Xiaomi Huami Amazfit Smartwatch Video Review

Huami, a subsidiary of a well, know brand co-operated with Xiaomi which is quite famous for their Smartphones in the Asian Market. Back in November 2016, Huami released a Smartwatch called Huami Amazfit PACE which was a kind of hybrid of a fitness tracker and a smartwatch, and the device was very well received by the consumers. Now I am pretty sure that many of you guys already know about this smart watch and some of you may have also seen a couple of reviews. But today I am not going to do an in-depth review or unboxing kind of stuff instead of that I am going to share my experience of using this smart watch for about two weeks and why this is the best budget smart watch that you should buy right now.

Excited? So let’s get started:

Design & Appearance

Now the most attracting thing that I liked about this smartwatch is the design; now those days are gone where you need to choose between wearing a fitness tracker or a smart watch because Huami Amazfit combines best of both worlds. It strikes a great balance between sporty and classy that not too many other smart watches can achieve.

This smart watch has a simple and minimalistic design with curved edges, and the edges are made up of ceramic which not only looks beautiful but also provides a far superior protection than metal or glass which leads for a better durability. And it’s perfect for a guy like me who use to travel a lot on buses and metro more often. Additionally, the touchscreen is also protected by Corning Gorilla glass, and in a usage of 2 weeks I didn’t use any tempered glass or any protection, and surprisingly it didn’t get a single stretch over the edges or screen.

On the other side, the straps are made up of high-quality rubber and believe me these are extremely comfortable. These straps are also interchangeable, which means you’ll be able to swap out a rubber strap for just about any standard 22mm watch strap you have lying around.

Additionally, Huami Amazfit PACE is also IP67 water and dust resistance which means you don’t have to worry about water damage, and you can still wear it while raining or you can also take it in a pool.

Features & Performance

The smartwatch is powered by a dual-core processor clocked at 1.2 GHz which I think is quite sufficient to provide a smoother experience, it is coupled with a 512 MB of Ram and 4 gigs of onboard storage and of that around 2 GB for storing music as it has an independent music player built in which you can pair with your Bluetooth headset on the go. The overall sound quality is quite decent, and you can only change the tracks back and forth and also control the volume.

The watch comes with a 1.34-inch trans-reflective LCD, with a resolution of 320 x 300. The trans-reflective technology is something new which I have never seen in any other smart watch, and this is one of my favorite feature of this watch. A trans-reflective LCD reflects and transmits light when exposed to daylight means the display acts mainly as a reflective display with a constant contrast and no backlight is needed, so the more daylight hits the screen, the easier it is to read outdoors. But in indoors the screen looks a bit over washed out which I don’t like.

The UI of the Huami Amazfit is quite simple just double tap on the screen to make it active, or you can also use the hardware button which is located at the top right side of the watch. By swiping down the notification panel you will get access to a bunch of option which includes airplane mode, silent mode, brightness controller and the setting menu option, swipe left, and you will get the information regarding the battery.

From the home screen when you swipe up you will get your notifications, and by swiping right you will get access to the fitness tracking stuff, and it can track your steps distance and calories. I regularly use the run activity, and when I start the activity, the GPS tracker starts detecting for GPS signal. It takes more than 45 seconds to lock on to a GPS signal and then you can start your activity.

Now when you swipe left, you will get an option for music, weather, alarm, sleep, compass. You can also track your heart rate as it has an inbuilt optical heart rate sensor at the bottom. After using it for few days its seem to be very accurate when recording resting and active heart rate readings.

Battery & App

The battery life of this smart watch is just insane with a standby of 2 weeks. I found that with a normal usage the battery lasts around 4 to 5 days easily and sometimes when I use to listen to music for a couple of hours the battery lasted around two days which is great as compared to smart watches available in the same segment.

So, all in all, it can perform most of the activities that a fitness tracker can, and I don’t want to go in depth regarding that, and you will also get most of the features of a smartwatch too.

You can simply connect your smart watch to your smartphones using the companion app which is available for both iOS as well as for Android. Once Huami is paired Via Bluetooth you can do lots of cool things like you can easily change the watch faces, there are lots of cool watches faces available for a different mood, but sadly you cannot download or add any third party watch faces which I think is a kind of a bummer.Additionally, you can also track the sleep and steps within the app, and you also have the option to rearrange or hide widgets from the watch.

If you are quite concerned regarding which notification you should receive, then you can simply block any particular app from which you don’t want to receive notification.

So, at last, I would like to give five reasons why I think Huami Amazfit PACE is the best budget smartwatch right now.

The very first reason would be the design and durability
The second one will be the amazing battery life.
The third reason would be IP67 water and dust resistance.
The fourth one would be the features it offers including trans-reflective LCD.
And the fifth one is the low pricing.

Price & Availability

I imported this Amazfit PACE from a Chinese website called TOMTOP as this is not available in India yet. It cost me about 9000 INR which is roughly equal to 140 USD including free shipping.