Brand name belongs to the well-known Chinese manufacturer - Huami Technology, which, in addition to fitness bracelets and watches, produces sports headphones, smart scales, treadmills and other products for a healthy lifestyle. Since September 2015, Huami has started to use its own brand Amazfit to sell smart wearable products that are designed for the mid-to-high-end market. Amazfit products are officially supplied to Russia, so devices sold under this brand are protected by a guarantee and have already gained some fame. For example, various models of Amazfit Stratos and Amazfit Bip watches can often be seen on the hands of runners in parks.
But today we will talk about a device that, by its appearance, most of all resembles an extreme sports watch, and not a modest fitness bracelet. Yes, and the name of this device is appropriate - : the very first advantage on the model page from the official website is an inscription about the compliance of this watch with twelve certificates of the US military standard MIL-STD-810G. Sounds harsh!
Contents of delivery
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The device comes in an unremarkable compact cardboard box. Together with the clock inside, we found the minimum set of accessories:
- USB cable with non-removable charging platform;
- a short printed guide to get started in different languages, including Russian.
The set is quite normal for this type of device.
Technical specifications
| Amazfit t-rex | |
| Form Factor | Wrist Watch |
| Screen | AMOLED, 1,3-inch diameter, 360 × 360 dots Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with oleophobic coating |
| OS | Amazfit OS |
| Interfaces | GPS / GLONASS Bluetooth 5.0/BLE |
| SENSORS | Biological optical sensor BioTracker PPG 3-axis acceleration sensor Geomagnetic sensor Ambient light sensor |
| Water and dust protection class | MIL-STD-810G-2014 Water resistance 5 ATM (according to GB/T 30106-2013) |
| Battery, mAh | 390 lithium polymer |
| Working hours | – GPS tracking: 20 hours; – off GPS: up to 66 days |
| Dimensions (without strap), mm | 48 × × 48 14 |
| Weight (with strap), g | 58 |
| Warranty, month | 12 |
| Estimated price, rub. | 10 999 |
The novelty comes in five colors: black, gray, camouflage, khaki and protective green. We got the first option for testing. It is noteworthy that in the watch design the manufacturer pays a lot of attention to the military theme, which is usually uncharacteristic for fitness trackers. Three of the five possible colors have a reference to the army.
The type of processor used, as well as the amount of RAM, the manufacturer does not indicate. However, no additional applications can be installed on this watch anyway, so the processor in this case will only affect the battery life. According to this indicator, Amazfit T-Rex watches look very good compared to competitors in their price range. Not every fitness tracker will be able to work 20 hours without recharging, recording a GPS track and tracking heart rate. Well, without recording a track, the stated operating time of this watch is from 20 to 66 days.
The set of sensors built into the device is almost complete. Huami's own development, the Biami Tracker PPG, is used as an optical heart rate sensor. The watch also has a three-axis acceleration sensor, a geomagnetic sensor and an ambient light sensor. But, alas, there is no barometer, which is a bit strange for a watch positioned as a harsh device for survival and all kinds of adventures. The watch communicates with the smartphone using the Bluetooth 5.0 interface.
But the most interesting thing is, of course, the degree of protection of Amazfit T-Rex from various external influencing factors. The watch, as I mentioned above, has a confirmed MIL-STD-810G certificate from 2014. This is the US military standard used today for the widest range of devices that need to be proven capable of operating in harsh environments. The standard contains three dozen different indicators for which the product must pass laboratory tests. Among them are:
- tightness;
- low pressure;
- exposure to high and low temperatures;
- temperature shock;
- rain and freezing rain;
- moisture, fungi, mold, salt fog;
- sand and dust;
- pyrotechnic strike and blast wave;
- mechanical shock and fall;
- acceleration;
- vibration from shooting;
- shaking during transportation in various ways, etc.
The manufacturer claims that the watch has twelve different certifications, but does not specify which ones. The manufacturer's website only states that this device operates in the ambient temperature range from -40 ° C (up to 1,5 hours of stable operation) to +70 ° C, is resistant to salt fog and waterproof when immersed to a depth of 50 meters in accordance with GB/T 30106-2013. The manufacturer officially confirms the possibility of using this watch not only to wash in the shower, but also to swim in an open pond or pool. Not every such device can boast of such capabilities.
Appearance
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Big and brutal! Something like this in a nutshell can describe the appearance of Amazfit T-Rex. The manufacturer claims that the watch case “radiates power”: well, putting on the Amazfit T-Rex on your hand, you just want to rush somewhere into the wild jungle to survive after Bear Grylls. Nevertheless, the watch turned out to be quite light - it's all about the plastic case. In this case, only four large round buttons are made of metal on the sides, the axis of the silicone strap and deliberately protruding screws that connect the elements of the case.
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Control buttons that fully duplicate the functions of the touch screen are a real treat for all those who use such a device a little further than just when jogging in the nearest park. Neither in mud, nor in water, nor in any adverse weather conditions, it is simply impossible to use the touch screen. But menu navigation buttons are usually only found on fairly expensive devices - the Amazfit T-Rex is a welcome exception to this rule. Two knurled buttons on one side of the watch are used to move up and down the menu, while the other pair of buttons is used to confirm a selection or go to the previous menu item or page.
Practicality is also evident in the design of the screen, which is not only covered with durable third-generation Gorilla Glass, but also equipped with a protruding bezel. The bezel, of course, is decorative, but it protects the screen from external influences when touching stones, trees, or simply from dropping the watch on the floor.
The bottom side of the Amazfit T-Rex case is traditional for this type of device. It houses an optical sensor and two magnetic contact pads for connecting a USB cable with a charging station. The magnetic base itself will choose the desired orientation of the station and connect with the watch as soon as you bring the devices to each other.
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Another advantage of the watch is the silicone strap. It is not only wide and elastic, but also incredibly soft. This softness provides proper wearing comfort. You can tighten it up a bit if you like. In this case, the watch will sit on the hand very tightly. Well, there are so many holes on the strap that the watch can be worn both on a small child and on an adult man with a strong physique. In general, the practical design of the Amazfit T-Rex deserves the highest score. Now let's look at their capabilities.
Capabilities
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The Amazfit T-Rex watch runs on an OS developed by Huami. The watch interface is almost the same as on similar models, so we did not have to get used to them for a long time. Everything is intuitive. If for a while we forget about the existence of four navigation keys, then the transitions from one menu to another and turning pages are carried out by the usual swipe movements in the horizontal and vertical directions. The screen is activated both when you press it or one of the keys, and when you wave your hand. This power saving feature can be disabled in the watch menu or in the Amazfit app installed on a smartphone running Android or iOS. Brightness is set both automatically by the light sensor and manually.
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Well, the first thing that meets the user is, of course, the dial. By default, it is as shown in the photo. You could say it's classic. The watch faces can be changed using the mobile application. For our watch model, there are three dozen official ones installed through the Amazfit application, and a huge number of third-party ones that can be installed, for example, using the Amazfit T-Rex Watch Face mobile application, which was found in the Play Market when installing the official Amazfit. There are watch faces for every taste and color, but some of them are only available in the paid version of the application. And Amazfit T-Rex does not have dials with the ability to click on some arrow or value with a further transition to a specific menu item. It is also worth complaining about the too slow loading of the watch faces in the watch. It takes about 40 seconds for the watch face to load.
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As we wrote above, all actions related to scrolling through screens, switching to menus and between pages can also be carried out by pressing the side buttons. By scrolling the screens in a vertical direction, you can see all the information about daily activity, including the distance traveled and the number of steps, calories burned, and also get information about the current heart rate. The last page of this list displays information about the current temperature and a menu with screen settings, as well as power saving modes.
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Scrolling from left to right brings up the message panel. Nothing out of the ordinary here. The text of the messages is clear, everything is perfectly readable both in Cyrillic and in Latin. But the main menu opens when you scroll the screen from right to left. This is where the most interesting is hidden. Firstly, here is the main menu with all kinds of activities.
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Secondly, in the "Status" and "Activity" sections, you can see detailed information about past workouts, including heart rate and pace graphs, a histogram of heart rate zones, and even see the recorded track, but without overlaying it on the map. A separate section of the menu is dedicated to the heartbeat, where graphs and histograms can be studied in a little more detail.
We also note a very interesting function of the personal activity index PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence), developed by the Canadian company . The index is calculated based on the heart rate measured throughout the day, and added to all the values for the previous six days. That is, the PAI index is the sum of the corresponding values for one week of your life. Each new day it changes, since the value for the day that is outside the week is subtracted, but the value for the current day is added.
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When walking at an easy pace, PAI does not change. Its value begins to rise as soon as the pulse rises. For more information about PAI, please visit the Amazfit mobile app. It will also give the user recommendations on the exercises that still need to be done during the remaining day to achieve a specific PAI goal, as well as advise on what heart rate to perform them. In fact, a free personal trainer is built into the Amazfit application, which gives real advice on increasing endurance and strengthening the body, and not just setting abstract goals for the number of steps or kilometers, as is done in simpler devices. Well, and most importantly: for those who do not want to bother much with theory, it is enough just to know that the PAI value must be maintained at a level greater than 100. According to the practical research of PAI Health, in this case, the risk of heart disease, as well as certain types of diabetes in the user will be much less than everyone else.
But that's where the useful features of the watch end. Thus, the Amazfit T-Rex model does not have the ability to calculate the effect obtained from training, the required recovery time and the most important indicator VO2max, which informs the user about the state of his body as a whole. And even though any watches and trackers give only a rough estimate of this indicator, a serious deviation from the norm can serve as a signal for a more accurate study.
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Fourteen types of activity are provided: walking, treadmill, cross-country running, walking, elliptical trainer, mountain climbing, walking, skiing, cycling, stationary bike, swimming in the pool, swimming in open water, triathlon and just exercises. Each mode has its own measured and calculated indicators. In some cases, the watch itself will ask you to enter some additional data for the calculation. So, for example, in the swimming pool mode, for calculations, you need to enter the length of the track. When swimming, the watch itself measures the number of strokes and even tries to determine the style of swimming. Also, for many types of workouts, you can independently set a goal and set a reminder.
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The most detailed information about each training session can be viewed in the Amazfit mobile application. In addition to information about averages and extremes, graphs and histograms, here you can see your track on Google maps (maps and satellite images are available) and even download it in the most popular GPX format. But you can’t upload a track to a watch in order to follow it later. However, this possibility is not provided for in the watches of other manufacturers of the same price range, so this should not be considered a disadvantage. But Amazfit T-Rex can track sleep patterns. True, information about this becomes available only in the mobile application, with which the watch is synchronized immediately when it is opened, provided that Bluetooth is turned on on the smartphone and the watch is not in training mode.
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Of the most useful additional features in the Amazfit T-Rex watch, it is worth noting the compass and the ability to control the music player. There is also an alarm clock with a vibrating alert, and reminders, and a stopwatch, and a countdown function. Implemented even searching for a phone and displaying the weather forecast on the screen. In general, the Amazfit T-Rex has a rather interesting set of features. But there are also controversial points. So, along with the admiringly useful function of calculating the PAI index, it is surprising that there are no other, more common functions for calculating the effect of training, recovery time and the value of the maximum amount of oxygen required during exercise.
The test is
The first thing we began to find out was how Amazfit T-Rex watches comply with the MIL-STD-810G standard. Of course, we do not have special climatic chambers and expensive stands, but we do have a real refrigerator, a sauna, a bath and a lake with a sandy beach. And if the MIL-STD-810G standard provides only laboratory tests, then our tests can be fully called field tests!
First, I put the watch in the freezer of the refrigerator with a temperature of about -20 ° C. I put them there with a full charge for exactly five hours. When I took the watch out at the end of this test, I found it in full working order, the menu worked without any slowdowns, and the battery charge was reduced by only 6%. At the same time, the clock in the freezer, of course, did not make any measurements. Unless the temperature was fixed. Test passed!
Further, I was lucky to visit the clock in the steam room of the Russian bath, in the process of kindling it. Together with the thermometer, the clock was placed on the canopy, where they felt the whole process of a gradual increase in temperature to +43 ° C, which is even slightly higher than the value declared by the manufacturer. At the same time, I periodically approached and checked the main functions of the watch - everything was in order. Test passed!
We divided the leak test into two stages. At the first stage of testing, the watch was immersed in a bath of water, the temperature of which ranged from +38 to +40 °C. The watch was submerged in water to a depth of about 0,7 m and lay at the bottom for thirty minutes. No change in performance was noted. The clock could be controlled (using buttons) even under water. Test passed!
The second part of the leak test was to test the performance of the watch while diving to a shallow depth in open water. To do this, the watch was switched to open water swimming mode. In the process of diving, the working capacity of the watch was checked, and no changes were noticed in it. Note that the manufacturer officially allows you to swim with the watch, but not to dive. And the 5 ATM standard itself provides only for the absence of leaks at a given pressure, which can be created not only when diving to 50 meters. Even at a meter depth, by waving your arms well, you can achieve a short-term increase in pressure to such values, so it’s still not worth repeating this test. And yet the test passed!
The next step was sand and wet earth. Here I didn’t arrange anything on purpose, I just rode a bicycle with a watch and swam with it in an open reservoir. Periodically, sand, earth and even clay fell on them. There are no scratches left on the case. The only drawback is the barely noticeable gaps around the perimeter around the side buttons. Behind them, of course, there is an airtight layer, but sand and dirt still penetrate into the cracks themselves. And it is better to wash them out with running water as soon as possible, since the rubber seals under the buttons are unlikely to be able to withstand long-term work with abrasives. With a few reservations, but this test is also passed!
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In addition to full-scale endurance testing of the device in various conditions, we evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of Amazfit T-Rex as a training gadget. Among the advantages can be considered a well-read screen with a decent level of maximum brightness, as well as very fast navigation and control. The response when you press the screen or buttons is instant. The track device also writes normally. Well, the biggest plus is the long battery life. With continuous track and heart rate recording in training mode, the watch worked for more than 18 hours. At the same time, the function of activating the screen by a wave of the hand was disabled, but the watch was periodically accessed for information about the current state of the body, as well as for reading notifications. Excellent result!
But the function of activating the screen with a wave of the hand does not work very reliably. Quite often, it works spontaneously and, on the contrary, does not work the first time when it is really needed. As a result of such incorrect operation, the battery is discharged faster. Also, given the presence of an AMOLED display in the watch, I would like to see energy-saving options in the official set of dials, with which it would be possible not to turn off the display at all. And yet, if you find fault, there is not enough customizable sound or vibration alerts to the user about exceeding the threshold of the allowable heart rate.
Conclusions
Amazfit T-Rex watches are not perfect, but they are beautiful! This model with its appearance and resistance to external influences will surely win the hearts of many. And most importantly, other manufacturers are asking for much more money for similar models. Huami engineers managed to create the best smartwatches on the market in terms of design and ease of use in the price range up to ten thousand rubles. In terms of equipment, they are also good, except that a barometer would not hurt - it can be useful, given the extreme positioning of the novelty. Well, a long time of work is generally a gift to all those who run or ride long distances, including marathons and ultramarathons.
The watch software is also well developed and fully corresponds to the cost. But after such a chic hardware, you also want an ideal software. I would like to see in the following firmware the possibility of evaluating workouts, recommendations for them and calculating the VO2max indicator. You can also scold the clock a little for a long synchronization and not the fastest process for updating the internal software.
Summing up, we note the most interesting advantages of Amazfit T-Rex:
- very interesting, thoughtful design in all respects;
- mechanical control buttons that completely duplicate the touch screen;
- low weight;
- proven resistance to a number of external influencing factors;
- manufacturer's official authorization for swimming and appropriate training regimes;
- long battery life;
- calculation of the PAI index.
Disadvantages:
- the software part is more in line with the capabilities of a fitness bracelet than a smart watch.
As far as cost is concerned, . Its capabilities can satisfy not only fitness enthusiasts, but even some amateur athletes or tourists. In general, with such a watch you can go in for sports, go on a kayak trip, or just wander around the city and show off in front of others.
Source: 3dnews.ru