Amazfit GTR 2 review

Verdict

The Amazfit GTR 2 is a great device. Huami is nothing short of a juggernaut in the smart wearable niche. It has been slowly and iteratively improving its tech and successfully bringing increasingly better value products to the market.

Honestly, it would be perfectly fair to say that the Xiaomi Mi Band line, which Huami deserves a lot of the credit for, was nothing short of a revolutionary product. One that is still catering to budget wearable needs of the market like few others.

Given this ongoing arrangement, Huami's own first-party Amazfit line of devices is likely always going to remain the what is sort of its own Mi Band-shaped shadow. That certainly has its unfortunate downsides, most notably that Amazfit products aren't supported by Xiaomi's much more-refined companion app ecosystem. While Amazfit's freshly-rebranded Zepp app has been getting incrementally better over the years, it is still quite disorderly and in need of a significant redesign and a lot of simplification.

As for the Amazfit GTR 2 in particular, it is, by far, the closest and Amazfit smart wearable has managed to get to a full-blown smartwatch. In a wearable market where most big players cater to the high-end segment leaving the budget segments to with smart bands and trackers, devices like the Amazfit GTR offer a great middle-ground, definitely closer to premium than budget in every aspect, but the price.

If you like the look, appreciate the great 10-day battery life on a single charge, and you are fine with the feature set, then honestly, at $180, getting the GTR 2 is a no-brainer. It is very much the most polished product by Amazfit, and the improvements are noticeable across the board.

Pros

• Great OLED screen and upmarket design.
• The Amazfit Watch UI is very responsive and has never looked so good
• Longer battery life than any smartwatch with a real OS
• Standard replacable wrist straps mean you can customize and accessorize
• Unlimited slots for watchfaces and unlimited always-on watchfaces are new for Amazfit
• Built-in mic and speaker means it can take voice commands and even calls from a connected phone
• It can store 3GB of offline music and play it back on your headphones
• Affordable price tag

Cons

• Lift to wake is slow and unreliable to react
• Companian app is Zepp is chaotic and overwhelming with features
• Calling functionality is power consuming and is rough around the edges
• Getting app notifications to show up on the watch requires an involved setup process of whitelisting the Zepp app