Long term user/early adopter of Wear OS smartwatches, and everyone in my family (except me the lone non-Apple holdout) has an Apple Watch. I can definitely say that overall this is the best smartwatch I’ve used, and, yes, that even includes the Apple Watches.
First of all, not even for one second am I going to invest in yet another Wear OS watch. I had a couple of Wear OS 1.0 watches, including one that was upgradeable to Wear OS 2.0, which basically rendered the watch unusable. I then upgraded to a Wear OS 2.0 watch only to have Google and the watch manufacturer just completely abandon the watch and the entire platform. Now Google has come out with Wear OS 3.0 as if they first two completely failed versions never existed, and want me to pay $300-500 for it??? No, thank you! So, I started looking at alternative watches like TicWatch, Garmin, Fitbit, etc., when I came across this AmazFit brand. I was immediately impressed with the features/price ratio. I had just about settled on the AmazFit GTS 4 Mini when I decided to go for the AmazFit GTS 4 instead.
The AmazFit GTS 4 does everything and more that I want from a smartwatch. It has far more sports modes, better GPS system, vastly superior battery life, and more accurate bio sensors than any other watch out there I’ve tried. I’ve had Wear OS watches that allowed me to initiate as well as fully respond to SMS text messages, and frankly I found the whole process to be cumbersome and almost useless. This watch allows you to receive notifications of incoming texts, and even quick respond with pre-defined custom messages. You can also receive, dismiss, or even answer/talk phone calls. I can also receive (or not) notifications on my watch for every other app on my phone, control YouTube Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and even download music to the watch and use bluetooth headphones/earbuds to listen to it without having my phone nearby. It monitors sleep very accurately, and all the bio sensors seem to be very accurate and reliable. Setting up and configuring the watch was much easier than setting up my Wear OS watches and getting them to work properly, and it was even easier than setting up my family member’s Apple Watches.
The AmazFit brand is also popular enough that you can get accessories for them, like charging docks, screen protectors/cases, watch bands, etc. — everything that you can only get for like the Apple Watch, but can’t get for the Wear OS watches because Android hardware is so fractured.
So far the AmazFit GTS 4 has actually functioned flawlessly and I haven’t encountered anything that didn’t work or feel like I’m missing any feature(s). Simply put, it’s just a great watch, especially if you’re using an Android phone.
One Week Update: I’ve now been using this watch for a full week and I still feel the same about it — simply the best smartwatch I’ve encountered. In this week I’ve found even more watch faces and even found an online editor that allows me to create my own custom watch face. I’m running the same or similar faces to my family’s Apple Watches, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, etc. My sleep monitoring has been spot on as has my heart BPM. I’m counting steps, miles, and time in multiple apps, and I can definitely say that the AmazFit GTS 4 is as accurate as all of them. It also has identical accuracy to my wife’s Apple Watch. The battery life has been superb. I walked all around Disney World for over 12 hours with the watch tracking my steps and heartbeat automatically, but also keeping track of my walking, as well as reading/answering texts, phone calls, etc. throughout the day, and the battery never went below 70%. At the end of the day my phone with its 5,000ah battery only had ~25% charge left. My previous Wear OS watches would’ve been dead after 6-8 hours of heavy use like that, and my wife’s Apple Watch was at ~20% charge at the end of the day. Still absolutely loving this watch!
Genie - Research Bot
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