enabled the company to briefly become one of the largest wearables makers in the world and generate a lot of press for itself. More recently, Xiaomi released a children's smart watch called the Xiaomi Bunny, but the appeal of that watch was limited by its target demographic. Now, Xiaomi is finally launching its own full-featured smart watch, albeit indirectly. The Amazfit Watch is coming from a Xiaomi sub-brand called Huami.

As the name suggests, fitness is a central theme for the Amazfit, and it comes with some impressive specifications for a smart watch that costs only 800 yuan, or about $120. It has built-in GPS and IP67 certification, making it dust- and water-resistant to 1m for 30 minutes. The watch runs on a 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. The battery has a capacity of 200mAh, which Huami said will last 11 days when everything except the pedometer is disabled. This makes the watch much less useful, of course, and not very smart. With everything on, including GPS, Huami said the watch gets 35 hours.

Xiaomi is entering the smart watch market at a time when many brands are wondering how high it can really go. Activity tracking is the main appeal of wearables at the moment, so Xiaomi certainly has the right focus. However, style and fashion matter in the wearables space. This is why Garmin released a premium, titanium smart watch and Apple its own smart watch with a gold variant.

The Amazfit does not look bad with its sleek, round design that fans of watches similar to the Moto 360 can appreciate. The gaudy red wristband seems to be the only offense in the fashion department. For $120, people in the market for a new smart watch might be hard pressed to find something better beyond a refurbished Pebble watch. Like many of Xiaomi's products, however, this one might not make it far beyond China's shores. Fortunately, many other China makers are producing similar round smart watches these days.