Amazfit T-Rex Pro

An affordable fitness watch wrapped in a retro rugged design.

You get a lot of features for your money with the T-Rex Pro, but a ‘wow factor’ isn’t one of them.

The T-Rex Pro looks almost exactly like the original Amazfit T-Rex. This new version also has four screws in the bezel for a practical, industrial and slightly plasticky look.

There are also four metal buttons (mode, back, up and down) on the edge of the casing that are big enough to easily press while running or when wearing gloves. Too easily, in fact, making accidental presses inevitable.

A 47.7mm radius watch that’s 13.5mm thick, the T-Rex Pro is a chunky polycarbonate product that has a relatively masculine look, but its paltry 59.4g means it never feels heavy when being worn. Zepp says that the T-Rex Pro is shock-resistant, can withstand -40°C to 70°C, copes with salt spray and meets the MIL-STD810G standard, though by far its most important rugged feature is that it’s waterproof down to 100m. That’s double what the original version was capable of.

Although the T-Rex Pro is ostensibly a fitness-orientated watch it also has a few smartwatch-like features. It’s nowhere near being the ‘ultimate personal assistant’, as claimed by the maker, but it can be set to haptically buzz for incoming text messages, calls and reminders. It can also exert basic control of the music on your phone.

Hook it up to a smartphone via Bluetooth – a simple task – and you’ll also get a weather forecast, sunrise and sunset times, and the current moon phase.

The tempered glass touchscreen is plenty responsive enough, which makes the T-Rex Pro a pleasure to use while on the move. Small swipes up and down swap between the watch face and the shortcut control panel, where you do everything from turn on the flashlight (which is not bright enough for any practical purpose!) and engage power-saving/ do-not-disturb modes, to choosing a screensaver and setting the screen’s brightness. It’s also possible to set the display to be ‘always-on’ during set times.

The T-Rex Pro arguably includes more features than it should at its low price. For day-to-day use, its GPS and heart rate monitoring are probably the most important, and both worked well during our fortnight-long test.

So during and after a run, you’ll get at-a-glance data on the time elapsed, calories burned, your average heart rate, and even finer detail like cadence, average stride, speed, elevation changes, and heart rate zones. As soon as you finish a run the T-Rex Pro will give you a recommended recovery time.

If you’re after a rugged smartwatch to accurately track and map your exercise while measuring your heart-rate, and also your sleep this is a great value option. However, its flurry of data is often meaningless and it doesn’t talk to third-party apps.

Jamie Carter