Welcome to Wesknows tech news and reviews! today we'll be doing a full and comprehensive review
of the amasfit gtr 2. we have done an initial impressions review as soon as the delivery man
left the package with this beast at the door. but now with five days of wearing the watch
of sleeping with it exercising with it i have a much much better appreciation of this
watch there's a speaker there's a microphone for voice commands and taking calls right off the
wrist there's 3gb for music downloads there's even an spo2 monitor and finally there's tons and tons
of sport modes. if you're new to wesknows tech news and reviews we talk about the latest tech
news we do brutally honest reviews and share hacks and tricks along the way!
let me ask you a question how do you tell if a product is premium or not? you know what i
mean right? there's a special kind of premium air around that product, well a smart watch
in our case. now when i first opened the outer box pulled out the velvety inner box i got a
feeling that this will be something special once i lifted the lid and looked at the actual watch
i knew that this is a premium product if we talk about premium i also had a very similar feeling
when i was holding the samsung galaxy watch active or the huawei gt2. now why is that? why do we get
that feeling? well i was actually thinking about this and i have actually come up with a list of
cues that make a smartwatch premium in my mind. let's go through some of them. the weight has
to be right you don't want a paperweight but you also don't want the plasticky and tacky light feel
don't get me wrong it's light but it's not too light i hope that makes sense so tick here
then there is the face the part of the watch that blinds you every time you look down on it
the watch face is the part you'll be looking at most and if you don't want to look away
then that's the right watch for you what draws us consumers the appeal of smooth edges clean facets
wholesome and solid well the master 2 does that for you so another tick goes here. a smartwatch
is not just a stylish accessory nor is it just a tool watch that throws stats and values at you it
has to be pleasant and enjoyable to use i will go out on a whim and call it user retention if i may.
what i mean is you want to engage with the watch over and over this can only be
achieved if the watch has a velvety smooth ui, if the colors are bright crisp yet deep and rich
but that's not all you also need a playground that allows you to keep on exploring the watches
options. can the amazfit gtr 2 do it? yes, it can! so another tick goes there. so is it premium
in my view? yes! i think now is a great time to actually discuss
this smartwatch in detail so as per usual we're going to kick off with the design then
we're going to get into the display and then we'll talk about the features and functions
we can see the aluminium finish on the watch case the watch pack though does look like it's plastic
also note the quick release traps but also make note that they are 22 millimeter silicon straps
because the watch face is rather large the thicker than 20 millimeters just makes the watch
look a bit more balanced the watch is fully touch activated but there are two buttons on the right
for additional efficiency the top right is the power button while the bottom one can be
programmed to take you to a screen you require a quick access to the design is both classy and
classic the watch face is round with dimensions of 46.4 by 46.4 millimeters the glass face is
bezel-less considering the watch case is also quite thin at just 10.7 millimeters
it lies comfortably on your wrist and isn't likely to chafe your long-sleeve shirts or a jacket
now let's take a look at the display and there are surprises here and it's not just in the specs
that a mass fit has given us the type of displays huami has put on the gtr and gts range you would
actually expect to find on much more expensive watches you get a crisp 1.39 inch amoled
454 by 454 pixel resolution display that's 326 ppi by the way there's no bezel to limit the
display surface as it stretches all the way to the watch case the colors are great and there's some
really beautiful watch faces available in the zepp app and preempting the question yes both
ios and android functionality is now same in regards to faces in fact there are now five faces
that allow for your own uploads to the watch face all you need to do is go to the zip app
there are five custom background faces choose a style you like select a photo from your album or
make a photo and it syncs to your watch on top of the cool faces you also get always on display and
auto brightness ladies and gentlemen the amazfit gtr 2 is premium it's got a lot of innovative and
advanced features that i absolutely want to share with you and we're going to do that right now
but of course i do not want to focus on the more simple and cool functionalities like alarm clocks
widgets like weather time and stopwatch no let's talk about the really cool the really premium
functionality of the amazon gtr 2. i would actually like to start off with the sports
and activities functionality because if you recall in the previous version or the first version of
the gtr and gts you did have those limitations in sport mode so for example activities like martial
arts tennis basketball they would be non-trackable unless you used a generic sport mode such as
freestyle another annoyance was that there was no actual storage allocated for music or other audio
to be fair that version did have dual gps but really would you be going out for a long run or
cycle with just your watch on without it being connected to the phone if you don't have any
music on your watch probably not the gtr 2 has actually made huge progress here the gtr 2 has
actually learned on its mistakes and shortcomings and has improved drastically it now brings
90 sport modes now you get 12 modes on the favorite screen and you can add more by
choosing from all these categories like outdoor sports combat sports and with these categories
you have plenty more like tai chi karate fencing etc another major positive here is that the watch
features a barometric altimeter not the gimmicky gps altimeter what this does is now when you're
going up and down a set of stairs it will be recorded on the watch in addition to that you
get 3gb allocated storage now some would be eaten by system files but for the most part
around 2 gb is left over for music and other audio media downloads with sports out of the way let's
talk about the health and well-being new features or additions to the prior model of course we do
get pi here and as we all know it's a metric that represents your cardiovascular health in a single
value your goal is to keep the pi number over 100 the metric remains albeit the screens are now
much more colorful and ambient the widget is also much more informative with the day's heart rate
plotted to show periods of intense activities or lack of those follow to the screen below and you
will see the intensity distribution map for more information just click on i for the more detail
the new version also gets a stretch monitor and once again the attention to detail is astounding
the colors are deep and rich the color grading shading and the graphic contours scream premium
here you have an option to choose automatic stress testing and it will plot your measurements over
the last seven days right here then of course we got the spo2 monitor aka blood oxygen saturation
monitor unfortunately it's on demand only and there is no continuous tracking say during the
night or during an exercise to identify threats of chronic or immediate respiratory conditions
and now let's look at some of the cool tricks that a mass fed gtr 2 brings straight to your
watch so we know that the watch has a speaker and a microphone with the speaker it's easy you can
hear alerts music the person on the other line you can actually take calls off the watch face
with the gtr2 don't get me wrong you still need to be connected to your phone via bluetooth but
at least you don't have to pull it out if you don't want to what's the mic for well
either to speak to a mom on the phone or to give voice commands to your watch
let's try some right now so in the zip app go to device screen and right down the bottom you will
see offline audio command words the screen doesn't just move up and down here the screen moves in a
fluid motion take the home screen as an example a mass fit have stepped away from the merry-go-round
approach where you could swipe left or right and get into the same screen and swipe away until
you get to the screen you actually need so here what you can do is swipe left for intelligence
for the likes of your pie daily activity summary daily heart rate plot weather and music you
can actually adjust the screen you want to see from the settings on the watch face go to user
preferences quick access and make your choices where were we aha swipe left for intelligence
or swipe right for convenience what do we mean by that essentially it's a shortcut cards function
you only need to swipe to the right to view information such as weather events countdowns
background programs and use and common application information which greatly improves efficiency you
don't need to scroll through stuff you don't need at that particular time the striking attention to
detail on this smartwatch is absolutely great so who is this watch for well let me ask you do you
like intelligent smarts not the ones that are just there but the ones are actually useful do
you like a product on your wrist to feel premium to be premium do you want a smartwatch that is
fun to use do you want a smartwatch that you want to look at and keep on looking at it because you
love the way it looks you love the way it presents the information and the fact is you love just
opening it up and playing around in the options you want to have a look at the different widgets
you actually want to look at the stats because they look cool they look interesting they look
inciting of course you also want to watch that will give you your metrics your stats
in such a way that they're easily understandable but of course you want them to be accurate as well
and you want quite a few of the metrics and stats you want your heart rate you want your spo2
you want your stress monitoring well this watch can do it for you
and if you are an avid sports enthusiast and you love your runs your jogs your cycling
what if you do your open water swimming you need inbuilt gps you've got that you don't want to
take your smart with you on your runs or cycles that's fine you can do that it's got inbuilt gps
as well as 3gb of allocated storage for music it looks great it's a great performer it's got a
long battery life what else do you need so for the price it's going at and we're talking 180 dollars
i don't know of any other smartwatch on the market that offers as much for that price!