A watch strap proves yet again that metal 3D printing has finally grown up

On December 25, 2025, Xiaomi released a watch band for the Watch 5 made from TC4 titanium, produced using LPBF technology. The result is metal with properties comparable to forged titanium. Price: around 100 euros.

The numbers speak for themselves. 800 layers of printing, 43 grams in the finished product. 50% lighter than a comparable steel band and 20% lighter than conventional titanium. Metal 3D printing enables internal structures that milling or casting cannot replicate. Material goes exactly where it is needed, and nowhere else.

It is worth noting that the industry has seen something similar before. A few years ago, Betatype and Uniform Wares presented a band made of 4,000 micro-links, also printed using LPBF, weighing just 10.5 grams. It featured an integrated clasp with microscopic teeth instead of a conventional mechanism. Engineeringly impressive, visually stunning. It never made it to a store shelf. It was a showcase for people already in the industry, not a product for anyone else.

The Xiaomi band is technically more modest. But it is elegant, fits the wrist well, and is available through normal retail channels at a normal price. That makes all the difference. The point is not which band is more impressive on paper. The point is which one you can actually buy.

Xiaomi chose PBF because it delivered a specific, desired result: lower weight, better structure, and a sensible final price. That is reason enough to start treating metal 3D printing as a standard production tool rather than a technology with an asterisk and a footnote.

For years, the main argument against 3D printing in mass production was the same: the cost per unit is too high. Printing works well for prototypes and small runs, but at consumer volumes, traditional methods win on economies of scale. Xiaomi shows that the line is moving. Better process control, technology maturity, and production automation are making that argument less and less valid.

One product from one company is not a revolution. But several mass market consumer products have been emerging in recent times, including the titanium 3D printed Apple Watch 11, the new iPhone Air and the ultra-thin Honor Magic smartphone. This is hard to ignore. The industry spent years asking when metal 3D printing would leave the lab and reach ordinary people. The answer turned out to be simpler than anyone expected: when someone figured out the production cost well enough to sell it for 100 euros at checkout.