The Amazfit GTR is the latest fitness tracker-smartwatch from Huami that looks to combine good looks and high end features. While most fitness watches have a specific rugged look, the Amazfit GTR takes a more casual route. It’s styled more like a traditional mechanical watch but with the guts of a smartwatch. What makes the Amazfit GTR different from other smartwatches in its class however is the fact that it boasts an eye-popping 24 days of battery life between charges.
For this review, I’ll be looking at the Amazfit GTR in stainless steel with the leather band. Amazfit was kind enough to send one our way to take a look at.
Design
Here is where the Amazfit GTR shines. This is a really good looking smartwatch. The version of the watch I got is the 47mm size with the stainless steel body and microcrystalline zirconium ceramics bezel. It’s more elegant looking that their fitness-centric Stratos with more of a traditional mechanical watch design. Instead of a silicone band, it comes with a leather band, though the leather is only on top with the inner part of the band being rubber for durability. It looks pretty nice, but I think a full leather band would have elevated it a bit more.
The Amazfit GTR features two button on the side. One is turn the screen on and off as well as taking you back to the home screen while the other takes you right into the activities menu where you can choose the type of activity you are about to engage in.
This brings me to the user interface which has been slimmed down a bit from what was on the Stratos. Swiping down on the screen brings up a quick settings menu. Swiping left or right takes you to the step counter and heart beat measuring apps. Swiping up takes you into the apps menu where you can see a variety of other apps to play with.
I should note that this smartwatch does not have a Wi-Fi connection like the Stratos did and you also can not connect headphones to it via Bluetooth. That’s because the Amazfit GTR doesn’t allow for you to transfer music over to it. It will allow for you to control your music, but that for files stored on your phone. Hence why this is one of the reasons this is a more budget friendly smartwatch.
Aside from that, the Amazfit GTR is probably one of their more elegantly styled smartwatches. It’s much more fashionable then the Stratos was and this is a watch you can wear for for any occasion without it looking out of place. I did however swap out the band to a black leather one just so it’ll match my own personal style a bit more.
Specs
Here’s a quick run down on the specs. I believe that it has most the basic features you come to expect from a fitness biased smartwatch. First an foremost, it’s built to withstand an active lifestyle. It’s made of materials that will withstand harsh conditions. The watch is waterproof and rated at 5 ATM which means it’s suitable for splashes, swimming, rain or snow, snorkeling, and showering. It is waterproof to a depth of 50 meters as per the GB/T 30106-2013 / ISO 22810:2010 standard. I would however swap straps for these conditions as leather isn’t exactly the best material to get wet.
The 47mm version of the Amazfit GTR I have has a 1.39″ AMOLED screen as a resolution of 454×454 @ 326 ppi. It’s bright, very easy to read, and topped off with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with an anti-fingerprint coating (you still get fingerprints).
The strap is a 22mm strap so you can swap this out with any other 22mm strap.
Sensor wise, it has everything. BioTrackerT PPG biological tracking optical sensor, 6-axis acceleration sensor, 3-axis geomagnetic sensor, Air-pressure sensor, Capacity sensor, and an Ambient light sensor. It also has GPS+GLONASS positioning. Lastly it’s connected to your phone via Bluetooth BT5.0 BLE.
The big thing with the Amazfit GTR though is the claimed 24 days of usage between charges. This is way longer than the Amazfit Stratos which at most was only around 5 days. The Amazfit GTR features a 410mAh LiPo battery that is stated to fully charge in approximately 2 hours. Of course real world usage depends largely largely on the frequency in which you use the watch and how you are using it. Amazfit states that this is typical usage to reach 24 days:
Heart rate always on, sleep monitoring,
150 pushed notifications with screen light-up,
lift the wrist to see the screen 30 times,
run or exercise 3 times a week for 30 minutes with GPS on, and 5 minutes for other operations.
So there are conditions involved in those 24 days. You can see that GPS, push notifications, and how many times the screen turns on really affects the battery life. And yes, the screen does turn off and only turns on when you raise your arm. It is possible to have the screen always on, but that will seriously affect the battery life.
Experience
For the most part, the Amazfit GTR is like any other smartwatch I’ve worn. It’s comfortable, it’s stylish, and it keeps track of what I care about. Mainly it’s great as a regular watch that happens to keep track of my daily step goals, occasionally check my heart rate, and serve of the notifications from the apps I care about.
In terms of activity tracking, there are 12 different activities you can keep track of. Most are pretty common activities, so that’s good. Running, walking, cycling, swimming, and even regular exercise is included. It does a pretty good job tracking all these activities and I’m not surprised as the Stratos was pretty good too.
With the Amazfit GTR, you can not upload your own music to it. That means you can’t pair headphones to it and use it independently of your phone when you go for a run and want to listen to music. You will need your phone. I never really used this feature on other smartwatches so it’s no big deal to me, but I know there are people who do.
What it doesn’t do so well either is the ability to use custom watch faces. You can change watch faces easily enough through the Amazfit app and there’s a good variety of them, but you can’t really use watch faces from a third party source very easily. With the Stratos you could as it was just a simple drag and drop process to the watches memory. The Amazfit GTR doesn’t have this. You can’t upload anything to the watch. You have to jump through some hoops to get third party watch faces to work and I rather just not go through the hassle. Luckily, the included watch faces aren’t that bad and I’m sure you’ll find one that you’ll like.
I also still am not a fan of the fact that the Amazfit does not sync with any other sources other than Strava, WeChat, and Alipay. I tried the sync with Strava and it’s not great and I don’t see the point of WeChat and Alipay connections. It needs much better export options such as to Google fit, MyFitnessPal, and all those other really popular fitness apps. Until then, all the data just sits in the Amazfit app. If you don’t care about exporting data, then that’s fine but for those who collect data from all different sources and combine them in other apps, the Amazfit app is lacking.
Lastly, lets talk about the battery drain. There really isn’t much during regular usage. I’ve had the watch for about 7 days already and it’s currently sitting at 82%. That’s under normal usage, mainly SMS/App notifications, heart-rate monitor constantly on, viewing my watch every few minutes when I’m checking the time, and a quick 10 minute run.
Final Thoughts
Amazfit is a brand that you don’t hear about too much here, aside from the incredibly inexpensive Amazfit Bip. They are more well known in other countries and apparently very popular outside of the US. For me, I’ve been using Amazfit products for the past few years now and have been generally pleased with their quality and features. The Amazfit GTR is no different.
While it’s a slightly different experience from their flagship Amazfit Stratos, the Amazfit GTR holds its own as a very capable fitness minded smartwatch. It does everything you want a fitness watch to do with the added phone notifications. Despite it missing a few little features here and there that were on it’s more advanced sibling, it’s pretty much all most people will need on a day to day basis. The main thing with the Amazfit GTR is the incredible battery life. While probably not the longest lasting smartwatch, it ranks up there especially when you compare it to a lot of what’s out there. Estimated 24 days between charges is nothing to sneeze at. The last thing you want is a smartwatch you have to remember to charge every few days.
That being said, the Amazfit GTR makes for a great daily smartwatch. I think this will be my new go-to watch I wear now mostly due to just how good it looks and not needing to recharge it as often.
