Original 3rd Jan 2021: This is my first smartwatch. I have bought a couple of Honor fitness bands earlier for family, but this is my personal first. I have been keenly following the smartwatch space for the last 10 months or so and I'm aware of most of the products in the budget range. While I can afford a slightly more expensive one (GTS2/GTR2 or Honor GT2 Pro, Oppo Watch, Fitbit etc) with calling feature, I wanted to get the feel of a smartwatch in the budget range first. I gave a lot of thought and finally bought this one as it included GPS and Amazon Alexa (yet to be included, but must be available through an OTA update). I'd have loved to buy Amazfit Bip U Pro as it has almost the same features with an LCD display (has GPS and Alexa in the global version named Amazfit Pop Pro). It still isn't released in India.
Coming to the watch's performance, the typical features I tried today (first day) are Heart RATE (HR), SPO2, Stress monitoring and GPS. I have a pulse oximeter from Dr. Trust at home and so I could compare the HR and SPO2. The numbers on the watch aren't very accurate to my surprise (heart rate variation by 5-10 bpm and SPO2 percentage off by 10% points at times) . But I still feel it's more to do with calibration and the way these numbers are measured than inaccuracy of the hardware etc. GPS was a breeze as I walked on the terrace of my rural town house. It won't surprise me if I don't get the same performance in a metro city with a lot of high rise apartments etc. The compass worked fine when I compared it with my phone. Music controls worked fine, bluetooth data transfer or sync was good. I couldn't control the phone camera as I couldn't get that feature to work (refer to image and help me if you can). I didn't face any issue with watch vibration during calls and app notifications. The readability on the watch screen has been really good. Tried a couple of workouts. While the step count seems to be fine, not sure of the accuracy of the stats on other workout modes.
To conclude, I wouldn't say that this watch is a disappointment, but it needs improvements on the accuracy of the fitness stats. Probably I should give it more time, but fitness brands have done better in terms of accuracy (at least the Honor bands I've seen). Eagerly waiting for Alexa update as I'm curious what all it can do.
I would love to update my review after using the watch for few more days. Let's see.
Update (8th Jan 2021): The battery is a clear disappointment as many other users pointed out. I'm hardly getting it for 3.5 days with always on display and an occasional workout. Limited watch faces, both on device (4) and the app (57). Not many out of these 57 do justice to the good display. Waterproof nature of the device is good. I didn't dip it in water, but it got wet when I was bathing my kids and it seems to have a waterproof coating which was in action. I got the camera shutter to work. I hope Amazfit provides updates to fix battery drain and enable Alexa. Notifications didn't have an issue, but could not clear individual items (clear all worked)