Having had this behemoth of a watch on my wrist for the last few weeks now and having tested it to the best of my ability, would I replace my current fitness watch with this? Read on to find out.
Before I start let me just say that my first foray into fitness band territory was a XIAOMI MI BAND and this is another product of XIAOMI.
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| Managed to find a picture of it. |
Lets keep in mind that this IS a reasonably priced fitness watch BUT still it has enough features packed in to give many more well known fitness brands of wrist-wear a pause for thought. Starting out with the specifications: the XIAOMI AMAZFIT STRATOS 2 is BIG...monstrously big but strangely enough it doesn't feel big on the wrist (well if you have small wrists then it could be a problem). The watch comes in at 23.00 x 3.50 x 1.50 cm and weighing approximately 60g. Now that is a huge circular display measuring a whopping 1.34 inches of 300x320 pixels and a reflective OLED display of MINERAL\SAPPHIRE GLASS (I don't know bout you guys but this is the best display that I have seen on a smart watch). To keep cost down, the processor does take a hit and is a respectable 1.2GHz dual core. Not the best but not the worst either and does what it is designed for. This is all housed within a thick frame and a textured chassis. It's also waterproof up to 50 meters so it is suitable for swimming. Now for the surprising features of this wearable; not only does it have an impressive battery life (4-5 days in normal watch testing and 1.5-2 days with heavy use of features) but it also packs in an optical heart rate sensor, acceleration sensor, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor, light sensor, Triaxial Accelerometer, Bluetooth 4.0, and a GPS. WHAAAT???!!! All this in a £150 (give or take) watch? Let me put this in perspective here: SUUNTO watches are between £250-£400 whereas GARMIN FENIX series are £500-£800 (again, give or take) and feature all the mentioned hardware sensors and maybe even a few more. So to get most of the features of a much more expensive fitness watch in a package costing a fraction of the other watches is quite a feat. Oh, and I saved the best for last. This watch also has 2GB (out of 4GB) of storage for music. Yep, no more carrying around your phone while your out on them runs. Stream your music from the watch to your Bluetooth headphones/earphones. SWEEEEEET!
For the fitness profiles it has the usual run, walk, cycling, swimming (pool and open water), run indoor, cycle indoor, elliptical trainer, climb, trail run, triathlon, skiing, tennis and soccer. Of most interest to me were the latter two as I was curious as to how these would be measured so I made a sorry attempt at both sports and true enough the tennis feature recorded the kinds of shots I was making. As for the football or soccer mode, that just basically told me of the two half's and when to start each half. As most of you can tell from reading all this that this watch is built around doing cardio exercises and that there is no gym profile (shock, horror). Well I did cheat a bit here and just used the "indoor running" profile to record a gym session (after all you're just recording your heart rate). Well the results were not very accurate and there were a lot of drop outs in the data. However, pairing the watch with a Bluetooth HR strap did fix this issue.Also keep in mind that this was a test of a feature not included within the watch (and there must be a reason as to why this wasn't included). So to summarise: while this fitness watch is spot on at recording cardio exercises it isn't very good at recording high intensity training exercises which explains the lack of a gym profile. Oh and the watch also records sleeping habits if you can wear it while sleeping. There is also a feature of using a custom background as a watch face which is kind of a nice. Speaking of watch faces, also features various interchangeable watch faces (my favorite feature).
Now for some of the problems that I've encountered while testing: for some reason when I switched from testing the watch from "fitness" mode to "normal" mode (normal as in just using the watch for notifications), I found that the battery was draining fast that is until I reset the watch to its factory settings and then after that I had no issues with battery drain while using as "normal" mode. Weird I know. Anyway, I almost got almost a full weeks use before needing to charge. In full "fitness" mode (continuous HR turned on, use of GPS around an hour or so a day, sleep tracking and recording of daily activities as well) the battery was...admirable; not ideal but it was good enough as it only lasted one and a half days (2 if I recorded a single activity) before I got the "low battery" warning. The sleep tracking on this was one of the best that I have encountered (compared with similar watches I have owned). As for comfort; the strap that the watch comes with does not last very long as it sort of disintegrates with time and in my opinion, wasn't as comfortable. However, the strap is your basic 22mm strap and as the watch features quick release pins, changing the straps is no big deal. So once I had a nice looking silicone sport strap fitted the watch on my wrist felt nice and comfortable so much so that at times I forgot it was there. Wearing this watch with formal attire was a breeze too as all it took was a quick change of strap to a leather or a leather looking strap and a fitting watch face. Saying that this is a good looking watch is kind of an understatement I think. I would call this a BEAUTIFUL looking watch (as long as you have a nice watch face to go with it) and in my time of wearing it, I did get a few friends and other people enquiring about it.
About the music features of this watch: I really had no need of testing this as my earphones have their own built in storage but test it I did and the results were quite surprising. If you remember the mp3 players of old and how one had to drag music files from the hard drive to the music player then you will have no problem using this as it uses the same train of thought. Just connect the watch to your computer\laptop and copy the music files into the music folder on the watch itself. Easy right? The sound is clear too depending on earphones\headphones used but the downside is that using the music features coupled up with using the GPS does drain the battery pretty quick.
So, in conclusion what did I think of this technological marvel? Would I replace my SUUNTO SPARTAN TRAINER with this. Short answer is NO as this watch although really good at tracking cardio exercises and the like is not suitable for tracking progress in the gym. I will keep the watch for formal events as it looks damn good under a suit with a leather strap and an appropriate watch face and use my SUUNTO (unless I do manage to purchase a FENIX 5) for all of my activities. It is worth purchasing as it features a wide range of activities that are found in many high end devices and it does this at a very reasonable price.
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