Xiaomi has come a long way since they released their first smartphone in India back in 2014. Now, they are known not just for their smartphone, but also for a wide range of products in the smart home market, such as the Home Security Camera 360°, Mi Air Purifier 3, the Mi Smart Water Purifier and many more. We reviewed the Mi Smart Water Purifier back in November 2019, explaining many of the features it offered. It has been nearly a year now since we started using the water purifier for our workplace and here is our long term review.
Design
Typically, for their smart home products, Xiaomi has a clean, industrial look in white colour, and that is the case here with Mi Smart Water Purifier too. Its exterior is made out of high-quality plastic that is sturdy and it has a nice feel to the touch. Thanks to its matte finish, scratches are not easily visible and if it collects any dirt, cleaning it was very easy with a slightly damp cloth.
In line with its minimalistic design language, the Smart Water Purifier mostly only has clean straight panels with soft curves at the edges. There are only two buttons on the front — Switch and Reset, and beside them are two LEDs, one for the Wi-Fi status and one to indicate the quality of the filters. And both the water inlet valve and outlet valve are at the bottom panel, making it easy to connect/disconnect if needed. Overall, the design has held up well, fitting perfectly fine in our office environment, and I’m sure it will be great for most home.
User experience and Smart functionality
Connecting the Mi Smart Water Purifier is a very simple process — press and hold the Switch and Reset buttons and the device will go into pairing mode. Open the Mi Smart Home app, sign-in, add a device and the water purifier should show up. Throughout the period of its use in our office, it connected very quickly with the app once the main plug was turned on and the device booted up.
So how was the purification performance during this past one year? In our opinion, it was very good. This water purifier is designed to reduce 90% of the TDS from the input water and this remained pretty much true during our usage. During our initial review, we got an output TDS value of anywhere between 40-48 ppm from an input TDS value of 800-950 ppm, which calculates to a purification level of well above 90%. After nearly a year of use, the output TDS level in the app now shows a value of 61 ppm for the same input water, which still is above 90%.
With constant daily use, the filters are supposed to last an entire year, however with the pandemic causing our office to shut down for many months, the filters in the water purifier remained largely unused.
So once the office opened up, did we need to replace our filters? Thankfully no. A cool feature in the Mi Home app is the ability to show the filter’s quality, and also provide warnings when the filter quality is low. All of our three filters showed 75% in the app, so we didn’t bother with changing them. We also did not require the separately-sold pre-filters as our input water levels were not absurdly high, but if you need it, you have the option.
Another good aspect for the water purifier is the ease at which the filters can be changed if needed. Usually to change the filters, you would need to call a technician but with the Mi Water Purifier, it’s a simple 30-second process for each filter. Simply open the front panel, twist to unlock the old filter, place the new filter and twist in the opposite direction to lock it.
Xiaomi continues to sell replacement filters via their store for the same price as before — Rs. 1299, Rs. 1799 and Rs. 899 for the PPC, RO and PAC filters respectively.
For water storage, it has a reasonably sized 7-liter tank built-in on the upper side of the body. Accessing it is very easy via a panel on the top of the device, giving us an easy way to clean it from time to time, although to be honest, we didn’t feel the need to do that. The water purifier would also turn on the UV light in the tank every 4 hours, killing and preventing any micro-organism growth, keeping the tank clean.
The Mi Home app is very easy to use and through it, you can quickly access important information that you want from the water purifier. The app also shows the amount of water purified every day, week or month along with TDS levels as a way of helping you keep track. There is an option to update the firmware, however there was no new update released during our usage. Another point to note is that while it is a “smart” water purifier, it can be used without the app as a regular water purifier. And obviously, its maximum functionality can only be achieved with the app.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi Mi Smart Water Purifier has worked well for us during the past one year, giving us a nice amount of smart features such as real-time TDS monitoring and good water purification. It has solid build quality, the filters are super easy to replace and the app is easy to navigate and use. Overall, our impressions of the Mi Smart Water Purifier are very positive and can be recommended for those who need a water purifier with some smart functionalities and a clean design. During offer, it is sold at Rs. 10,999. It is available from Flipkart, Amazon.in, mi.com and Mi Home stores.