Amazfit Bip

The fitness tracker that thinks it’s a smart watch

Long battery life, lots of fitness data options and smart watch capabilities

Although you’ve never heard of it, this is one of the world’s most popular smart watches. This is because it’s made by the Beijing-based smartphone giant Xiaomi, and most of its users are in China. It’s not even officially available in the UK, but that hasn’t stopped importers offering it via Amazon, and if you venture into the wilds of ebay you can even find it for a few quid less. At around £60, it’s cheaper than even basic devices, let alone the likes of the Apple Watch. So is it any good?

Surprisingly, yes. The Bip has a colour touchscreen that, unlike Apple’s, stays on all the time, so you don’t have to rely on it recognising that you’ve swung your wrist up towards your face before displaying anything. It’s quite coarse, but perfectly legible and the battery is rated to last as long as a month.

It’s not suitable for swimming or showering, but is water-resistant so will survive exercising in all weathers. It also contains both a heart-rate tracker and GPS, as well as the usual pedometer. Xiaomi’s MMI Fit app isn’t the easiest to figure out at first, but once you get the hang of it you can get huge amounts of information about how far you’ve walked, run or cycled, and it also tracks your sleep patterns.

You can compete with other users, a popular feature in China, but if you want competition closer than Xinjiang province you might have to persuade a friend to buy one. This is a smart watch, not just a tracking bracelet, so you can use it to get notifications from apps on your smartphone, such as incoming messages.

Of course, it’s not perfect. That amazing battery life only applies if you avoid its more power-hungry features, like GPS mapping. Yet even when we used these, it still lasted days, beating pricier rivals. Distance measurements weren’t entirely accurate – it sometimes counted phantom steps when we weren’t moving – and it consistently thought our heart rate was a little lower than it was.

The plastic case is undeniably chunky, and the touchscreen is a bit laggy. The only other fitness platform supported is Google Fit, so you can’t connect to Apple Healthkit or services such as Strava. None of this changes the fact that the Bip is a real bargain.

SPECIFICATIONS

1.28in 176x176 pixel touchscreen • Heart-rate monitor • GPS • 802.11n Wi-fi • Bluetooth 4.0 • IP68 water and dust resistant • Requires Android 4.4 or IOS 8 or higher device • 9.5x34x40mm (HXWXD) www.snipca.com/28357

VERDICT: There are more accurate fitness trackers and smarter watches, but they cost a lot more than this one, which works amazingly well ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE: Garmin Vivosmart HR+ £105 With proper smart watches costingng around £200 or more, this is the nearest fitness-band contender