The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is a rather interesting smartwatch, for a number of reasons. This watch is far from being affordable, but it has a lot to offer for that price tag. It does debut the company’s new OS, Zepp OS, and it managed to surprise me in a number of ways. Amazfit smartwatches were primarily a synonym for capable devices with affordable price tags. Well, the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is the company’s take to compete with the best of the best, and, spoiler alert, it’s a very good attempt, as you’ll find out in our review.
This smartwatch is far from perfect, don’t get me wrong, but so is its competition. Not a single product is perfect, of course. The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is priced at $229.99, so it’s priced far above the company’s usual offerings. This smartwatch is trying to blend sleek and sporty into one package. Amazfit wanted to create a watch that you can wear to your business meetings, and the gym at the same time. Truth be said, as far as the design is concerned, it’s more of a sleek-looking product that you should take care of, than a sporty watch that you can bash around. Having said that, let’s kick off this Amazfit GTR 3 Pro review, shall we.
The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is one of the best-looking smartwatches to date
As mentioned earlier, this is a really good-looking, round smartwatch. In fact, this design is my favorite feature of the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro, pretty much. It’s my favorite design for a smartwatch to date. It looks great, it’s perfect in terms of size, and it has a rotating dial on the side. Its body is made out of metal, and it’s not shiny, it’s matte, which is something I appreciate quite a bit. It simply looks great in this silver + brown combination that Amazfit sent us. The strap is also really nice, a leather one, but you can replace it with any standard 22m strap.
There are two buttons on this watch, and both are located on the right side. The top button doubles as a rotating crown. It feels a bit mushy when you’re rotating it, it’s not my favorite implementation, but it’s good enough. Both buttons are quite clicky, and feel good overall, they’re also made out of metal. This smartwatch also has a speaker on it, and a microphone, so you can use it for phone calls, if you want. At the bottom, Amazfit included a heart rate sensor. The watch is also not too heavy, nor is it too light. The company really managed to hit the home run with this design.
The display is big, round, and sharp
The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro includes a 1.45-inch AMOLED display with 480 x 480 resolution. In other words, it’s a really big display, for a smartwatch, and it’s more than sharp enough. The display looks great in person, miles better from some others I’ve seen. The company managed to keep the size of the watch in check despite such a large display, which is something I really appreciate. On my wrist, which is average in size, it looks great.
That’s not all, though. This display has a tempered glass panel on it, for protection, while Amazfit also applied coating to battle fingerprints. This coating is not flawless, but it’s great. I’ve used so many smartwatches thus far, and the vast majority of them don’t have such coating applied, they quickly become plagued with fingerprints. That’s not exactly the case here, and the fact you can use that rotating crown on the side is a great plus to counter fingerprints as well, as you’re not required to slide your finger over the screen that often. I literally don’t have a single complaint when it comes to this display. It’s bright, offers punchy colors, it repels fingerprints, it’s large enough, and it’s not washed out at all.
The performance is good, but there are improvements to be made
So, the design is great, and so is the display, what about the performance? Well, it’s good, but not as great as I expected. The main annoyance for me was the slight lag that I experienced. This does feel like it could be fixed via an update, but that didn’t happen during my usage, even though two updates arrived. The main annoyance was lag when I was returning to the main display. This does not happen every time, but it happens quite frequently. So, when you’re browsing the watch, and then hit the home button, the return to the home screen is not instantaneous. Sometimes it takes a second, sometimes a couple of seconds. Amazfit will hopefully fix this soon.
I did notice some stuttering
I also noticed some stutters when using the watch, here and there. The software could be a bit more in tune with the rotating crown as well, as the usage didn’t feel as good as on some other watches. The Huawei Watch 3, for example, nailed the rotating crown implementation. This is a brand new OS for the company, so it could take some time to fully optimize it. If Amazfit can fix these issues, the watch would offer a much better experience. I do hope this is software-related, as I don’t really know what chip is the company using in this watch.
Speaking of software, you’re probably wondering about other aspects of it. Notifications, for example. Well, the watch is, for the most part, great with handling notifications. When you swipe them away from the watch, they disappear from your phone, and vice versa… for the most part. Notifications tend to get stuck on the watch, though, they don’t go away when you dismiss them on the phone. That happens with like 1/10 notifications, in my case, so it’s not that bad, but it’s noticeable. The watch is fast to push notifications to the watch, though, I didn’t have issues with that at all. You cannot respond to notifications, though, so keep that in mind.
The media widget was a major annoyance for me
Another annoyance that I’ve spotted has to do with the media / music widget. It is set to play music from the watch, by default, though you can change that. You can set it to play music from your smartphone instead. The thing is, you cannot set that by default, so you’ll have to do it every time you play music on your device, as it does not automatically recognize you’re doing it. This has been an annoyance, though the good news are, there is a button to change this on the widget itself, so you don’t have to dig through the menus. Amazfit should really offer an option to change it by default, though, as most people play music from their smartphones, not the watch directly.
The software is good overall
Other than these complaints, the software is pretty good. It’s extremely responsive most of the time, and it has a lot to offer. You can download some extra watch faces from the company’s store, if you want, and some new widgets as well. The smartphone app does not offer dark mode, and I do hope Amazfit is working on changing that. The menus are also a bit all over the place, but there are a ton of options included there, so once you set everything up, you’ll be good to go. You can edit quick toggles, widgets, and various other parts of the watch UI, which is great.
What you cannot do is reply to text messages, you cannot really act on notifications you receive at all, other than removing them. That is a feature many people want from a smartwatch, so let’s hope Amazfit will find a way to deliver it in the future.
The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro has a lot of health features
The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro has a lot of health features. It comes with the latest BioTracker 3.0 sensor. It includes two LEDs and six photodiodes, which should help with data collection. The watch should also be more accurate in its measurements because of that. This watch can also detect SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) for you, and it can do it in only 15 seconds now. Breathing rate tracking is included, and the same goes for heart rate tracking. You can set it to track your heart rate 24/7, though that will consume more battery life. On top of all that, the watch does track sleep tracking as well, it can track your light sleep, deep sleep, and REM as well. It will also make sure you know when you were awake.
The BioTracker 3.0, heart rate tracking, SpO2, and everything I’ve mentioned thus far works great, to be quite honest. Amazfit did its best to include the latest sensors here, and everything is calibrated properly. I was even a bit surprised when I realized that sleep tracking is also quite accurate. Many smartwatches out there struggle with this, but not this one. It was quite accurate when it comes to realizing when I fell asleep, woke up, and when I was waking up during the night to let the dog inside, or outside, and so on. I cannot really know how accurate is light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep, though, of course, but the experience, in general, was really good.
PAI score is a useful tool / feature
The PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) score is also a part of the offering. It will keep track of various metrics over a course of 7 days, and provide you with a score based on that. That is a really useful feature to have, as it will push to improve your habits and health as a result.
There are over 150 sports modes to choose from
Let’s just mention it, off the bat, that exercise data from this watch can be synced with both Google Fit and Apple Health. On top of that, you can sync it with third-party services like Strava and RunKeeper as well. That gives you plenty of options from the start, as the watch adapts to what you’re using, basically. Switching from a different smartwatch / fitness tracker shouldn’t exactly be difficult thanks to this.
Having said that, the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro can track over 150 sports modes, and automatically recognize 8 of them. Amazfit also included some really useful features for fitness tracking. It has its own algorithm for tracking maximum oxygen intake (VO2 Max), the training load, and more. On top of that, a Virtual Pacer feature is also included here, which will help you get better running results. How? Well, this feature allows you to compete against yourself, basically, it will push you to beat your best score.
Yes, GPS is included, and it’s quite accurate
GPS is also a part of the package, and the same goes for GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDo, and QNSS satellites. In other words, it has all the necessary hardware to provide you with an accurate location, which helps greatly when it comes to fitness tracking.
I have to admit I’m not much of an exercise person, so the only two fitness tracking modes that I tried out are walking and outdoor cycling. It did a good job with that, as expected, but I really don’t know how well it will do with different (and more demanding, for tracking) sports activities, like hiking, yoga, skiing… and so on.
The battery life is excellent in comparison to offerings from Samsung & Apple
Battery life on so many smartwatches is really poor, well, you’ll be glad to know that the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is not one of them. Amazfit says that you can get 6 days of heavy use with this watch, and double that on regular use. Well, our results are a bit different than that, but we still got excellent battery life. You can easily get around 10-11 days on regular use with this watch. Heavy use knocks a couple of days off that estimation. You can count to around 5-6 days on heavy use, though, it all depends.
If you plan on using this smartwatch for notifications and music controls, and you don’t really care about its health features and all that other stuff, you can get a truly amazing battery life. Even if you push it hard, it will last a lot longer than many other offerings. The most popular watches out there last 1-2 days, so… this is excellent in comparison. Do note that setting your display to always-on will impact the battery more, of course. I don’t have a tendency to use that feature, but I did leave it on for a couple of days of a charge cycle just to impact the battery and try to bring some variation to battery use. Do note that the watch also has some battery-saving modes that can prolong your battery life considerably.
It does not support wireless charging, unfortunately
The watch comes with a proprietary charger, unfortunately. It does not support wireless charging, and that is one of my biggest gripes with the watch. Don’t get me wrong, it charges perfectly fine, and the cradle charger that comes with it is extremely small. That makes it really easy to carry around and whatnot. I would prefer wireless charging, though, so that I can charge it on a third-party charger that I usually carry with me when traveling and so on. You can charge this watch from 0 to 100 in about an hour and 15 minutes. It takes it around an hour to reach that 90-level mark.
It has a speaker, and Amazon Alexa support
This smartwatch is 5 ATM rated for water and dust resistance, but despite that, both a speaker and a microphone are included here. You can take calls with this watch without headphones. That speaker is not great, as expected, but it is more than usable. The situation is similar to that microphone that is included. It’s far better than some other implementations we’ve seen, but not the best. What’s great is that you can even call people from the watch, as there is a dial included. You can even set up a list of favorite contacts, if you really like to talk via your smartwatch.
Proper Alexa support is on board
Speaking of audio stuff, Amazon Alexa support is on board here as well. That may actually be one of the main selling points for some of you. You can fully control all your Alexa-powered devices via this watch. There’s also a Home Connect app included, and you can create voice memos too. Do note that support for Mi Home gadgets is not included, for those of you who have a ton of Xiaomi gadgets around. We mention that as Amazfit basically started as a Xiaomi company. So, it’s a bit weird Mi Home is not supported from the get-go.
The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is an excellent smartwatch with tough competition
So, is this smartwatch worth it? Well, it has some really tough competition to deal with. Add just a little bit of money, and you can get the Galaxy Watch 4, for example. The Apple Watch is also quite close when it comes to price. The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro is different than both of those devices, though, considerably different. If you’re really annoyed by the poor battery life most popular smartwatches offer, this is the watch for you. It also won me over with its design, which is excellent. That may be a factor for you as well. There are plenty of health features included here, and you even get access to Alexa. The Amazfit GTR 3 Pro surely can stand side-by-side with the competition. It all depends on what you’re looking for in a smartwatch.
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Source: ndroidheadlines.com