How much should you spend on a good smart watch? Not just a smart band that counts your steps and detects your heart rate while doing sports, with some notifications from your smartphone. But a device with a decent-sized, good-quality display that can answer calls. And a pinch of AI, which doesn’t hurt. Amazfit Active offers all this to a competitive price, and it convinced us in the tests for this one review. But to reach a price of just over one hundred euros, he has to make compromises. The point is to understand what to give up for an excellent price and a competitive device: we help you do this in this review.
Our review of Amazfit Active
In recent years, Amazfit has been changing its position on the market, with high-level smart watches and advanced technologies, the result of research work between Cupertino and Shenzhen. But he’s also trying to simplify and rationalize its range of watches for the mid-range of the market and Amazfit Active wants to position itself right here. A product for those who want something more than a simple wrist pedometer, but who are not ready to spend hundreds of euros on the latest technologies.
With a price of 129,90 euro, aims at those who want a smart watch for every day, both in design and functions. But he doesn’t give up a partner to sleep better and train more effectively. In short: a product for a huge slice of the Italian market. And precisely for this reason, it has to face competition from many products. But as we will see, it succeeds quite well, at least in its price range.
Simple design, but well made
Already from the packaging we understand what it has focused on simplicity: we only find the watch and its proprietary charging cable, which will need a transformer with a USB-A port for charging. And the look of the device is equally simple. We have tested the version Midnight Blackbut you can also find the Petal Pink and Lavender Purple versions (the latter with stainless steel structure and Italian vegan leather strap).
The watch case has a profile around the aluminum display, while on the back we find black plastic. A tempered glass covers the 1.75 inch displayrectangular in shape (it is slightly taller than wide).
We find only one button on the right side, as soon as the edge ends aluminum. We like the tactile feedback of the button: it seems well made, like the rest of the smart watch. Around the clock you will also find microphones and speakers, which as we will see are not only useful during calls.
The back houses the sensors and magnetic couplings for charging with the included cable.
One of the features we most appreciated about this watch is its lightness: It weighs just 24 grams without the strapwhich of its own adds just over ten more. Just 10.75mm thick, 35.9mm wide and 42.36mm highit fits easily on any wrist and allows you to forget you have it on when there are no notifications or you are training.
The device seems resistant and well built: we noticed no signs of any kind even when we “mistreated” it a bit during training. And the resistance to 5 atmospheres it also makes it suitable for swimming: so don’t worry, you can get it wet without problems.
I also appreciated the simple mechanism for replacing the strap: just press on the hook to unlock it. The strap itself is silicone and quite comfortable if you use it mainly for training. You can replace it with any 20mm wide strapextra convenience.
Amazfit Active review: a display for all your information
The setup process takes very little time. By scanning the QR code on the device you can connect it to yours app Zepp (if you haven’t downloaded it yet, the code will send you to the link in the store you use). You’ll need to allow notifications and calls, among other things. But it’s all intuitive and at the end of the link you will also have a short tutorial to understand how to move on the smart watch.
Lo 1.75 inch screen It makes using the Amazfit Active really comfortable: we appreciated it a lot during this review. It has a rather high pixel density good at 341 PPI, which allows for well-defined images on the screen. Some applications, such as the one for the weather which has interesting animations, are really pleasant to look at. Brightness is also good, which makes it visible under the sun. Although we fear that the situation will be more complicated this summer under direct sun: there are alternatives (more expensive, it must be said), which offer more. Also, there is no automatic brightness.
The display has over 80 watch faces to personalize your experience. And with ZeppOS 2.0 you will have access to several apps to download on your device. Thanks to the large, high-quality display, you can use them all from the smart watch without having to use your phone too much. And the same goes for incoming messages and notifications, which are clearly readable.
An (almost) complete smart watch
Navigating the device is easy. Clicking the button allows you to open the list of available applications when you are in the home page, or returns you to the home page if you are in the menus. A swipe down shows quick access options: battery, night or theater mode, flashlight and more. Swiping up instead shows notifications. On the left and right you can view other screens: basically you will find workouts, heart rate, weather and more – but you can change as you like.
Notifications are easy to read, you can read an email in its entirety. However, they do not show attached images (you will see emojis instead) and cannot let us listen to voice messages from the most used apps. You can reply with pre-set messages, which you can customize from the smartphone app.
Equipped with microphone and speaker, allows you to receive and make calls (also allowing you to register up to 50 favorite contacts). The audio quality is not stellar, however the speakers are loud enough to let you hear the call even in the car or on the street. On the other end of the phone call, your voice is heard well, better than we expected from a watch (especially in this price range).
You can also use Alexa as your smart assistant by connecting it to the app on your smartphone. It is activated both from the menus and by holding down the button, but there is no voice activation. The voice assistant responds both by writing on the menu and by voice.
It’s not as responsive as a smartphone, but he understood us well during the tests and provided appropriate answers. We find it rather inconvenient to use Alexa via the watch, so we found ourselves asking little for her help, other than for tests. But it is an additional option that we are sure many will find useful.
Lots of health features, with a pinch of AI
The sensors on the smart watch to detect heart rate, oxygenation and stress allow us to monitor our health all day and provide details on how we feel. The PAI score (Personal Activity Intelligence), to which Amazfit has accustomed us, gives a general evaluation of how you moved during the day: how much time you spent standing, the steps taken, the cardio sessions and more. The value of “Readiness” instead analyzes how you slept and indicates your mental and physical recovery during sleep.
The algorithms used by the Zepp app summarize different data so that they are easily digestiblethe. And they give clear and immediate feedback: both from the smart watch and from the smartphone app they understood the differences between when we found time to train and when we had spent too much time in front of the PC.
Some advanced features, based on artificial intelligence, improve the experience. As Zepp Aura, which allows you to relax with suitable sounds and music. And in the morning it provides us with a complete report on sleep, highlighting four risk factors: insomnia, sleep apnea and snoring, napping, daytime sleepiness. Then use a Large Language Model (LLM) which allows you to communicate with the application in a natural way: it will be like talking to an expert (or almost).
You can take advantage of these features for 14 days free, and then purchase the annual subscription if desired. We don’t have sleep problems, so we find the analysis in the free version of the app sufficient. But it could be an added value for those who don’t get enough rest.
Training made simple
For training, Amazfit has 120 sports modes, although the level of detail of the parameters changes a lot. The race tracking is particularly well done, which we found very convenient to use: on the display we can easily read the pace, the time elapsed, the kilometers travelled. The heart rate reading seemed particularly precise to us, even when comparing the results with heart rate monitors and other (more expensive) smartwatches.
The system a five GPS satellites does a great job of tracking our route during workouts. Although, on only one occasion, it took too long to connect: we had already been running for about a kilometre. But this was a problem that never arose again: overall, we are very satisfied, especially considering the price. Every kilometer the watch reads your progress in English and at the end of the workout it shows you the route taken, as well as all the statistics and recovery times.
For cardio activities…