Huami Amazfit GTR Smartwatch for 109.99 from Amazon

At Huami the release rhythm has multiplied. After the Amazfit Bip (2) Lite and the Amazfit Verge 2 the Huami Amazfit GTR follows. This is advertised as an elegant sports watch or sporty “suit watch”. Can the GTR maintain a healthy balance between these two poles or outweigh the compromises on one side? We have tested the Amazfit GTR in the large 47 mm aluminium version.

• Huami Amazfit GTR 47mm
  • at Amazon for $109.99
• Huami Amazfit GTR 42 mm
  • at Amazon for $129.99

One watch, two versions

For the first time Huami releases two different versions of a watch that differ in more than just color. The Huami Amazfit GTR is available in a 42 mm and a 47 mm version. The smaller 42 mm version is with 42.6 x 42.6 x 9.2 mm slightly thinner and with 25.5 g also a lot lighter. The 47 mm variant is slightly thicker with dimensions of 47.2 x 47.2 x 10.75 mm and in the stainless steel variant even weighs 48 g. The titanium (40 g) and aluminium alloy (36 g) versions are somewhat lighter.

The bracelets also differ depending on the version. The small 42 mm GTR always comes with a matching 20 mm silicone strap, only the Glitter Edition comes with a white leather strap. The large 47 mm GTR, on the other hand, is supplied with 22 mm wide hybrid straps, which are the same in aluminium and stainless steel. This is made of brown imitation leather on the outside and black TPU on the inside, so it can also be worn during sports. The titanium version gets a strange green-grey coloured bracelet made of fluororubber.

When you make your initial choice, you first have to decide on a size and then on a colour or material combination. Fortunately, you can simply exchange the 20 mm or 22 mm wide bracelets for others. This is handy, for example, to quickly switch between a sporty and elegant bracelet or if you like the case but not the included bracelet when you buy it.

Design & Processing

When you first unpack Huami (the company behind the Amazfit brand) is one of the largest Smartwatch and fitness tracker manufacturers in the world – after all, they also produce the extremely successful Mi Band 4 for Xiaomi. The expertise is directly reflected in the flawless workmanship.

Nothing wobbles, looks cheap or has too large a gap. This starts with the bezel around the display. This is made of zirconium ceramic, which makes the bezel much more difficult to scratch. Something that wouldn’t have harmed my Honor Watch Magic either. The bezel is mostly matt at the top (except for the hour markings) and shiny at the side.

The aluminium housing is also matt grey and screwed to the plastic back on the underside. The sensors for pulse measurement and the two contact points for the charging station are also located on this underside. On the right side there are two pushbuttons, the upper one with a red accent. This functions as a home and back button while the lower pushbutton can be assigned a function relatively freely. So you can quickly jump to the sports modes, weather or notifications etc..

The included hybrid wristband also looks chic and has after a month of daily showering and regular sports still no obvious signs of use. The TPU side feels comfortable on the skin and can certainly handle sweat better than imitation leather. Nevertheless, I would probably buy a silicone wristband for the sports use in the long run, because the artificial leather outside looks a bit out of place during sports. Thanks to the standard size of 22 mm the change is quick and easy.

Of course, the Amazfit GTR is also water-resistant again according to the ATM5 classification. This means that you can shower, bathe and swim on the surface without hesitation. Only deeper diving and of course salt water should be avoided.

Sharp AMOLED display with Always-On function

No matter which of the two versions of the GTR you choose, you always get a bright and colorful AMOLED display with a high pixel density of 326 PPI (pixels per inch). This is because the larger version not only increases the display from 1.2 to 1.39 inches, but also increases the resolution from 390 x 390 pixels to 454 x 454 pixels. This puts the Amazfit GTR on a par with the Honor Watch Magic and the Huawei Watch GT. Both GTR variants are also protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

The brightness can be adjusted steplessly on the watch itself or you let the auto mode do the work. I also did the latter during the test and never had any problems reading it, so the display gets nice and bright and the ambient light sensor works well. Unfortunately, the display usually takes a second to switch to the required higher brightness after you have activated it by lifting your wrist. The Honor Watch can do this better and Amazfit should update it to the same level.

Since the clock is usually operated via the touch screen, this must not be bad. Fortunately, it responds extremely quickly to every typing and wiping action and is nice and large, especially in the 47 mm version, so that symbols aren’t too small and you don’t have to be too meticulous with the “aiming” of your finger.

Using the Amazfit GTR

Apart from the two pushers already mentioned, the clock is operated by typing and wiping on the touchscreen. To the left or right of the Home screen you can see the steps, kilometres and calories burned during the day on one screen and the current heart rate on the other. A tip on one of the displays gives you even more details in the form of diagrams and more detailed statistics.

Above the Home screen you will find the quick settings as well as the connection status and the remaining battery charge in percent. The quick settings are: Flashlight, brightness, non-interference mode (planning, intelligent sleep detection & on/off), energy saving mode (step & sleep tracking only) and a screen lock.

Below the Homes screen all functions are listed and can be sorted in the app as desired. I have e.g. the music control at the top and then the weather comes and so on. The individual functions are as follows: Music, weather, notifications, status (steps etc.), pulse, sport, activities (recordings), alarm, reminders, more (compass, stopwatch, countdown, mobile phone search) and settings (dial, duration of screen on, shortcut for lower button, system info). If you absolutely don’t need one or more of the functions, you can hide them completely.

The connection between mobile phone and clock is established via Bluetooth 5.0 LE and is very stable and fast. This can be seen in the synchronization of steps and workouts as well as in the music control. With this you can control the music on your mobile phone, which also works with Spotify, but not if you are using one of the 12 sports modes. Unfortunately there is no internal memory on the clock.

Amazfit App & Alternatives

The official Amazfit app is available for both Android and iOS. This is a one-to-one copy of the well known Mi Fit app with a black-white-red colour scheme. Accordingly, you have an overview of the status including steps, sleep, pulse, weight, sport and the daily step target on the start page. In the right profile tab all devices are listed, thus also the GTR.

For these you can choose from 40 dials in the app, activate Smart Lock, manage call and app notifications (each app can be deactivated), activate inactivity warnings and SMS and step-by-step notifications. You can create your own vibration pattern for all notification types. The vibration, however, is already so strong and quite loud that you would not have to amplify anything, but rather weaken it.

You can also search for the clock, select the wearer side, set when to activate the screen by lifting the wrist, configure the pulse measurement during the day (every 1, 5, 10 or 30 minutes) and activate sleep monitoring. The location for the weather forecast can also either be detected automatically or entered manually.

All in all, the Amazfit App already offers quite a few setting options and even an excellently functioning synchronisation with Strava. But if you don’t have the Google Fit synchronization of the Mi Fit App (Android/iOS), you can just use it, because it’s almost the same app as mentioned before. For more watchfaces there are the apps Notify & Fitness and AmazFaces, even if they didn’t work for me yet. Apple fans can use the AmazTools here.

For those who need even more functions, Android also offers the choice between Notify & Fitness, Tools & Amazfit and Master for Amazfit. With Notify & Fitness, for example, Google Maps navigation on the clock also works.

Sports tracking – 12 modes / 7 with GPS

Since the GTR is supposed to be an elegant sports watch, some sports modes should not be missing. In total there are 12 different activities which can be started directly on the watch. These are: Outdoor running, jogging (walking/walking), cycling, treadmill, indoor cycling, open water, swimming in the pool, crosstrainer, climbing, trail running, skiing and (free) training. From these, outdoor running, jogging (walking/walking), cycling, open water, climbing, trail running and skiing are tracked by GPS.

Running tracking and cycling with GPS

This is the first and pretty much the only really big criticism of the Amazfit GTR. Unfortunately, GPS tracking is not yet really fast, good or reliable. If you leave the house and then start the search for a GPS signal, the GTR will take 1-2 minutes to find it. For comparison: my Honor Watch Magic and the Garmin Forerunner 645 can do this within a few seconds at exactly the same location.

Once you have found a GPS signal, it can break off during the run, even when I was walking on the banks of the Rhine without disturbing trees or houses. In this case the GTR calculates the distance from the steps taken, at least until it has a signal again. Unfortunately, this means that the distance I was supposed to cover is recorded even less accurately and I was supposed to have walked 630 meters more than the Garmin had recorded. The Honor Watch, on the other hand, was only 250 meters off – not perfect either, but 380 meters better.

Even during a run in the park, the GTR was 400 meters away while the Honor Watch was only 130 meters away. I had the same mistakes and signal interruptions while cycling and therefore think that it is a general GPS weakness. Here simply an update has to be done, which significantly improves the GPS performance, which unfortunately hasn’t happened with the previous updates yet. Also gpx.files cannot be imported, although Stratos and Verge both can.

Also maybe interesting: to pause the active sports mode, you have to hold one of the two buttons down for about 2 seconds. That’s two seconds too much for faster running or cycling, especially if you want to measure the times as accurately as possible. With the Honor Watch, for example, a short press of the upper button is enough to pause the workout. To continue or end the tracking you have to use the “Play” or “Stop” symbol on the screen, which is especially difficult when swimming with wet display and fingers. Here, too, other clocks simply use one of the keys.

Swim tracking

Unfortunately we could not test the swimming mode yet. At least the screen is locked and can only be unlocked by pressing one of the keys. During the tracking you can see on the first screen the time, distance in meters, number of trains and calories burned.

The second screen shows the average speed per 100 meters, the average number of beats and the maximum number of beats per minute. Afterwards you can also see the SWOLF value on the clock and in the app.

Sleep, steps & pulse

When it comes to step tracking, I find the GTR very accurate and even more accurate than the Honor Watch Magic, which counted 100-200 steps more every day. While sleeping, the GTR recognizes how the Mi Band 4 is lying quietly in bed and being on the mobile phone as sleep. According to Amazfit, you often fall asleep 10 minutes earlier and wake up 10 minutes later, although you were already awake, but were just lying in bed.

The pulse measurement seems to be quite accurate, so you can clearly see when you ran to the track and when there were quiet phases. Of course, the GTR does not come close to the accuracy of a chest strap in sports, but the pulse measurements can still be used as a guideline.

Battery life of over 3 weeks

As already mentioned, the two versions of the Amazfit GTR also have different battery sizes. The 42 mm version is promised to run for 12 days, while our 47 mm model even has a 24-day battery life. And to everyone’s surprise, the advertising promises here are completely correct and in my case even exceeded. With my use I came after 21 days on a remaining battery charge of 33%, so there would be still approx. 10 days more in it. So the battery life for me is over 4 weeks!

This is my usage: automatic screen brightness, alarm Monday-Friday, notifications on the tape from WhatsApp, Skype, calls & China gadgets, inactivity warning, lift to activate during the day, heart rate monitor every minute & while sleeping and occasional music control. At Sports Tracking I had 10 sports units with 38.4 km travelled over 8 hours and 16 minutes and 3 hours of it with GPS tracking enabled.

Depending on personal use, the runtime varies of course, but should not disappoint overall. Charging then takes about 2 hours with the included charging pad.

Conclusion: Fitnesstracker Deluxe

Contrary to our initial assumptions, the Amazfit GTR is not a spiritual successor to the Stratos, but a completely independent watch with its own target group. For a real sports watch, the GPS is currently too bad and the operation is not well thought out enough. Therefore, the GTR is aimed more at occasional athletes who would like to have a solid fitness tracker and a somewhat chic, but still quite smart watch for everyday use in one.

And it is precisely for these people that I can recommend the Amazfit GTR with its top battery life, flawless and high-quality workmanship and beautiful AMOLED display – at least after the hopefully upcoming GPS update. As soon as this is available, I will update the article of course.

What do you think of the new Huami Amazfit GTR?