I’ve been using Amazfit fitness smartwatches for years now and each new model they come out with just keeps getting better and better. While these are considered smartwatches, (compare smartwatches at Smartwatches4u.com), Amazfit watches are more geared towards collecting your daily fitness stats and less about using smart apps. The only thing really smart about them is receiving notifications from your smartphone apps and that’s pretty much it. Their new Amazfit T-Rex is no different. However, the Amazfit T-Rex is their first truly rugged watch, built to tackle the elements and the most extreme of activities.
I’ll start this off by saying that most of this Amazfit T-Rex review is a straight cut and paste from the Amazfit GTR which we reviewed back in October 2019. Almost everything about it seems to be the same as the GT-R except for the way it looks and a few little things here and there.
SPECS
First We’ll start with what is the same or similar.
This is a 47mm watch with a 1.3″ AMOLED screen with a resolution of 360×360. This is a little bit lower than the GTR but can’t really tell the difference. It’s bright, very easy to read, and topped off with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with an anti-fingerprint coating (you still get fingerprints).
Sensor wise, it has everything. BioTracker 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.
There’s is no internal memory on this device so you can not store music on it or additional watch faces like on some older Amazfit watches.
The Amazfit T-Rex also uses the same charging cable that all their latest watches use. That means if you own one, you can use the same cable for this one too.
DESIGN
This is where the Amazfit T-Rex differs. It’s all about toughness and the body style really emphasizes this. It’s mostly made of a polymer type material that feels very lightweight and durable with 12 military grade certifications. It’s heat resistant, cold resistant, humidity resistant, and salt spray resistant and carries the MIL-STD 810G-2014 rating. It’s also water resistant up to 50 meters and meets 5ATM atmospheric pressure waterproofing standards.
The Amazfit T-Rex also has four buttons on it which allows you to use the T-Rex solely by pressing these buttons instead of relying on the touch screen. That comes in handy when you’re using gloves or if you’re under water. The buttons make it very simple to operate and will also help keep fingerprint smudges away from your screen.
While the Amazfit T-Rex is built for toughness, it’s also very thick compared to the other Amazfit watches. Diameter wise, it’s not that much bigger.
For the most part, the deign is very nice, but the one thing that do not like about it is the watch strap. While the strap looks great from afar, closer inspection of it reveals how flimsy feeling it is. The material used is very flexible and soft, but it just doesn’t feel very rugged. It is comfortable to wear though, but I wish it was maybe a bit more rigid. Also, the T-Rex doesn’t seem to allow for swapping of watch bands. It doesn’t have the normal pin style attachment and it doesn’t look like you can swap these out for something better.
20 DAY BATTERY LIFE
Of course what makes these new breed of Amazfit watches so intriguing is the rated 20-day battery life per charge. The Amzfit T-Rex has a 390mAh LiPo battery which is a bit smaller than what is on the GTR, but is still able to push an estimated 20 days between charges. Of course real world usage depends 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 20 days:
Daily use mode:20 days Heart rate monitoring always on, sleep monitoring; GPS turned on for 13 minutes a day, 150 messages pushed daily which activate screen, wrist raised 30 times which activate screen, 5 minutes of other operations.
It is possible to get around 66 days if you turn off Bluetooth and some other features, but that’s a bit extreme unless you’re just using it as a regular watch.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Amazfit T-Rex is another strong watch in Amazfit’s lineup that you can choose. Feature and function wise, it is very similar to the Amazfit GTR and Amazfit GTS so it really just comes down to personal style preference.
Note that the Amazfit T-Rex still suffers from lack of of 3rd party sources it can sync with. You still can’t export to any popular 3rd party fitness and nutrition apps other than Strava. The data itself just lives in the Amazfit app.
That might just be a drop in the bucket however compared to everything else the Amazfit T-Rex can do especially its long lasting battery life. While not as high as the GTR, the 20-day battery life is nothing to sneeze at and is still quite high compared to other watches in this group.
That being said, the Amazfit T-Rex makes for a great daily smartwatch and definitely a great one for those who live a super active lifestyle. That means those who engage in activities such as mountain climbing, skiing, snowboarding, etc. It was made to be used and abused.
The Amazfit T-Rex is available now and can be had in four different colors – Gun Grey, Rock Black, Camo Green, and Khaki.
