5 Chinese Smartwatches That Can Compare To The Apple Watch

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The Apple Watch is by far one of the best smartwatches you can buy. People love Apple’s smartwatches for different reasons, including the seamless integration with the broader iOS ecosystem, advanced health and safety features like hypertension and sleep apnea notifications, a vibrant ecosystem of apps, customizability, and build quality. These are a few reasons why some pick the Apple Watch over Android-powered smartwatches. 

Additionally, there are many lesser-known Apple Watch features that make Apple’s smartwatches stand out. But while the Apple Watch ranks as one of the best, and, to some people, the absolute best smartwatch, the competition has been working really hard to beat Apple’s offering. Up to now, there are a handful of pretty capable Apple Watch alternatives from household names like Google and Samsung. 

But besides these two, there are also smartwatches from Chinese tech companies that can compare to the Apple Watch. We’ve rounded up a list of the five best smartwatches from Chinese companies that are capable of competing with Apple’s watches, showing how good the competition has become.

The Huawei Watch Fit 5 has a sleek rectangular design with smooth rounded corners that more or less looks like an Apple Watch Series 11. At the center of the watch is a 1.82-inch AMOLED display that reaches up to 2,500 nits to ensure a comfortable viewing experience during the bright hours of the day. Like the Apple Watch, the case uses aluminum, and it has all the controls on the right, with a primary Digital Crown-like main button and a secondary unobtrusive one.

In short, if you like the Apple Watch’s standout design, you’ll feel right at home with the Watch Fit 5. The Watch Fit 5 has plenty of health and fitness features, too, that make it comparable to Apple’s smartwatches. It can track your blood oxygen, heart rate, sleep, stress levels, menstrual cycle, and even your workouts, with over 100 workout modes supported. The watch also includes fall detection, and you can contact your emergency contacts if that happens for your safety, just like on the Apple Watch.

The watch is also available in a variety of colors and offers a host of watch faces. Huawei promises up to 10 days of battery life in light use and up to 4 days with Always-On display enabled. While it isn’t available in the U.S., you can buy the Huawei Watch Fit 5 for the equivalent of $214 in the U.K., and the Watch Fit 5 Pro at around $345.

The Redmi Watch 5 is comparable to the Apple Watch SE 3 right from the exterior. It follows the Apple Watch formula of a squarish rectangle with smooth rounded corners. The screen is a 2.07-inch AMOLED display with minimal bezels, and there’s a stainless steel rotating crown on the right side of the watch with haptic feedback. That display supports up to 1,500 nits in High Brightness Mode, which should come in handy to ensure the screen is readable in direct sunlight.

The company says the watch can last up to 24 days on a single charge. In comparison, the longest battery life claim on Apple’s current models is 42 hours under normal use and 72 hours in Low Power Mode. Like the Apple Watch, Xiaomi offers a variety of watch faces to choose from (over 200, to be specific), and you can also jump in and customize the background with your photos. 

This watch can track a variety of metrics, including blood oxygen, sleep, stress, and heart rate. It also doubles as a fitness companion capable of tracking your workouts, with over 150 sports modes supported, such as running, swimming, cycling, and surfing. The Redmi Watch 5 sells in Obsidian Black, Silver Gray, or Lavender Purple, but there is a wide variety of band colors and styles to choose from. The Redmi Watch 5 isn’t available in the U.S. but Xiaomi launched it at a starting price of $80 in China.

Chinese tech company Oppo launched the Watch X3 smartwatch in March this year. While it might not resemble the Apple Watch Ultra 3, it is built to be just as tough. First, the Watch X3’s body is made of titanium alloy, and the display uses sapphire crystal for durability similar to the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Another similarity to the Watch Ultra 3 is that this model offers an LTPO OLED display that can reach a peak brightness of 3,000 nits.

That display measures 1.5 inches, and the Oppo Watch X3 is IP69-certified for dust and water resistance. As expected of a modern smartwatch, the Watch X3 has built-in sensors for health and fitness tracking. It can track your blood oxygen, heart rate, temperature, sleep, and stress. The watch can also track your workouts, with over 100 workout modes, including swimming, running, and cycling. For your safety, the Watch X3 has fall detection and will automatically activate Emergency SOS features if you stay still for a minute. 

What makes the Oppo Watch X3 even better is that it runs Google’s Wear OS platform. Google’s Wear OS is better than Apple’s watchOS in some respects, and this watch comes with Google Pay support. Oppo promises up to 5 days of battery life in normal use. Similar to some other mentions on the list, the Watch X3 isn’t available in the U.S., but it’s priced at roughly $374 in the U.K.

The Amazfit Balance Ultra was unveiled by the Chinese wearable company in June this year. This is a high-end smartwatch that takes on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, with high-end build materials and features, such as 64 GB of internal storage. Like the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the Balance Ultra is made of a titanium case, and its display uses high-quality sapphire crystal to prevent scratches. The display is an AMOLED measuring 1.5 inches, which can hit a peak brightness of 3,000 nits like the Watch Ultra 3. 

Amazfit promises a maximum battery life of up to 30 days on a single charge in normal use and up to 10 days with the Always-On display feature active. However, using the GPS mode can drain its 780 mAh cell in just 50 hours, which is still better than the Apple Watch Ultra 3’s 42-hour battery life promise under normal use. The Balance Ultra is water-resistant and can withstand a pressure of up to 10 ATM and will still work when you go scuba diving to depths of about 148 feet, slightly better than the Watch Ultra 3’s 131 feet. 

This watch also has health tracking features and can measure your stress, blood oxygen, heart rate, skin temperature, sleep quality, and menstrual cycle. It can also track physical activity with over 180 modes supported. You can buy the Balance Ultra smartwatch from Amazfit’s official website for $600.

Besides Amazfit’s Balance Ultra, the company also has a more budget-friendly option called the Bip 6, which can be compared to Apple’s entry-level Watch SE 3. The Watch SE 3 starts at $249, but the Amazfit Bip 6 is much cheaper — it only costs $79 on Amazon. Being Apple’s entry-level model, the Watch SE 3 isn’t feature-packed, and the same holds true for the Bip 6. The Bip 6 only comes with a handful of tracking features – sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen, menstrual cycles, and stress – and it can also track workouts with over 140 modes supported. 

The main advantage the Watch SE 3 has over the Bip 6 when it comes to tracking is that it can also measure wrist temperature, and it can detect sleep apnea, falls, and crashes. On the exterior, the Amazfit Bip 6’s design is comparable to what the Watch SE 3 offers, with a squarish case that has smooth edges with control buttons on the right side. 

At the center of the case is a 1.97-inch AMOLED display with maximum brightness of 2,000 nits — double the Watch SE 3’s peak brightness. The Bip 6 has a water resistance depth of 164 feet, like the Watch SE 3, and promises up to 14 days of battery life on a single charge in normal use or up to 6 days under heavy use.

To compile this list of smartwatches, our primary selection criterion was to look for models that were a) produced by Chinese tech companies and b) similar to at least one of Apple’s current smartwatch models (either the Watch SE 3, Watch Series 11, or Watch Ultra 3). To determine whether a model can be compared to one of Apple’s smartwatches, we looked at either the exterior (the design or the build materials used) or the features offered, such as tracking capabilities and battery life.

For each model we listed, we highlighted what makes it comparable to a specific Apple Watch model, so you know outright why it was included. Note that while a given Chinese smartwatch can be compared to one of Apple’s products based on our selection criteria, that doesn’t mean that it offers all the features you’ll find on that specific Apple Watch model.