Amazfit Stratos
AMAZFIT’S FIRST FORAY INTO AUSTRALIA COULD BE A BIG HIT FOR THOSE WHO PUT FITNESS FIRST.
XAOMI HAS MADE a name for itself in the US on the back of a series of competitively priced fitness trackers and smartphones, so we were pretty excited when the company announced it would be officially available here in April. It might be one of the first lot devices we’ve seen from Huami (a sub-brand of Xiaomi), but the Amazfit Stratos is one of the brand’s most full featured smartwatches, offering advanced bio-physical tracking across 16 different activities and some premium smartwatch functionalities.
While the powerful features of the Xiaomi Huami AmazFit Stratos are definitely selling points, its standout feature is a generous battery life that lasts up to five days under moderate usage conditions or 35 hours using continuous GPS-enabled fitness tracking. This feature not only means you can use it to keep track of extended endurance exercises like marathons, but it also makes it exceptionally convenient for ongoing day-to-day use.
This battery life is in part facilitated by the large, but less power hungry 1.34-inch transflective colour LCD screen. This display definitely lacks the vibrancy of an AMOLED screen, making the watch face look overexposed even in a dark room, but this aesthetic sacrifice means it can run for the better part of a week without top ups.
This screen is wrapped by a ceramic bezel that’s etched with second increments, adding detail to the digital watch face and making the screen border less obvious. Between its large screen and prominent bezel the top edge of the watch spans 4.5cm, which means it’s more suited to bigger wrists. Yet despite this grand appearance, the Amazfit Stratos actually only weighs a 59.5g thanks to a hardy and lightweight carbon fibre body, and the soft silicone wristband makes it one of the more comfortable smartwatches we’ve worn.
The AmazeFit Stratos has a familiar interface that is similar to what you see on recent Galaxy Watches where you scroll left for notifications and right to access customisable widgets. Three buttons mounted on the right hand side of the device provide the unlock, select and back functions and offer the option for custom shortcuts using long or double presses. The capacitive touchscreen picks up the remainder of the controls where you swipe up for notifications and down for settings, which adds up to an effective way of navigating the device’s applications.
It might not have the library of apps you find on Wear OS, but everything that’s there is really useful and responsive. The activity tracking is comprehensive, offering accurate GPS and GLONASS tracking, and there’s also advanced fitness metrics like VO2 Max estimates and cumulative training load fatigue levels. The sleep tracking isn’t as in-depth as the market leaders, and you have to load music directly onto the device form a computer if you want to listen to it over Bluetooth headphones, but everything else is on par or better than the best fitness watches.
With industry standard 5ATM water resistance, Strava integration and local availability at prices as low as $260, the Xiaomi Huami AmazFit is a solid choice of fitness tracker for those with an active lifestyle.