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| Amazfit Bip |
I've been wearing the
Amazfit Bip GPS watch for the past three weeks. I was a little apprehensive about testing this watch as I love my Garmin but not everyone can afford a Garmin, especially as fast as they update them, so I figured why not try this out. Retail on the watch is $99.99.
The Amazfit Bip is a tracking device that tracks your steps as well as all your activities. The packaging looks very similar to a well known competing company. Very nice presentation. As you can see below, the watch comes with a little note and that's about it. I will say that fits in line with all other GPS watches out there. Nobody gives any paper directions anymore. Fortunately for this watch, one is not really needed since it's very simple to use.
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| Welcom |
Upon getting the box open, you get a nice view of the watch itself. Looks very similar to an Apple Watch. In fact, I think that most, if they didn't look close enough, would never know it.
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| Box presentation |
The watch also includes a charging cable to charge the watch.
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| What you get |
I plugged mine in right away and let it charge for a few hours until it was ready to go. One thing I can say about this watch is that no competitor can even come close to the battery life. While I charged it a few times while testing it. I probably could have made it with one single charge in three weeks. The battery is amazing and I love not having to worry about being low as I do with my Garmin.
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| Charging |
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| The watch |
As you can see, the watch is quite thin, it's very light and super comfortable to wear. One drawback is that they don't recommend you shower with it, although I do wash it off after my workout and rain does not effect it at all.
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| Side view |
The watch has several pages that you can scroll through. All you do is press the watch button on the right side and that allows you to use the touch screen. This is a great feature as there is no worry about starting something you didn't want to start.
Status gives you a summary of your day including steps, heartrate, miles moved, calories used, and sessions in which you have not moved in over an hour.
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| Status page |
While it's a useful page, I downloaded a custom watch face as shown below that basically gave you a summary of those items. Note the watch is set up for 24hr time so you need to download a watch face if you want to be on a 12hr time.
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| Watch face |
Next comes activity.
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| Activity |
You can set it for Outdoor running, Treadmill, Cycling, Walking, Activity History, and Activity Settings. I'll go through a few for you.
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| Outdoor Running |
First of all, you need to complete an activity. When you are ready to start, you can press cycling and it will start to find the GPS. Yes, it's much slower than the big names but not really much longer (maybe 30 seconds longer). Once it's finds your GPS position, you can press start and it gives you a countdown. Not sure I really like that feature as I want it to start tracking as soon as I push start but there's no way to change it.
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| Cycling |
When you are done with your run or ride, you can hard press the side button and it will ask you if you want to continue or save it. It's really that simple. You can also set the watch to hard press the button and it will start the activity you use the most.
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| Activity History |
Once you are done saving it, you can look at the History on the watch or you can sync it to the app on your phone. I'll get to the app later.
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| History page 1 |
The watch has several screens under history so you can see all the details of your activity. In this case, the ride I did. I really like the Climbed distance. That's one I have not seen on other watches.
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| History page 2 |
The watch will keep numerous activities on the watch. There were 13 activities on my watch now.
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| History page 3 |
You can also see the route you did on the watch which is a cool feature.
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| History page 4 |
Also, it shows you the uphill and downhill elevation. All the stats you need are readily available on the watch. This works the same whether it's a run, bike, etc.
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| History page 5 |
Next up is some of the other features on the watch. First up is the weather application.
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| Weather |
It gives you a nice summary of a couple days. As you can see, it's been quite hot here. The app syncs to where you are automatically and works well.
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| Weather page 1 |
The watch has an Alarm. I know many complain about other watches not being able to wake you up. This one vibrates quite strongly to wake you up. I never slept through it.
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| Alarm |
The watch also has a timer as well as a stopwatch should you need one. Didn't really use it but then I never use a timer or stopwatch for anything.
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| Timer |
The watch comes with a Compass as well. That could prove useful if you are in an area, such as when you trail run, and you don't know the area well. Again, not really a feature I use but handy to have on your watch.
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| Compass |
Of course, there are Settings on the watch. Here you can change watch faces, change the long press button, Adjust the brightness, Find your phone(very handy actually), do a Factory reset, and Turn it off. I never turned it off the whole time I used it as it was either charging or on my wrist.
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| Settings |
You also have the ability to set up Alipay, although good luck finding anything that has this. I assume this is more for overseas rather than in the US.
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| Alipay |
Another great feature that all watches should have is notifications. I like how they have this set up much better than Garmin. I can detail exactly the kind of notifications I want on the watch. For example, I can put just my Facebook notices if I want. You can't do that with Garmin. You need to pick social media and it picks everything you have which can drive you crazy. On this watch, I just set it up to get texts and missed calls. I love having this in the office and the range from your phone is great. I was able to see missed called in another part of my building without my phone next to me.
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| Notifications - blacked out for privacy |
As far as the app goes, it's got much of the same information many of the watches out there give you. My biggest issue with it is that it won't sync with Strava - you need an upgraded watch by Amazfit for that but the app is good enough if you just want to track your runs and not be social. While I have not tested their other watches, they too, look pretty awesome at a reasonable price.
You can see your steps as shown below. You can also see your sleep. I did notice that sleep tracking was not that accurate. I had several days it said I only slept four hours which I know was not true. I do think it got a little better after using it longer but still was off quite a bit. It's not really a function I use anyway, even on my Garmin.
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| My day |
It keeps a nice log of your activities. You can also see all of them, the last 30 days or the last week. You can see below that I ran on Tuesday and Thursday and also did a bike ride on Saturday. I'll get into the details of each activity shortly.
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| My week |
You can also get more details on the sleep activity.
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| My sleep |
You can keep track of your weight as shown below. It's funny this says I'm underweight when all other scales tell me I'm overweight by about 15 points. I'm hoping to get back to my goal weight.
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| My weight |
The watch also tracks your daily activity as you meet your goals. It even gives you your streak record - 5 days for me (I had it set at 8,000 steps/day)
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| Streak times |
As shown below, there was one error I received when syncing and could not get the data into the app. Not sure what happened but it was the only time it happened.
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| All activities and error |
After you ride, you can go into your phone and see all your stats. Lots of information here regarding your ride. Once again, I really like the climbing statistic.
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| Cycling data |
As you change pages, you can see the speed for each mile as well as your fastest and slowest speed.
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| Speed data |
You can also see your speed and heartrate on a charts as seen below.
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| Speed/heartrate data |
It also gives you a great picture of your route with paces changing colors.
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| Map from Ride |
The app also tracks running really well too. Total time, pace, etc.
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| Run data |
You can also see detailed splits.
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| Pace data |
And again it shows a pace charge and heartrate chart.
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| Pace/heartrate data |
As well as a map. As you can see below, the map is kind of fragmented below. I'm not really sure why it did this, however, it did it for at least 3 of the 15+ times I used it.
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| Map error |
You can see below, this is what it should actually look like (although it was on a different run in the same area). The error did not effect accuracy though which, by the way, is excellent. It took a few activities in the area but after that, my Garmin and Bip were pretty much spot on for distance.
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| Correct map |
The app does a great job at also tracking your steps so you can see those for the day as well as the distance I've run/walked and calories burned. How do you like that stat on the gas saved too? 4.85 pt of gas. Ha, nice! That's a new stat I've not seen.
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| My steps |
The watch also breaks down your day in details. Probably too detailed actually. I'm not sure how I would use the below information (other than to know that I'm active)
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| Details of day |
It's funny that some of my running shows up as fast walking. What can I say, I'm slow while running on the trails, but again, it's quite accurate.
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| More details of day |
Overall, for the money, this is one of the best tracking and GPS watches I've ever used. There's several things that I loved about the watch:
- It's light and comfortable (you don't even notice it's on your wrist) It's much more comfortable than my Garmin HR and much smaller too.
- It's surprisingly accurate. I was within 0.05 of most activities compared to my Garmin.
- It's inexpensive. For the price, you can't beat this watch with all the features.
- It comes with a good app with all the data you would want.
- The battery is unbelievable. I can get a week out of my Garmin but I'm sure I could have gotten 3-4 weeks from the Bip without charging. No GPS watch I know can do that especially considering I'm using the GPS on average 5 days a week.
- Notifications are nice and the watch and app remain connected. It was very reliable.
The only real drawback for me was not being able to sync to Strava (although Amazfit does offer ones that do sync with Strava). If it had this function, I'd probably drop Garmin and go with this full time. This is certainly a GPS watch considering if you are looking for basic GPS and tracking capabilities with a few smartwatch features thrown in for good measure. In my opinion, there's not a better GPS watch out there at this price level. It's worth looking into if you need a new tracking device.
Have a great day and....Keep Running!!!!
Note: I received an Amazfit Bip in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own and I was not required to give a particular opinion.
