Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch review

The Huami AMAZFIT is a little more expensive than some other smartwatches but offers great performance and stability.

Huami is another one of those Xiaomi owned sub-brand so while Huami isn’t a brand that you might be familiar with you can rest assured that Xiaomi is behind its products and they are good quality items.

Case in point is the Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch, a wearable with a simple, functional design, great features, awesome battery life and for less than $100 too!

The Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch looks a little like the Apple iWatch and even has a physical side button that has been designed to look like the screw on an analog watch.

That single physical button along with the touchscreen are the ways which you can navigate the simple operating system.

Search through the menus and you will discover modes including fitness tracking, heart rate monitor, Bluetooth setting for connecting to your smartphone, screen brightness and more. The only issue is that the Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch’s menu is in Chinese only! This might slow you down with the initial set-up but once you’re up and running it won’t affect your day to day usage.

If we just roll back a notch to the display. The screen on the Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch is covered in Corning Gorilla Glass and so far I have been unable to break the panel, not that I’ve been trying too just that the screen has survived day to day use.

The panel can scratch if dealt enough abuse though, but if you were worried about this you can always buy a screen protector for the watch.

As you flip through the menus on the watch using the touch screen you’ll likely notice that the colourful icons are quite blocky.This is down to the relatively low resolution of the screen. At 176 x 176 pixels across a 1.28in display you’re not getting iWatch levels of resolution, but then again that’s not really necessary on a device that simply tells the time, sends you notifications and also keeps track of your movements through the day (and your sleep at night).

Speaking of tracking, the Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch boasts GPS tracking, a feature that many other watches lack and explains the $59.99 price of the wearable. Not a huge amount of money, but in a world of $30 smartwatches the AMAZFIT is a little more pricey than some rivals.

Another feature packed into the IP68 plastic body of the wearable is an optical heart rate monitor. In the past, I’ve found features like this to be quite inaccurate, but the AMAZFIT is better than most in this respect.

A soft rubber strap attaches the watch to your wrist and so far it has been comfortable to wear and has not caused any irritation even when used in very hot, sweaty environments.

What you might have to keep an eye on though is the two metal contacts for the charging dock. After some use, these can get a little dirty and will need cleaning to ensure good contact is made to the included, magnetic charging dock.

This brings us nicely onto the battery life of the watch. Huami claims a whopping 45 days from a single charge of the 190mAh battery. In our tests were getting closer to 40 days, but this was under test conditions and using the watch in much more demanding situations than the average user. We believe under normal conditions 45 days should easily be within sight.

Overall if you’re in the market for a quality wearbale and you appreciate what it means for a device to come from a Xiaomi brand, plus you require the accuracy of GPS and good battery life we can’t think of a reason not to buy the Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch, well, unless the Chinese interface put’s you off that is.

• The Huami AMAZFIT Smartwatch is available to buy from Gearbest for just $59.99 now.