AmazFit has just announced the new Active 2, a smartwatch at $99 (or $129 for the Premium model with a sapphire screen and genuine leather strap). Otherwise, both watches feature identical software features – and for $99, as is usually the case with AmazFit, the feature list is impressive.
The 1.32” AMOLED display-laden watch includes 164 sport modes, full mapping (with ski maps), barometric altimeter, voice control, NFC Payment via Curve, and plenty more. Many of these features mirror what are seen on their high-end watch, the AmazFit T-Rex 3 (for $234USD), that I just reviewed a few days ago. Of course equally, some of those features seem a bit unpolished once you start digging into them. But at $99, that lack of polish can probably be overlooked.
Now this isn’t a review at this point, just a quick hands-on look at things. While AmazFit has just unlocked being the first company to correctly send me a package from the US to Mallorca without customs jail, it unfortunately got sideswiped/delayed by Spanish holidays on this end, so Mr. FedEx just came this morning. Nonetheless, I figured I’d give you the details for now.
What’s New & Specs:
Ok, so here’s what’s notable/new on the AmazFit Active 2 compared to the existing Active 1:
– Switched from rectangular design to a round/circular design
– Increased display brightness to 2,000 nits (that’s very high)
– Increased display resolution/size to 1.32” & 466x366px
– Added terrain maps, ski maps
– Added support for Bluetooth sport sensors (including power meters, heart rate sensors, cadence/speed sensors)
– Added barometric altimeter
– Added ambient light sensor
– Added strength movement & rep counting
– Added 40 new sport modes including skiing, stair climbing, golf swinging (total 164 sport modes)
– Added NFC payments via Curve (Zepp Pay)
– Smartwatch battery life claim of “up to 10 days”
– GPS battery life claim of “up to 21 hours”
– 5ATM/50m water resistance level
– Touchscreen with two dedicated buttons
– Microphone for voice commands
– $99 for the base model, $129 for the premium model
And that’s just the new stuff, at a quick high-level, it supports basically all of the typical AmazFit/Zepp features, including:
– Daily Activity Tracking
– Sleep tracking (with phases/stages)
– Structured workout creation/execution from app
– On-demand interval creation via watch
– Track Running recognition
– Virtual Pacer
– 164 sport modes including Bobsled, Checkers, and Tug-of-War (Wingsuit is not in this model)
Got all that? Good. If not, the full list of 164 sport modes are located here.
Hands-On Quick Look:
First up, the box. No big surprises here. This box is the Premium edition for $129, which includes both the genuine leather strap as well as a secondary sport strap.
I actually quite like the feel of both bands, kudos on this. Not sure how a company can get this right for $129, yet plenty of others charge 5x that much for lesser plastic straps.
The bands do appear to use standard band attachments, so you can swap out to whatever you want, as usual. Meanwhile, the charger is just an adapter for your own USB-C cable. This is different than the T-Rex 3, and I presume also different from the rectangular Active 1.
Ok, looking at the UI basics, it has two buttons and the touchscreen. Long-time followers know I’m a button guy, so while I’d much prefer 4-5 buttons, these work. The upper right button acts as an escape/back button, and the lower right is confirmation (basically opposite Garmin). However, the touch screen is very much needed for many operations, such as tapping ‘Go’ on a workout.
Backing up though, here’s the watch face:
If you swipe down from the top, you’ll find all your settings.
If you tap the upper right, you’ll get a list of all the apps you can finger around in:
And then equally, if you tap lower right, you’ll get a list of all the sport modes:
You can tap open a sport mode to start it, such as Run, which will fire up the GPS.
As with their other watches, you can customize data fields for that sport mode on the watch itself (though not on the smartphone app), up to 6 data fields per custom page. Very solid.
This area is also where you’d load up a route to follow (either imported file or Komoot, though that’s kinda messy, as I showed in my T-Rex 3 review a few days ago).
As noted, the device supports maps, and I was able to download my map pretty easily, though, it took a little bit via Bluetooth. There is no WiFi on this device, and somewhat oddly, you can’t load an area smaller than 30KM x 47KM. Like, you can’t make the box smaller (just bigger).
So to download the above map took about 3-4 minutes. Not horrible.
Unfortunately, like the T-Rex 3, the maps in this area are all wonky. Some portions of dry land show as water, albeit water is usually water, and…thus well…the maps are mostly useless for me. This seems to be a problem with more than just me, as others have been reporting it in various areas for months.
That said, assuming the maps in your area load correctly, and you’ve sent a route to it, then you’re good to go for basic turn-by-turn route following.
Pivoting slightly, in the settings you can pair up Bluetooth sensors, including power meters. This is new to the Active 2 compared to the Active 1.
Setting sports side, here’s a few more pretty pictures of the watch. The look and feel is nice, and gives off a solid polished vibe. Not too heavy, but not too light.
Again, if you want to see how the rest of the features work, check out my T-Rex 3 video/post from two days ago, since everything else is identical and quite current given that was all filmed/shot in the past few days on the same app/platform.
Wrap-Up:
As I said in the intro, the features here are super impressive for the price. If we compare it to other things in that price ballpark, such as the Fitbit Charge 6 (usually floating around $99), this obviously has a boatload more features and functionality. Like, cargo-ship vs paddle-boat level more functionality. And since the Fitbit Charge 6 requires you to choose between accurate GPS or accurate HR, this almost certainly wouldn’t do that based on my other AmazFit testing, assuming they didn’t solidly break anything. Of course, sometimes companies do – so more testing is ahead.
Still, the fact that AmazFit can deliver all of these features is mind-boggling. Especially the mapping pieces (setting aside the water rendering quirk). That’s something that’s missing from the $500 Garmin Instinct 3 that just launched yesterday, a fact that can’t easily be overlooked for an endurance sports watch. Whereas this very-not-endurance sports watch has it.
Nonetheless, as I said in my T-Rex 3 review, I hope that AmazFit understands that if they can spend a bit more time on polish of the software features, it’d go a long way. In a quick ‘Hands-on’ piece like this, the AmazFit units tend to be super impressive. But once you start using those features, the quirks are endless. No cycling power data to Strava, weird understanding issues with the voice assistant, cumbersome navigation process, etc… The list goes on.
So again, if AmazFit can focus on that a bit, then they’ll very quickly start to make inroads against multiple companies in this space. But software details matter just as much as incredible hardware specs. Here’s to hoping!
With that – thanks for reading!
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Hopefully you found this review/post useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
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Are contactless payments now available in the U.S.?
A quick comment on Amazfit as a former customer. I purchased an Amazfit Stratos. I was very impressed with the feel and function of the watch and it performed very well doing my first 70.3 triathlon.
My problems began with warranty support. The first time the watch failed at the 6 month mark it took about a dozen emails for them to honour their 1 year warranty. They initially blamed me on getting the watch wet (a multisport watched designed for SWIMMING). Once they finally replaced it, the new watch failed within 2 months (complete black screen). Despite all my efforts they refused to honour their one-year warranty.
Unless they have made significant improvements in quality/durability AND customer service… I would not even consider purchasing.
My experiences with the Stratos were also negative.
I expected that Amazfit, as a subsidiary of Xiaomi, would continue the latter’s reputation for producing quality products without all the corporate overhead of Garmin. Years later, it seems like they still haven’t figured out the basics of an accurate GPS, quality software, and reliability.
Hello, i also agree that Stratos was not the best watch from Amazfit (battery drain when using an HR Bluetooth sensor was an example). But… the T-REX2 is very good, especially if you take the price into account. I think Amazfit in general has made big progress in quality sport watches in the last years.
No wingsuit profile, no purchase for me
Space diving is also missing: link to en.wikipedia.org
I’ve seen friends with Amazfit watches having their races not recorded because of some bugs on their watches. I’ve never had a core functionality fail on one of my Garmins, I’d rather pay 5x and have my watch work when it needs to. It will take me years to reconsider Amazfit.
And I have never had an Amazfit fail to record any activity. I do not rely on auto-detection, ever.
I have been using Amazfit since 2018. I have owned 4. All but the first one works, and it only recently failed after 6 years of ownership. Value pricing with a rich feature set.
If only Garmin meant stellar, error-free software… Unfortunately, this is not the case and Garmin also has bugs and errors, just maybe a little bit less of them.
I would never choose this watch, but the fact you can get 10 of them for one Fenix 8 shows the hardware is not exactly expensive at this point. Question is then if Garmins software work / development effort is worth additional 900 bucks (i know i am exaggerating here).
Kinda wanted a watch to track football (soccer) games to see distance and HR for a while but have never been able to justify the cost of other GPS equiped watches previously. I have a head unit for my bike already so it would be fairly single use. This has got me interested.
Vegan leather is plastic and has none of the qualities of real leather, can we stop pandering to this marketing nonsense?
Leather is a premium material, pleather is just fancy plastic. It’s like saying the shell of the watch is made from warm titanium, it’s just a different material in every way.
Actually, vegan leather can be all assortment of plant materials too.
I have no idea what exactly is in this, but it certainly doesn’t feel like plastic. It feels pretty close to real leather.
You know I’m the last person to go down the marketing drain, but this is far closer to leather than not.
Don’t get me wrong, you have to use the terms the manufacturers do, Im not suggesting otherwise. This stuff drives me crazy though, it’s pure virtue signalling and marketing. Maybe it’s not plastic but I’m confident it won’t age like leather which improves with time and rarely wears out (ultimate sustainability, given it’s a byproduct!).
We’re perfectly capable of coming up with new names, vegans shouldn’t need to use leather and bacon, call it what it is!
It’s just a name to facilitate identification, but I’m ok with that, let’s call leather bovine skin from now on
Just to make this comment thread come full circle…I just got a note from AmazFit out of the blue, that there was some internal confusion within the company, and indeed, the strap is actual real leather. Neither vegan leather or some other plastic thing. But…as Alex put, bovine skin. :)
To continue down that rabbit hole a bit more:
“Real leather” describes a range of materials that can in some instances are quite far from bovine skin and what many people would consider “leather”.
Things like fullgrain and topgrain leather are actually animal hide, but “Genuine Leather” is an industry term for a middle layer of the hide (with the topgrain/top layers leathe removed) which doesn’t have the durability and other characteristics of traditional leather. “Bonded leather” is even worse, consisting of ground-up leather scraps mixed with a synthetic bonding agent (glue).
All these are marketed as genuine/authentic/real leather…
To be clear: The above is general information, not related to Amazfit. I don’t know what Amaazfit is using for the strap – it could well be topgrain leather (it looks too soft and light for fullgrain leather).
Does it track hrv? And is it compatible with stryd? (Trex is, according your review)
If it claimed to track HRV, would you trust it?
Yes, it tracks HRV. I don’t know for certain on Stryd, but I’d assume it’s the same.
In that case, I would be interested to know how it compares to other devices ;-)
I’m the T-Rex review ray mentioned that it provides values similar to competitors. If the active 2 shares de hw, there is a chance that it does behave well.
Cool thanks for the info
I had an Amazfit Bip S just to play around with. Tiny. GPS (no maps). OHR. Long battery life. As Ray points out, pretty unpolished/limited software compared to Garmin. But, c’mon! This watch was something like $49 list and I got it on a discount – maybe $30? Super, super impressive in terms of capabilities for the price. I don’t know that I’d have trusted the recording of my A races to it (sold it a bit ago), but used it mostly for running during travel. But I would have run a training 5k / 10k with it, no worries. WRT the Active 2, I also think that the appearance is super attractive and another positive characteristic in this price range.
I have the Bip S, again it was around $30 with the discount. What I liked about it was the seriously long battery life, especially just in watch mode.
What I didn’t like was the software, I had to install two Zepp apps on my phone to get it to sync to Strava and the Chinese seem to rapidly lose interest in improving things.
I tend to use my Garmin watch now as I like the Garmin Connect ecosystem for running.
30$ extra for sapphire glass, this is amazing.
I don’t see how other watch manufacturer can sell X00$ watch with gorilla glass or equivalent.
I had any Amazfit Stratos years back. Solid experience for low cost, switched to garmin Fenix after 2 years. Last year I won a Amazfit Cheetah Round and I am impressed. In direct comparision I find it acurate, stable and reliable. A lot of updates…
I think I’m going to try this for the navigation function. I currently use an Ultra with locust maps. It almost works perfectly and the app barely uses battery. I went on an 8 hour hike. I was left with 75% on the watch with turn-by-turn directions. The problem is something is not right with Samsung’s compass. My maps are always upside down. Locust, like Google maps, has auto rotate. Some apps don’t. Regardless, I think it still screws with the turning directions on locust because that is usually off. Also locust does require the phone to store maps.
I think I’ll try this and compare the two simultaneously. It doesn’t matter if the water color isn’t accurate. I just need the gpx route function with onboard maps.
I’m very excited to see how products like this perform once the EU cracks open Apple’s locked down Watch APIs. As a Watch SE 1st Gen owner who didn’t get WatchOS 11, this would be a pretty interesting option, plus it’s round.
That chess profile is exactly what I needed to switch from Garmin to AmazFit. 🤣
In all fairness, you can create a chess profile on Garmin.
Amazfit as a brand continue to offer amazing value in terms of build quality and features – compare this to the cynical behavior displayed by Garmin with the latest Instinct release. The fact is that it would have been easier to include full mapping on the Instinct than leave was purely a strategy to protect Fenix sales by not offering the same features for half the price. I have owned the Amazfit Falcon for 2 years – it got me round the TMB with the GPS / mapping and has survived many a whack on rocks without showing a scratch. The improvements Amazfit have made in their heart rate monitor show they are serious about the future of their brand and is in marked contrast to Garmin who are playing fast and loose with the good will of their customer base.
Could you please tell me if you can set multiple alarms with this watch? Thank you
could i bother the author to confirm a few things about this watch?
all the other reviews are essentially press releases of some sort
I see there’s a microphone and a speaker so I can safely assume you can answer calls over Bluetooth
Can you initiate calls over Bluetooth?
Likewise, (on android) can you actually reply to text messages?
I’m sure there are canned replies you could choose from but can you type a custom reply to a text?
thank you!
I cannot confirm but it looks as if you could dictate texts with Zepp Flow.
I Love Amazfit watches but I probably will not buy another one until I can get ecg and some other measurements.
i see, is Zepp Flow a built in app on the watch?
say i got a text, how would i use this zepp flow to reply?
thanks
It works on the watch. I am reminded that we cannot send messages, only reply.
If you hold down the crown for a second or two, Zepp Flow will initiate. Sorry, I don’t remember the work flow to respond.
Funny thing is I can say to Zepp Flow, “Send a text to my sister.” It will prompt me to speak the message. But it cannot send it.
I think there are limitations depending on country and probably the messaging app you use
Sorry, I am a bit fuzzy on details as I have only used it a few times..
this was very helpful, thank you!!
Can it broadcast HR?
I read that is can
Does anyone know why these optical HR sensors have difficulty locking onto HR? I understand that if the band is loose, or you have dark skin it can have difficulty in general.
However what I see with both my Garmin and Amazfit is they may take 10 minutes to lock onto my HR when running but then are quite accurate when they do get a fix. So I’ll see 10 minutes of low HR at the start of exercise then suddenly it picks up the right rythm.
Are you starting before it locks?
I’ve never seen any optical HR sensor on the market in the last few years take more than 10-20 seconds (at worst).
Hi Ray, it is more like in your T-Rex review where it is recording HR but fails to track at some point:
https://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2025/01/SaCalobraHR-720×315.png
so sometimes I get what looks like plausible HR data but 20 beats under my current HR, at some point the sensor will lock onto my real HR.
Ahh, gotchya. Unfortunately, I don’t really have any good options there, especially on cycling.
For running, it’s usually easier to identify the break point, as it typically tends to be locked to cadence. Or, slightly looser wearing, which is definitely an issue.
actually thih HR problem is present on Epix 2 for over a year now, there are a lot of posts on garmin forum about that, and i seems that the only advise from garmin is to wear it correctly.
I am experiencing this problem and for this I would like to switch to this for a fraction of the cost.
Hi Frank,
I hope Ray doesn’t mind but this was my review of the HR and GPS tracking. For me there were issues.
link to youtube.com
The GPS tracking has been highlighted in other reviews. It is fine in open environment but not so good under trees or in town.
I’d be interested in more reviews though. This is just one person with one watch.
The screen looks very reflective in these photos.
Hey Ray, have you heard anything about the map issue (water) from Amazfit? Do you think they will ever fix it? Updates and bug fixes seems not to have a high priority für Amazfit?
No update from them. :(
Hi, is it possible to see the calories during lane swimming? Is it possible, to let the smartwatch vibrate after for example 200 calories?
Is there an AOD?
Cheers Sylvia
I know you were told by Amazfit that the leather strap on the premium version is vegan, but it’s actually made of genuine leather and not suitable for vegans.
Source: Reddit comment by u/Amazfit-Bryce, an Amazfit representative: link to reddit.com
One important limitation that should be mentioned even in a non-review summary: The maximum general HR recording frequency (ie, outside of sports modes) is once per minute.
I believe that is still the case for all Amazfit watches.
I “think” you are correct.
Five years ago I used a third-party app to do continuous HR detection with an Amazfit BIPd. The app might have been Notify.
To be fair, this is actually pretty similiar to most watches out there.
Garmin and Fitbit are one of the few that do true 1-second recording. COROS for example default’s to every 10 minutes, but can be tweaked to every minute. Apple Watch is every few minutes on a variable basis (though is doing background monitoring but not recording, at a higher rate for high HR alerts). Polar is the same. Suunto likewise.
That does not say the whole story. Garmin advertizes every second HR tracking but uses a low power accuracy mode outside of workouts, which makes HR readings less frequent (not every second) and less accurate. It cannot be turned off, even though users requested it because they noticed that bigger HR changes are not recorded outside of activity. Amazfit introduced recently feature Active heart rate, which makes HR readings much more frequent depending on movemen (something similar to Garmins low power mode). This can be turned on and off. It does affect battery but makes HR reading more frequent than every minute.
Every single company in wearables uses low-power outside of workout modes, else, their watches won’t last.
The bigger question is honestly less about getting the data at 1-second on the watch, but getting it downloaded in a file, for someone that wants it.
@Willy: That is almost entirely incorrect.
1. While all companies use a lower power mode outside of workouts (or conversely, use a higher power mode during workouts) Garmin does NOT reduce the frequency when set to record every second.
2. By default Garmin does use “Smart Recording” at variable frequencies but it CAN be turned off/set to record every second.
3. Amazfit Active heart rate monitoring is something completely different. It basically puts the HR sensor into higher (albeit unspecified) frequency when the watch detects activity outside of a workout. Garmin (Move IQ) and others have had that for years.
Bottom line:
Outside of workots/higher frequency being triggered by some activity, Amazfit records HR once per minute _at most_ (the default setting is for once every _ten minutes_).
In contrast, Garmin gives full recording every second 24/7.
@SG: You are wrong so I will give more details and links from where you can start to explore the subject if you care to.
1. You are wrong. Whole point of HR tracking is that it is accurate and it does so with more frequent recording and more power used. Low power HR tracking that Garmin uses for measuring HR outside IS MUCH LESS ACCURATE than HR tracking in full power mode (when in activity), and even Garmin confirmed that on its official forums. Thus, Garmin uses algorithmic guessing as much HR tracking, to which is why it is very inaccurate for bigger HR changes. If you really believe that Garmin uses every second HR tracking when outside activity, start any non-GPS activity and do not turn it off for a day, you will see how much more battery actual every second HR tracking use compared to low power mode.
2. You are wrong. “Smart Recording” has nothing to do with HR tracking outside activity, it is only for activities.
3. You are partially wrong. Amazfit Active heart rate monitoring has unspecified HR tracking frequency – that is true. However, it is not true that it is completely different from what Garmin uses, and you confirmed that by your reply with “Garmin (Move IQ) and others have had that for years”. If you read my previous reply you would see that I said practically the same thing with “something similar to Garmins low power mode”.
4. Your conclusion is wrong. If Garmin provided every second low power HR tracking, it would be as accurate outside activity as when in activity, which is not the case (and would use much more battery). Using low power mode, is something that every company does for battery preservation purposes (as Ray also confirmed in his reply), so let’s not pretend that HR tracking in that mode is as frequent/accurate as when in activity. If you do not believe me, feel free to try it as I said under point 1.
5. Proof. Even Garmin itself said what I am saying: “The optical HR monitor is designed to attempt to monitor a user’s heart rate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The frequency at which heart rate is measured varies, and may depend on the level of activity of the user. When you start an activity with your Garmin optical HR device, the optical HR monitor measures more frequently. The intent is to provide the user with a more frequent and accurate heart rate reading during a given activity.” Link: link to garmin.com
6. More proof awaits for you on Garmin forums in discussion such as this one: link to forums.garmin.com
I honestly think at this point you guys are pretty much argueing the same thing.
At the end of the day:
1) Garmin does indeed measure every 1-second 24×7, and records that at 1s too (you can dig into the Monitor files to check that). However, as noted, outside of workout mode (like every other company) it does this at a lower power level. Not a lower frequency, but a lower power level.
2) Like all companies, getting 24×7 data at the higher-frequency level to show up on graphs/etc in app is a PITA. Some offer it in export, most don’t.
3) Lower-power optical HR sensor modes (non-workout) can be variable in accuracy. All companies try to use movement to get around this by adding more power to the HR sensor when they detect movement, but it’s not foolproof (for any company).
4) There is, notably, a difference between how some companies will do recording of that background data versus triggers for low/high HR alerts. Why, I don’t know, but it’s clearly visible.
We don’t know what AmazFit is doing here, but honestly, nothing they’re doing seems any different than what anyone else is already doing in some capacity. It’s sorta like COROS and their 10-minute toggle vs more frequent toggle. The more frequent toggle basically just brings it inline with competitors, whereas the default 10-minute toggle gets them their historic battery life claims.
Not quite. SG argues that Garmin measures HR outside activity every second which makes it better and more accurate than other brands in that regard, and I disagreed stating that Garmin uses low power mode outside activity that leads to less accurate HR tracking, thus not making Garmin any better than others in that particular regard.
Garmin’s low-power mode for heart rate tracking outside workouts affects both the FREQUENCY AND ACCURACY of readings, which Garmin stated clearly on the link I provided in my previous post. I’ll copy again their text: “The optical HR monitor is designed to attempt to monitor a user’s heart rate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The frequency at which heart rate is measured varies, and may depend on the level of activity of the user. When you start an activity with your Garmin optical HR device, the optical HR monitor measures more frequently. The intent is to provide the user with a more frequent and accurate heart rate reading during a given activity.” They say “attempt to measure 24/7” and “When you start an activity…HR monitor measures more frequently.” Since HR measuring in workout is every second, it is clear that in low power mode then it is less frequent.
As you correctly concluded, everyone seems to be doing same thing, which is the point I was making. Garmin is no better than others in that regard.
They just released the square BIP 6 with maps for 79,90 €:
link to amazfit.com
Hi, i’m starting my personal test to compare Amazfit Active 2 with my Fenix 7Xss, with iPhone iOS 18.4
– Strenght training, Amazfit win, better count of the reps, when WHR is similar to my F7Xss
– Amazfit (Zeep App) is able to filter notifications by apps ! something that Garmin is not capable on Apple iOS
Today i will try the Navigation Turn-by-Turn with Map during Trail Run
“filter notifications by apps ! something that Garmin is not capable on Apple iOS”
Is that really the case? On Android you can certainly select the apps from which notifications are displayed on the watch.
i tested a Xiaomi Smart Band 7 in the past, this was already working with this 30€ device.
but activities were too “simple” and not accurate.
With Amazfit, it is really better for this part
Can anyone confirm Amazfit Active 2 supports “Heart Rate Push”? I can’t find any information online.