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Your friend can. Change their hair or the style of their jeans, but you’ll still recognize them. Amazfit isn’t my friend, or even human, but I’ve tried several similar-looking fitness trackers from the manufacturer Zepp (formerly known as Huami). They all shared the same constants: Zep Health’s operating system was annoying, the watches never connected reliably, and the proprietary Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) measure wasn’t helpful or intuitive. In addition, the straps are plastic and uncomfortable to wear.
So I didn’t have high hopes for the new Amazfit GTR 3 Pro ($230). But surprise me – after three weeks, this is actually the first of my favorite Zepp outfits. The bluetooth connection is improved, the strap is broken, and I’m sure to love the PAI. Naturally, it doesn’t hurt that the watch keeps telling me I’m in “amazing physical condition.”
Entry
Photo: Amazfit
More than many other gadgets, how much you like a fitness tracker depends on how much you like the software. Are your friends using the wearable or the app? Is the data easy to read and applicable to your life? Every fitness tracker has one main proprietary health metric, like Fitbit’s Daily Fitness Score or Garmin’s Body Battery.
Zep Health uses PAI based on research by Professor Ulrik Wislof of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It uses your age, gender, resting heart rate, and heart rate data from the past seven days to calculate your PAI, but it’s actually a metric similar to Amazon’s Activity Points. You collect PAI when you do activities that increase your heart rate. It starts with an initial goal of earning 30 PAI per day and aims for the final goal of achieving 100 PAI per day.
I qualify, but not exceptionally. I blew the PAI scale, biking my kids to school, running 3 to 4 miles a day, and hanging around my kitchen drinking Go-Gurts to collect over 250 PAI points a day. To PAI’s fairness, the watch not only automatically tracked my cycling workouts, but also put them together. I realized that I spend over an hour on my bike every day as I get around everyone.
You can change your goals, such as the number of steps you want to hit or the hours you sleep, but you can’t change your PAI. As much as I feel waking up every morning and being told I’m as fit as a 20-year-old (I’m not), it’s not a good motivator to improve.
Other parameters measured by Zep Health OS are steps, sleep, heart rate and activities. You can scroll through a wide range of workouts, from Zumba to board games to regular cycling, walking, and trail running (but there’s no workout category for karaoke right now). It has onboard GPS, which is amazing in a fitness tracker at this price point, and it was very accurate—the measurements matched my Garmin Instinct 2S.
You can also sync your data with WeChat, Health, Strava, Amazon Alexa and the Relive app. It has advanced training features like VO2 Max, and can analyze your training load, although I don’t trust these as training tools (if you must know, I’m in “good exercise mode”, typo). I do not find the data credible.
A real relationship
Photo: Amazfit
When I tried the Amazfit watch last year, it often disconnected from my phone. The new model not only has improved Bluetooth connectivity, but the GTR 3 Pro is even better to look at and wear, making it much easier to use. I tried the brown leather version which is not made of genuine leather. The strap was stiff and uncomfortable out of the box but softened as the weeks went by. There are two knobs on the right side of the thin aluminum bezel, which are reliable pushers and feel good to turn.
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