Amazfit GTR smartwatch review

There’s five items I want to buy this year, and the Amazfit GTR smartwatch is one of them.

After a great amount of contemplation, and the extra cash I have in hand due to the MCO moratorium, I decided to buy myself a new watch which came in the form of the Amazfit GTR.

This week, I received the smartwatch after waiting for almost two weeks for it to be delivered.  The delivery took longer than expected because of delays by Poslaju.

SPECIFICATIONS: Why I bought the Amazfit GTR smartwatch

There’s two variants of the Amazfit GTR, namely the Amazfit GTR, and the Amazfit GTR Lite.  The latter lacks several features and is slightly cheaper.

I opted for the full version Amazfit GTR because I figured it would be best to get the most out of my smartwatch.

The Amazfit GTR comes in two sizes, the 47mm and the 42mm.  I bought the 47mm because the 42mm is meant for girls.  The watch enclosure is made from either aluminium, stainless steel or titanium.  I’ve not found the titanium enclosure sold online, so I opted for the aluminium one which looks nice in black.

Variants aside, my Amazfit smartwatch has a 47.2mm diameter and is just about 10.75mm in thickness.  It is the lightest of the three variants, weighing only 40g.

It comes with a nice looking 22mm strap, 5ATM water resistance, and its watch face is protected with Gorilla Glass 3.

The display of the watch is a 47mm, 1.39″ AMOLED screen with a resolution of 454×454 and 326 ppi and it has 16MB + 40MB of memory which supports both Android and iOS.  The memory included isn’t accessible to normal users. This means can’t use it to store songs or any personal files.  It is only for system operation.

A 410mAh battery powers this smartwatch.  Amazfit claiming 24 days of battery life under ‘typical use’.

Amazfit ‘typical use’ means the heart rate sensor and sleep monitoring is always on, the watch is used for 150 pushed notifications with screen light-up, and you lift the wrist to see the screen 30 times.  It also means that the watch exercise is used 3 times a week for 30 minutes with GPS on, and 5 minutes for other operations.

When the battery is drained, two hours is needed to recharge it to full capacity.

Last but not least, the battery also comes with Bluetooth 5.0 + BLE, GPS+GLONASS, NFC, BioTracker PPG biological tracking optical sensor, 6-axis acceleration sensor, 3-axis geomagnetic sensor, air-pressure sensor, capacity sensor, and ambient light sensor.

THE HIGHLIGHTS: What I liked about the smartwatch

I bought the watch because of its said ’24 day’ battery life.  Even if it falls short of the promised time, it’s still better than many other similar smartwatches including more expensive ones.

That said, the smartwatch went from 88% to 76% in 24 hours, so if I take that factor into ‘my normal use’, I think I’m going to get about 7+ days of battery life. – My normal day use includes switching on App alerts, Bluetooth, GPS, automatic heart rate detection and sleep assistant and lift wrist to view info all day.  I also exercised for about 30 minutes about 3 times weekly.

I think this is pretty OK especially considering I wanted a watch with sharp and clear display that would look like a ‘real watch’ at a first glance.

Another thing I loved was the design of the watch.  While it does look similar to most watches, the brown PU leather strap gives it that premium feel.  The nice metallic black for the watch dial adds to that feel.

The wide variety of face watches gives me ample space to customize the look of my watch.

In terms of functionality, I frequently use the GPS to track my running routes, and I like the fact I can control my music app using the Amazfit GTR.

On top of all those, the watch weighs just 40g.  This is pretty light.

THE REGRETS: What disappointed me in the Amazfit GTR smartwatch

The drawbacks of the Amazfit GTR is mostly focused to what it doesn’t have, but could be added on.

This means the watch pretty great already, but could it be better. No harm in wanting more, right?

My disappointments with the Amazfit GTR become more obvious when I compare it to the likes of the latest Apple Watch or Samsung Watch.  Both watches cost above RM1,000 each.

So, considering the massive price difference of these smartwatches and the GTR, I can’t actually complaint although it would be really great if Amazfit could have equipped the GTR with the ability to measure blood oxygen levels.

One genuine disappointment about the GTR is the slow wake-up time.  This issue appears when I turn my wrist to look at the time, and it takes a second for the display to show the watch face.

There’s a fix to this problem, but it comes at the cost of poorer battery life and an ugly default screen saver watch face.

Speaking of the display, the AMOLED screen reflects glare like crazy.  This results in the display looking less sharp at certain angle which can be annoying as well.

I also felt the two hardware buttons of the GTR were underutilized.  I only used it once a while, mainly to activate modes for my exercise regime.

VIDEO REVIEW AFTER A MONTH

I made another review of this watch after a month using it.  You can watch it below.

CONCLUSION

I bought the Amazfit GTR for RM445 on Shopee. It was the cheapest I could find online.

This watch is perfect if you are seeking a smartwatch with long battery life, looks premium and doesn’t cost a bomb.

However, if you are expecting the watch to be a cheaper version of the Apple Watch or Samsung Watch, this would not be the case.

The Amazfit GTR functions as it’s priced and has functionalities equal to lower less beautiful fitness bands like the Xiaomi Mi Band 5.

However, when I decided to buy the GTR, I wasn’t looking for a smartwatch that could function like the Apple Watch, but wanted a watch that looked premium and was able to last long on a single charge while at the same time calculating my steps, heart rate and sleep time.

That said, I felt the GTR was indeed a worthy purchase to say the least and I would recommend it to anyone.

BUY FROM SHOPEE MALAYSIA