The ‘Chinese Apple’ is bringing budget tech Down Under, but is it any good?

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has officially opened up shop in Australia, bringing dozens of products that look like they should cost a lot more than they do, and more than a few models that resemble gadgets offered by Apple or Samsung.

Fifteen years after it first launched, and soon ruffled feathers by challenging Apple in China, Xiaomi offers hundreds of different products in its home market. Here, it has brought a more curated selection of phones, gadgets, robots and smart home appliances, carrying both the Xiaomi and budget-focused Redmi branding. We’ve tested five of them to see how they stack up.

If all you want is something that looks like an Apple watch for less than $100, the Watch 5 Active has you covered.Credit:

Redmi Watch 5 Active – $80

The Redmi Watch 5 is an unabashed Apple Watch lookalike, with an aluminium case, rotating crown and AMOLED display. The Watch 5 Active, meanwhile, at less than half the price of Redmi Watch 5’s $190, just does the absolute basics.

The Active’s case looks and feels like plastic, which it is, but at least it’s very light. The included TPU band is perfectly fine, but uses standard lugs if you want to swap it out.

Connected to an Android or iPhone, the experience of using the watch is surprisingly smooth. It has everything you would expect – including media control, step counting, heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking and phone notifications – but also extras such as a blood oxygen test, speakers and microphones for taking calls, and a 5 ATM water resistance rating. It has activity tracking for quite a few different exercises, but weirdly no swimming.

The big square screen is bright and sharp, and you can set it to wake by lifting, tapping or both. There’s no crown so you’ll be swiping and touching a lot, but it feels like a WearOS watch. You’re limited to the apps it comes with, but it’s a decent selection, including a remote camera shutter and Amazon’s Alexa. The choice of watch faces is nice and varied too, with a good selection of classy, informational, whimsical and jokey options.

Overall, it does the job of a smartwatch perfectly well considering the sub-$100 price, and you can export fitness data to your phone’s native health app. Most impressive is the fact I easily got a week of use out of a single charge.

The Smart Band 10 is a small and light wearable with a premium feel.Credit:

Xiaomi Smart Band 10 – $90

If you’re more of a Fitbit person than a smartwatch person, this tiny fitness tracker is noticeably more premium than the Watch 5 Active, though obviously more focused on quietly tracking.

It has an aluminium body (or ceramic if you go for the fancy $110 version), and the included TPU strap is comfy enough, though you’ll find heaps of additional options on Amazon, Temu or AliExpress. The app even lets you choose if the device is being worn on your wrist, as a necklace or with a shoe strap.

What is Xiaomi?

• Founded in Beijing, in 2010.
• Faced early criticism for copying Apple products and marketing.
• Expanded into electronics, IoT, smart appliances, fitness tech, robotics, AI and cars.
• In 2019, was the youngest company ever to enter the Fortune Global 500.
• In 2021, the US government attempted to blacklist Xiaomi over security concerns.
• A US federal court dismissed the move as baseless.
• Xiaomi is now the third-biggest smartphone brand by global share.
• It makes products across 200 categories.
• Claims to have nearly 944 million devices connected to its global IoT network.

The smart band was Xiaomi’s first popular wearable more than a decade ago, and you can tell this is a design that’s been iterated upon. It has access to most of the same apps as the watch, including blood oxygen tracking, and can also display notifications from your phone, but it’s clearly best at tracking steps and workouts in the background. It’s very light, looks good and has an elongated OLED screen that’s just big enough to show your steps and stats at a glance.

Like the watch, it also has various face options, plus an always-on display option for glanceable info. Even with that feature active, I still got through the week with battery to spare, and Xiaomi says the battery will last twice as long with always-on display deactivated. During a workout, it does everything you’re likely to need, measuring your progress and vitals while giving access to media playback from your phone, and it’s all saved to the app for charting or to export to a different health platform. It’s also 5 ATM water-resistant, and unlike the watch, offers swim tracking.

Though far from the worst wireless earbuds I’ve used, these Redmis are probably the cheapest.Credit:

Redmi Buds 6 Play – $30

These buds are so cheap that I struggle to evaluate them without unfairly comparing them to products that cost three times as much or more. On looks alone I would have believed they cost $100, but after using them I probably would have believed they cost $50. So if all you need are the bare basics of wireless earbuds, these may suit.

The buds come with three sizes of ear tips, and while they have no fins or stems, they feel quite stable. This is because they’re small enough to sit inside your ear, and they’re extremely light. Pairing is quick and easy, there are touch controls for playing and pausing, and they have no problem going for six hours before needing a top-up in their battery case.

10 other products from Xiaomi’s Australian launch

• Electric Shaver S200, $50.
• Smart Jump Rope, $50.
• Body Composition Scale S400, $70. 
• Electric precision screwdriver, $90.
• Outdoor Camera BW300, $110.
• Vacuum Cleaner G20 Lite, $200. 
• Cordless Pressure Washer, $200.
• Watch S4, $270.
• Redmi Note 14 Pro+, $700.
• Robot Vacuum X20+, $1200.

As nice as they are for $30, though, there’s no getting around the fact the sound is thin and harsh for music, and uneven for podcasts. There’s an EQ in the app, but there’s only so much you can do with these cheap and tiny drivers.

A lot of ambient noise gets in, meaning you’ll probably be turning the volume up when listening in public. Combined with the pretty ordinary microphone performance and quite a short range on the Bluetooth, you could do a lot better by spending just a little more.

The Xiaomi 15T Pro certainly isn’t cheap at $1300, but it is competitive with some other more expensive phones.Credit:

Xiaomi 15T Pro – $1300

The company offers several smartphones, starting as low as $350, but the model it lent me for its Australian launch is much further up the price spectrum. Explaining the name is a bit complicated; Xiaomi’s T series are tweaked versions of its regular flagship phone, and since it jumped from 15 last year to 17 this year (presumably to match the iPhone), what we have here is a take on the 2024 high-end model. “Pro” in this case indicates some gaming-forward features, more power and better cameras.

Put simply, this is a well-made smartphone with features that compare favourably with more expensive phones, such as Samsung’s Galaxy S25+. But I do feel like Xiaomi loses a bit of its edge when it’s competing closer to the high end. At $1300, it’s difficult to recommend above an iPhone, Galaxy or Pixel purely on the grounds of their more established services and ecosystem, even if the 15T Pro offers more grunt and saves you a little money.

I do like the Android-meets-Apple of Xiaomi’s HyperOS quite a bit more than Samsung’s OneUI, and the full line-up of Google apps is here, including the Play Store and Gemini. Xiaomi also offers its own AI suite, with tools for rewriting and translating text, generating and editing images, subtitling, and even turning still wallpaper images into looping videos. There’s also a vibe of generosity in all the included animated lock screens and colourful themes, not to mention the screen protector and case that are included in the box. The device also supports dual physical SIM cards.

On the tech specs side of things there’s a brilliant 6.8-inch Dolby Vision OLED with a refresh at 144Hz, the powerful Mediatek Dimensity 9400+ chip, excellent battery life and charging speeds, and a trio of Leica-branded rear cameras. I have no complaints about the camera results, which are competitive with the most expensive phones on the market. The 50MP main camera and 5x telephoto hand in great shots even in low light, as well as nice portraits. Selfies from the front camera, however, are just OK.

If you don’t need top performance or a 5x telephoto, the $1000 15T could be worth a look instead.

The Redmi Pad 2 is a decent alternative to the standard iPad, which costs almost twice as much.Credit:

Redmi Pad 2 – $350

Finally, we have a budget-friendly HyperOS tablet, which is a great entry-level alternative to an iPad if you’re primarily after a screen for videos, browsing and games. Android never really caught up to Apple when it comes to an app ecosystem specifically tuned for tablets, but these nevertheless make great devices if you don’t need an iPad’s power, and the Redmi Pad 2 is nicer than the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+.

On paper the 11-inch screen might sound the same size as an iPad, but in practice it feels smaller because it’s not as square. The screen isn’t going to win awards for consistency or viewing angles, but it is bright and sharp, supporting HDR and up to 90Hz refresh.

Similarly, the camera and chip give you what you need to support most apps and games and not much more. Surprisingly, though, I found the speakers to be great. The tablet also features a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card reader, which is welcome.

Streaming movies and playing casual games are great experiences on this tablet, and once again HyperOS provides a nice breezy take on Android. It’s a good kids’ tablet thanks to Google’s Family Link controls, and you can get keyboard cases for it if you want to get some work done. Just don’t expect iPad quality or performance.

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