Review: Amazfit GTR 2e Smartwatch

The Amazfit GTR 2e is the smaller brother of the Amazfit GTR 2 which was launched in November 2020. The ‘e’ variant is the more affordable version of Amazfit’s flagship model. Amazfit GTR 2e retails at S$189, and is S$40 cheaper than the GTR 2. With a lower price tag, there are some features cut but you stand to gain on battery life.

Unboxing

In the box you’ll find the following:

• Amazfit GTR 2e smartwatch
• Magnetic charging cradle
• User manual

Tech specs

Build quality and design

The Amazfit GTR 2e has a clean and minimalistic design, with just two buttons on the right side. The round face has a subtle line markings to denote the hours. It is also rather slim and lightweight, measuring 10.8mm and weighing just 47g (with strap). Amazfit GTR 2e is available in three different colours – Obsidian Black, Slate Grey, and Matcha Green. The review unit I have is the Obsidian Black model.

The strap on the Amazfit GTR 2e is made from silicon, which feels rather soft and flexible. It is also really comfortable to wear. The buttons on the watch is tactile and responsive. Charging the Amazfit GTR 2e is very easy as the the back of the watch snaps on magnetically to the charging cradle.

Zepp App

Before we get into Amazfit GTR 2e in detail, let’s talk about the Zepp app. The Zepp app is the accompanying smartphone app that you need to have to use the Amazfit GTR 2e. The app allows you to see your health and fitness data in more detail, and also allows you to set many different settings such as display and adjusting the type of heart rate detection.

Screen

Amazfit GTR 2e features a 1.39-inch AMOLED display which produces sharp graphics regardless of the watch face you choose. There isn’t an advice to many nits of brightness the display maxes out to but it is bright enough to view in direct sunlight.

Watch faces

When you first activate the Amazfit GTR 2e, there will only be about seven types of watch faces to choose from. However, the Zepp app has a “Store’ which you can download watches faces from.

There are many types of watch faces ranging from digital, analogue, and even data packed ones. As of now, the store only contains watch faces, but it could be possible for Amazfit to include apps in the future.

Always-On display

Amazfit GTR 2e features Always-On display in a unique way. Instead of displaying the full watch face as shown in the store, the watch face transform in a minimalistic way of displaying the time. Each watch face has it own unique ‘Always-On Display’ look. You can refer to the examples below to get a clearer example:

User Interface

The Amazfit GTR 2e is pretty easy to use. On the watch face screen, swiping down will show a control center while swiping up will reveal your notifications. Check out the video demo below:

Swiping left and right across the screen will allow you to access your “Quick Access” apps. You can choose up to five apps in the Zepp app to be in the list of your “Quick Access” apps. Check out the video demo below:

Within the “Quick Access” apps, there is also a something like a summary page where it shows little cards of information. In the Zepp app, you can choose what “shortcut cards” you want to be displayed in the summary page. Check out the video below below:

Going from the ‘Always-On display’ to the full watch face can be triggered by a flick of your wrist. The speed of the transition is fairy quick. Let’s move on to the buttons. You can view the upper right button as the ‘Home’ button. Pressing that button allows you to access the Amazfit GTR 2e’s app drawer and pressing it again takes you back to the watch face. You can customise the list of apps shown in the app drawer so you can hide those apps you don’t use often. Check out the video demo below:

For the lower right button. Out of the box it is mapped to open the Workout app, but you can customise it in the Zepp smartphone app to any app you want.

Fitness and health tracking

Amazfit GTS 2e comes with water resistance of up to 50 meters and has up to 90 pre-loaded activities in the Workout app. You can check out the video below (I didn’t scroll through all) to get a sense of the list of pre-loaded activities:

For the Freestyle types of activities, the watch will mainly track your heart rate during the duration of the activity, and help to classify in the various heart rate zones. Most of the workout activities that does not require GPS such as Bowling, will give you the same type of data and chart in the Zepp app.

Offline GPS maps

For outdoor activities such as running, skateboarding, hiking, open water swimming, the in-built GPS will be activated so that the watch can measure your distance covered throughout the activity. It takes about 10 seconds or so for the GPS to position itself before you can hit “Go” on the watch. Having in-built GPS is great because you don’t have to bring along your smartphone if you want to track the distance.

The watch lets you know that you’ve hit 1km by vibrating – I think that is a pretty good feature. Stopping the run requires you to swipe left and hit the stop button on the screen. Personally I think it would be better if Amazfit enabled long pressing of the lower right button as the stop button.

I went for a short run and you can refer to the images below to check the stats and data recorded by the watch. In the Zepp app, you can even overlay two graphs together such as Pace and Stride so you can see how they interact.

Active heart rate monitoring

There are three types of heart rate monitoring modes. I’m not exactly too sure what are the differences of each modes, but I chose to use the “Automatic heart rate detection & Sleep assistant detection” as it seems to be the most feature packed. You can also choose the detection frequency of the heart rate sensor. I chose to have my heart rate measured every minute as will chart a more accurate graph.

If you wish to measure your rate rate manually, you can use the Heart Rate app in the watch and it will be logged in the Zepp app.

Blood-oxygen measurement

Amazfit GTR 2e is also able to measure your Blood-oxygen. It takes about 35 seconds or so for the measurement to complete and you must remain still during the entire process. Check out the video demo below:

I do find that wearing the watch on the flip side of your wrist is able to garner more accurate results.

Sleep tracking

If you do wear the Amazfit GTR 2e to sleep then you’ll be able to check on your sleep activity. Amazfit is able to tell you the duration that you had/were:

• Deep sleep
• Light sleep
• REM
• Awake

I found that the time which the Amazfit GTR 2e deemed that I woke up to be quite accurate. On some instances where I woke up just to snooze my alarm, the watch did not record it as an ‘Awake’, but on other occasions the watch did record an ‘Awake’. You can also monitor your heart rate throughout your sleep, and the app will calculate your resting heart rate (found in the heart rate chart above) as well.

Stress level monitoring

There is also a feature that helps to monitor your stress levels. I’m guessing that the app uses your heart rate to determine your stress levels. I’m not too sure about the accuracy of the data, but if you ever wish to find out about such data, it’s good that the Amazfit GTR 2e offers it.

Music control

You are able to control the music playback from your phone using the Amazfit 2 GTR 2e. You can skip tracks, play/pause and also change the volume. It does take a while for the app to figure out the music that is playing. Check out the video demo below:

Notifications

Whether you’re using an Android smartphone or an iPhone, the Amazfit GTR 2e is able to push notifications to your phone. As the Amazfit GTR 2e does not come with a speaker, the watch vibrates to let you know that there is a notification. The screen will then update with the notification. Check out the video demo below:

You can even create custom vibrations for different types of app. Check out the video demo below:

For phone calls, you are able to pick up incoming phone calls via Bluetooth but communication still has to done on your phone as the Amazfit GTR 2e lacks a speaker.

Thermometer

This is a feature that the more premium GTR 2 does not have. But this merely measures the temperature of your skin surface and not the temperature that you’ll usually rely on to check if you have a fever.

To measure the surrounding temperature, you have to remove to the watch and expose the back of the watch to the surroundings.

Battery life

Amazfit states that the Amazfit GTR 2e can last up to 24 days of use based on Amazfit’s everyday use scenario. These are the settings I have applied on the Amazfit GTR 2e and my use cases during my time of testing:

• Automatic heart rate detection & Sleep assistant detection
• Detection frequency = 1 min
• All-day pressure monitoring turned on
• Always-On display start 8.30am to 11.50pm
• Lift wrist to view info start 8.00am to 11.50pm
• Run twice a week
• Wear to sleep, only remove watch when showering

For me, it took about 10 days for the battery to reach close to 2%. Of course, your mileage will vary according to how you use the watch. To be honest, the battery life I experienced with the Amazfit GTR 2e is actually more than enough for my use case. This is because the battery that is depleted during the day can almost be charged back during the time I shower.

Conclusion

The Amazfit GTR 2e is an easy-to-use smartwatch that is an affordable personal companion for health and fitness. The watch comes with 14 pre-loaded apps which will be all the features you have for now until Amazfit pushes a firmware update with new apps. It is a great smartwatch if you seek to log your fitness activities, track your heart rate, sleep data, and perhaps occasionally measure your blood-oxygen levels.

Comparing to the slightly more premium Amazfit GTS 2, where it costs S$40 more, Amazfit GTS 2 offers offline music storage, Wi-Fi (mainly used for transferring songs), and slightly better materials, but at an expense of battery life. Offline music storage is particularly useful if you like to go for runs with music but do not wish to take your phone. If these extra features aren’t appealing to you, then you can perhaps save the extra money and go for the cheaper Amazfit GTS 2e which has longer battery life.