your friend can change their haircut or jeans style, but you will still be able to recognize them. Amazfit isn’t my friend, not even a human being, but now I’ve tested various iterations of similar-looking fitness trackers from its maker, Zepp (formerly known as Huami). They all shared the same constants: Zepp Health OS was almost unusably annoying, watches never reliably stayed connected, and the proprietary Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) metric was neither helpful nor intuitive. On top of that, the straps felt sticky and uncomfortable to wear.
So I didn’t have high expectations for the new thing. Amazfit GTR 3 Pro ($230). But color me surprised: After three weeks, this is the first of Zepp’s handhelds that I really like. The Bluetooth connection has improved, the strap has broken and I am almost convinced that I like PAI. Naturally, it doesn’t hurt that the watch keeps telling me I’m in “excellent physical condition”.
Logging in
Photography: Amazfit
More than many other devices, how much you like a fitness tracker depends on how much you like its software. Do your friends use the wearable device or its app? Is the data easy to read and applicable to your life? Each fitness tracker also has a core proprietary health metric, like Fitbit’s Daily Fitness Score or Garmin’s Body Battery.
Zepp Health uses PAI based on research by Ulrik Wisløff, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It uses your age, gender, resting heart rate, and heart rate data from the last seven days to calculate your PAI, but it’s really just a metric similar to Amazon Activity Points. As you do activities that increase your heart rate, you accumulate PAI. Start with the initial goal of earning 30 PAI per day and aim for the ultimate goal of achieving 100 PAI per day.
I am in shape, but not exceptionally. I surpassed the PAI measurement, racking up over 250 PAI points a day by biking my kids to school, running 3-4 miles a day, and mindlessly walking around drinking Go-Gurts in my kitchen. To be fair to PAI, the watch didn’t just automatically track my cycling workouts, it added them too. I found that while I am transporting everyone, I spend over an hour on a bike each day.
You can change your goals, such as the number of steps or hours of sleep you want to get, but you can’t change your PAI. As nice as it feels to wake up every morning and be told I’m as fit as a 20-year-old (I’m not), it’s not really much of an incentive to improve.
The other metrics Zepp Health OS measures are steps, sleep, heart rate, and activities. You can scroll through a ton of workouts, including everything from Zumba to board games, biking, walking, and standard trail running (there’s still no workout category for karaoke, though). It has built-in GPS, which is amazing for a fitness tracker at this price point, and it was pretty accurate – measurements were consistent with my Garmin instinct 2S.
You can also sync your data with WeChat, Health, Strava, Amazon Alexa and Relive app. It even has advanced training features like VO2 Max and can analyze your training load, although I wouldn’t trust these as training tools (I’m in “good training condition” if you want to know, typo). I just never found the reliable data.
true connection
Photography: Amazfit
When I tried an Amazfit watch last year, it often got disconnected from my phone. The newer model is much easier to use not only because the Bluetooth connection has improved, but also because the GTR 3 Pro is more pleasant to look at and use. I tried the brown leather version, which is not made of real leather. The strap was stiff and uncomfortable out of the box, but it did soften as the weeks went by. There are two knobs on the right side of the slim aluminum bezel, which are reliable push buttons and feel nice to turn.
.
