Amazfit GTR Titanium: An elegantly crafted watch that doubles up as a fitness tracker
With a traditional design, Amazfit’s GTR Titanium is more of a fitness tracker than a smartwatch. Find out if it’s worth the buy.
Amazfit is becoming quite the household name as a smart budget wearable. After the budget Apple Watch lookalikes, Bip and Bip Lite, the more premium GTS, Amazfit has now come up with the GTR.
Amazfit GTR isn’t new. The original model came out in September last year, and in December, the company launched two special edition models – GTR Glitter Edition with embedded crystals and GTR Titanium Edition – in the country. I’ve been using the GTR Titanium Edition for two weeks and here’s why I really like it:
Photo courtesy: Amazon.in
Design and Build
Amazfit has done a brilliant job vis-à-vis the design of the GTR. When I reviewed the GTS, I wasn’t enthused at all about the square design. The GTR Titanium has made me sit up and take notice. It may look very unappealing from the outside but, from the moment you start wearing it, you’ll really begin to like it.
The Amazfit GTR brings with it a gorgeously crafted circular dial. The dial is one of the best in the business and comes very close to the rotating dial of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch. It may be slightly thick but, the GTR Titanium (how I’ll refer to it going forward) screams premium. It’s got a nice metallic finish that sits well on the wrist. And there are two crowns, jutting out on the right-hand side of the dial.
The chassis is made out of titanium (hence the inclusion in the model name) and the strap is made out of rubber. I’ve been wearing it for over a week and it feels soft on my skin. Despite it being slightly thick, the GTR Titanium is relatively light. Furthermore, I felt close to zero skin irritation, which was the case in smartwatches of the past. The gold colour makes people sit up and take notice.
The dial features a 1.37-inch AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass protection. The protection is sufficient enough to survive multiple bumps a day. Thankfully, Amazfit has decided to add an anti-smudge coating. Lastly, the watch has a 5ATM water resistance rating, which means you can go swimming with it.
Fitness tracking first
The GTR Titanium may not be a smartwatch as much as it is a fitness band. The software on the GTR Titanium has been improved vis-à-vis the past smartwatches, and one can set it up in no time.
The user interface (UI) is primarily geared towards fitness tracking rather than mirroring your smartphone and giving you a barrage of notifications.
One can swipe left for heart rate readings and right, for steps walked. Swipe up and you’ll get the menu while swiping down will reveal the settings. The top crown, by default, is set to turn the screen on and off while the bottom one opens the fitness menu.
The GTR Titanium uses the same proprietary OS as watches of the past from Amazfit but, thanks to some nifty software updates, it’s more fluid and feature-rich. One can choose from several watch faces from the app, see notifications but not reply to them, find out the weather, and set alarms. It can perform all the basic functions.
The GTR Titanium excels in fitness tracking. The watch tracks your basic steps, calories, and the Personal Activity Intelligence (based upon your heart rate) even tells you (sedentary warning) to get up and walk about, if you haven’t done so in over an hour.
Under the workout menu, one can find a bevvy of options – outdoor running, walking, outdoor cycling, treadmill, indoor cycling, open water swimming, pool swimming, elliptical trainer, climbing, trail running, skiing, and weight training – and this is a boon for anyone who is a fitness freak.
One of the shortcomings of the GTR Titanium is that it doesn’t support automatic workout tracking. One has to select each style of workout that they want before beginning their session.
Once a workout is selected, the GTR Titanium will show you time, distance, calorie consumption, current and average pace, and even your heart rate. Depending on the activity, the smartwatch may also fetch the GPS signal to give you a map of your activity.
During my usage and all my fitness activities, the GTR Titanium came in fairly accurate. Using the companion app one can even see many details about the workout session.
What the GTR Titanium gets wrong is sleep tracking. It just isn’t accurate. It segments sleep patterns into light and deep sleep, and nothing more. Further, it doesn’t detect short naps that one might take. This needs to be seriously improved when the successor is released.
Battery life: simply brilliant
While the GTR Titanium promises a 24-day battery life, I was down to five percent a few days before I hit that mark. I got about 21 days of battery life with a mixed-usage of workouts, sleep, and notifications filtering in. This isn’t bad, but not up to Amazfit’s claims.
Half-baked smartwatch
If one is looking for ‘smart’ features, then they’re going to be disappointed. As good as the GTR Titanium is on its own, it just isn’t worth it as a smartwatch. It’s a fitness tracker acting like a traditional watch. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but, one must know before they go ahead and purchase it.
Verdict: eye-catching fitness band
Let me just put it this way: Amazfit’s GTR Titanium is an elegantly crafted traditional-looking watch that doubles up as a fitness behemoth.
It’s by far my favourite smartwatch from Amazfit but, the software needs an overhaul for it to be competitive in this fast-growing market.
The GTR Titanium, with a 47mm strap, is priced at Rs 14,999 – Rs 4,000 more than the original variant.
The only basic difference between the two is the design (apart from some minor software differences). I’d wait for a price reduction on the GTR Titanium edition before recommending it as a buy.
Amazfit is going in the right direction with its smartwatches, and I’m excited for what’s to come next.
(Edited by Suman Singh)