Amazfit GTS 3 long-term review: smartwatch with ten days of battery

As a big smartwatch fan, I use either the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or the Apple Watch SE, depending on my daily driver smartphone. While looking for Christmas gifts, I came across the Amazfit GTS 3. At a €149 recommended retail price (RRP), that is definitely worth a second look. I bought the watch myself, so I am passing on my experiences unvarnished. I took it with me on vacation and tested it for almost three weeks.

Unboxing

The watch is cleverly packaged: it sits in a box with the paperwork, and the charging cable is in a second box. At first glance it looks like an Apple Watch. I wanted to test whether it can keep up.

Display and build quality

The case is made of aluminum and is 8.8 millimeters thin. The AMOLED display has a resolution of 341 ppi and gets really bright. You can still read the watch even in direct sunlight. The build quality is very high, and thanks to the 20-millimeter replaceable strap you can change the style again and again. At 24.4 grams it is comfortable to wear and, despite its 42 millimeters, doesn’t look too big even on my wrist. It is operated via the touch display and the crown, both quick and without lag.

Health and sports

The biometric sensor has six photodiodes.

• Blood oxygen: I had it monitored regularly. Without a comparison device I can’t say much about its accuracy, except that the measurement is accurate and takes place regularly.
• Heart rate: During workouts the watch measured nearly the same heart rate as the fitness machine I was using at the same time.
• Sleep: Sleep tracking works surprisingly accurately, at least for the times I fall asleep and wake up. Naps are recorded automatically from 20 minutes. The sleep analysis in the app is very detailed and roughly reflects what my Galaxy Watch 4 and my Apple Watch measure.
• Sports: Over 150 sports can be tracked. I wore the watch on the treadmill, the cross trainer, on walks, and while jogging. Distance tracking and heart rate tracking are surprisingly accurate. Even on the treadmill, the GTS 3 shows roughly the same distance as the machine. Galaxy Watch and Apple Watch often show not insignificant deviations in running distance, which impressed me a lot.
• Automatic workout detection is available for running, walking, and cycling. The sensitivity can be adjusted. After a workout, the watch shows when you have recovered enough.
• Activity index: It measures how often and how long you do activities with an elevated heart rate. The goal is a daily value of at least 100. That is comparable to the activities at Apple.

The watch is water resistant to 50 meters. I went swimming with it several times on vacation and took it into the water once by accident. It works flawlessly.

Battery

The battery really does last ten days, including workouts and notifications turned on. That thrilled me, because Galaxy Watch (since the fourth generation) and Apple Watch have to be charged every day, which bothers me enormously. On vacation I was able to track a five-hour bike ride completely and still had a week of battery afterward.

Smart features

The GTS 3 brings along pretty much all the familiar smartwatch functions, for example app notifications and call notifications. You can’t make phone calls. I have never used that on watches that can do it, either. With the Alexa voice assistant you can handle various tasks.

Points of criticism

• Watch faces: In the app you can set up numerous watch faces and complications. The complications are not linked to the widgets, though. I can’t tap on workout to open the workout app, and not on weather or calendar either. They are just a dead display.
• Controls: They work well and smoothly, but are not quite as intuitive as with other manufacturers. You have to take more time to find apps, and not every app has a widget that you call up by swiping left. I miss a widget for starting a workout. I have to go into the overview. For a fitness watch that is too inconvenient. The fitness overview and summary, on the other hand, can be set as a widget. I can call up the workout overview as a shortcut by long-pressing the crown. But I would rather use the shortcut for something else like the timer and set my frequent workout types as a widget.
• Black screen: A few times, one of the overview screens was black during tracking while all the others worked. So far I have been able to fix that completely with a restart of the watch.

Verdict

With the few exceptions mentioned, I was absolutely satisfied for almost three weeks. Above all, the display, the design, and the indestructible battery life won me over. At a €149 RRP you can’t go wrong here. Small improvements would be welcome: linking complications to widgets and making it simpler to start the activity tracker. Otherwise the Amazfit GTS 3 absolutely convinces me, and I am curious what Amazfit will bring to market in the future.