Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock are more than just hours. This is a smart watch with Google Assistant support, with which you can listen to your favorite music on Spotify or watch a live broadcast from a security camera.
Where to Buy Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock?
We had the Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock at our disposal thanks to our new partner, the Slovak e-shop MiStores.sk, which has been specializing in the sale of Xiaomi devices for many years. You can buy a watch with our coupon more cheaply.
Coupons for Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock can be found here
It will please fast delivery within 1 - 3 working days and a standard 2-year warranty.
Technical specifications in brief
dimensions | 113 x 68 x 81.5 cm |
Weight | 272 g |
Display | 4 "LCD with a resolution of 800 x 480 px |
Audio | 2 microphones and a 1.5 "full range speaker |
Connectivity | WiFi 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth 5.0 |
Power port | Micro-USB |
Easy packaging
The Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock comes in a small box measuring 15 x 9.6 x 8.9 cm. In addition to photos of the clock, we will also find basic information about the functionality on the box.
The clock is housed inside in a cardboard reinforcement and white foil. The clock display is additionally protected by a transparent foil. Next to the clock we will find only a power micro-USB cable with an adapter and a manual for use. The packaging is so simple, but it contains everything you need.
Design and quality of workmanship
The design of the clock is minimalist and simple, similar to many other intelligent home appliances from Xiaomi. The clock is made of white, matte plastic with a black frame around the touch screen. However, they make a good impression.
As for the layout of the individual elements, there is only a display in the front. The sides of the clock are empty and the only control buttons are located at the top. There are three and they are used to control the volume and mute the microphone, the so-called mute. In addition to them, we will also find a pair of microphones.
The back is home to the micro-USB power port and at the bottom is a grille for audio output.
The clock is relatively compact. Their dimensions are only 113 x 68 x 81.5 cm and fit into any modern home. The display is a classic IPS, so don't expect miracles. Black is rather dark gray, but the resolution is good, so the display is fine.
First turn on and pair with your smartphone
You won't add Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock to Xiaomi Home, but since they also serve as Google Assistant, they work with Google Home. We haven't used this app yet, so the first step was to install it from the Google Play store.
After successfully installing and signing in with your Google Account, the app immediately found a Mi Smart Clock near your smartphone and offered to add it. The next step was to choose the language, as Slovak is not in the lesson offer.
In the next step, we chose the room where the clock will be stored, entered the password for the home WiFi network and went through the initial settings. These consist of setting up a default music service (Youtube Music or Spotify) and adding home contacts that we often call.
In the last step, the clock firmware was updated and the application offered us several examples of voice control. The whole process of adding hours to the application was very quick and easy.
Clocks with different designs
The primary purpose of the Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock is to display the current time. The home screen displays the time and day of the week. The clock offers quite a lot of options for customizing this screen.
There are 12 different designs, each of which you can customize. The change is made by a long hold on the home screen, where you will find all the designs with a pencil icon in the lower left corner, which is used for customization.
For example, with the default design with color numbers, you can change the background color, turn on light and dark switching based on the lighting in the room, and display the current temperature or information bar for Google Now. You will find similar settings for other designs.
The display quality is not the best. Viewing angles are good in the horizontal direction, but if you look at the clock from below or above, you can see significant differences in colors and overall the image on the screen disappears slightly. But it responds quite reliably to the touch.
What the watch menu offers
In the Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock menu, swipe right on the screen to switch to the next screen. There are alarm settings, weather and music playback.
With the alarm, you can adjust its volume, snooze time, maximum duration and ring tone. There are 7 different melodies, the last of which is from Google AI and changes every day, but it is always a piano melody. Subsequently, you can still choose on which days the alarm should be repeated, turn on the so-called Sunrise alarm and Good Morning Routine.
The Sunrise alarm function gradually increases the brightness of the display 30 minutes before the alarm sounds. If you turn on Good Morning Routine, after turning off the alarm clock, you will also hear Google Assistant, which will inform you about the weather and current news from the world (of course in English) from several sources, which you switch between similarly when you want to select another song.
Weather and music playback
Another menu item is the weather, which shows the current, maximum and minimum temperature. After clicking on the weather screen, Google Assistant will tell you what the weather will be like today, which it uses for weather.com.
The last screen is to play music. The clock supports Spotify or Youtube Music. You can set the default service during the initial setup when pairing the clock with the application, or at any time later via Google Home.
However, we had trouble changing the default music service. Although Google Home has Music settings, there should be at least a choice between Spotify and YouTube Music, in our case this settings screen was still blank.
The clock shows only 3 recommended songs. If you want to play others, you can use voice control. However, you must have Spotify premium to select a specific song. Without this membership, you can only choose an artist. However, there's also the option to play music from your smartphone using the Spotify app, where you can use Chromecast. However, you must have a paid membership to use the same feature in YouTube Music.
As for the sound quality, it is surprisingly good. The sound is clear, the volume is sufficient and there is also bass.
Application environment and options for adding additional devices
The main screen of the application shows our household. At the beginning of testing, we only had a Google Assistant - Mi Smart Clock. However, let's move on to the more interesting part, which is to add more smart devices by connecting other accounts.
Right at the top of the main screen we see an offer to connect Mi Home and SmartLife accounts. We have several devices in the Mi Home application and in SmartLife we have a Moes thermostatic head.
We gradually connected all the mentioned accounts by entering the login data. The available devices from these accounts were then displayed at the bottom. If you also want to control them with the Google Home app, you must add them to your home in Google Home.
As you can see in the screenshot above, we have several devices in Mi Home. However, only the fryer and the Mi 360 ° 2K Pro camera were imported from all these devices. Too bad other cameras or thermometers are not usable. Unfortunately, we were unable to find any list of Xiaomi devices that are supported.
As for SmartLife, we used it to test a thermostatic head that was imported into Google Home correctly. We also imported the Xiaomi Mi TV 4S smart TV into Google Home, on which it is possible to display various content using voice commands.
Google Voice Assistant
Unfortunately, the voice assistant is not available in Slovak or Czech, so we used English for entering instructions. If you know at least the basics of English, you can use the assistant very well. It is activated by the command "OK Google".
For example, just tell him to set the living room temperature to 23 ° C, and since he has access to a thermostatic head, he will adjust the temperature according to the instructions. Often you don't have to use any complicated sentences in English, but you just have to be simple and it doesn't matter if it's not grammatically correct.
In most cases, Google Now will understand what you want from it. In this way, you can use voice commands to set an alarm, change the clock design, ask about the weather, or start playing music on the clock. If you have a Spotify premium or paid membership in YouTube Music, you can also choose a specific song.
But Google Now can do a lot more. It can also be used as a calculator, showing you the current date, calendar events or even playing your favorite radio station. There are many possibilities, you just have to test what he can do and what he can't. Voice assistant control is very convenient and simple.
It should also be possible to make phone calls through the Google Duo app. We knew how to make a call directly from Google Duo on your smartphone, but we weren't able to connect this feature with the clock. The call always failed, even though the called party also had the Google Duo application installed.
Monitoring transmission from the camera
As mentioned above, not all Xiaomi Home devices have been imported into Google Home. There are several cameras among those we have in the Xiaomi Home application. Specifically, these are Imilab EC3, Mi 360 ° 2K Pro, Imilab A1, and Imilab Home Security Camera Basic.
Of all these cameras, we see only one in the Google Home application, the Xiaomi Mi 360° 2K Pro. Unfortunately, we no longer see the thermometers that are connected to this camera via Bluetooth. Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock can use Google Assistant to display video from the camera. This function is only available through Google Assistant, to which you just need to say "Show [camera name]".
At the beginning, however, it didn't work for us, but we found a helper in the application, thanks to which we found out that it was first necessary to tell the Google Assistant to synchronize the cameras. After this step, the online transmission from the camera worked for us without any problems.
Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock: Final Review
Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock is a smart clock with Google Assistant support. However, in addition to displaying the clock or setting the alarm, they can do much more. The clock can also show you the current weather, play music from Spotify or YouTube Music or inform you about current news from around the world.
After connecting several devices to the Google Home application, other possibilities open up, such as monitoring the online stream from a security camera, which, however, only worked for us with the Xiaomi Mi 360 ° 2K Pro camera. Google Assistant can also set the temperature on the Moes thermostatic head, turn on the fryer, display photos on TV, and also serve as a calculator or search engine for various information on Wikipedia and other sites. Google Now's options are really rich.
Coupons for Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock can be found here
The Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock should be able to make a call through the Google Duo application, but we were unable to run this feature. The overall settings in Google Home aren't very clear, and we often had to take Google longer to figure out how to set some things up.
Is it possible to display on YI camera clocks?
Not. It is also written in the review, it must be read.
How can I view events from the Google Calendar on the clock?