Amazfit Bip S Review: The Best Budget Smartwatch?

POSITIVES

✓ Ease of use

Simple and efficient - easy to use and maneuver

✓ Price

Bang for your buck in the budget smartwatch space

✓ Battery life

Long lasting battery that keeps powering through

NEGATIVES

✘Not the sleekest looking watch

Won't necessarily turn heads when you're wearing it

✘ Display brightness can use some work

Although battery efficient, the brightness is a little dim at times

✘ Workouts are not detected automatically

You'll have to set your watch when you start working out to log it

Retail Price: $59.99

Buy on Amazon

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees and support our channel by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

DISCLAIMER: AMAZFIT SENT US A REVIEW UNIT OF THE BIP S BUT ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE OUR OWN

The Lowdown

No stranger to the budget smartwatch space, Huami's Amazfit recently released the Bip S for a competitively low price of $60. Updated with newer features from the 2018 version that Alex had reviewed on our channel, the Bip S has managed to keep most of its best features while simultaneously improving upon some of its weaknesses. After more than a month of wearing the watch everyday, I can excitedly say there's quite a few boxes the Bip S has ticked off my list.

Touch & Feel

Weighing in at only 31 grams, the Amazfit Bip S is lightweight thus making it comfortable to wear. Huami supplies you with a default silicone watch band. There's four color options available including red orange, carbon black, white rock and warm pink. The wristband is comfortable to wear all day with no chafing even during a sweaty or intensive workout. The surface of the watch is protected by a polycarbonate casing and features a 316L stainless steel button along the right hand side that offers users control over the watch's navigation menu. There's also an impressive fingerprint resistant Corning Gorilla Glass screen on top of a 176 x 176 resolution always-on 1.28 inch transflective color display with a 64 RGB color gamut. Despite a rather large bezel and average curb appeal, the Bip S makes up for the not so sexy appearance by relying on other features that are not only practical but also outstanding for the price point.

One of the first concerns that came to mind when I began using the Bip S was its display and lack of brightness in broad daylight. Despite a relatively strong backlight, it was occasionally difficult to glance at the watch face to see the time or notifications when a lot of sunlight was blazing down. On top of that, colors are not as vibrant and appear dull on the display. For a $60 smartwatch, it's impossible to compare this to the Apple Watch's display or more expensive competitors, but I still think there's some room for improvement. All of this was a sacrifice in order to obtain godly battery life. Is it a trade-off that ultimately benefits the user experience? We’ll come back to the question at the end of the article. Nevertheless, other features like touch sensitivity were excellent in my opinion, and the button was easy to use and navigate thus making the overall experience pleasant to use everyday.

Monitoring & Health

It was absolutely crucial to me that my smartwatch could track my workouts, heart rate and sync with other apps like Google Fit seamlessly. Fortunately, the Amazfit Bip S checked off all these boxes. Features like continuous heart rate monitoring are useful to see how I performed during my full workouts and Amazfit also added a PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) score. Huami claims this score is meant to more accurately assess your health and understand your lifestyle. However, one of my biggest gripes was that I had to manually choose a workout type from the 10 options available in order to get the watch to start tracking. Amazfit has added more workout tracking options than its predecessor, but 10 is still limited in an era where we have so many different forms of fitness models. On top of that, I often found myself forgetting to start the tracking on the watch and would have to add it manually through the Google Fit app on my phone after the workout. Workout detection is one feature I'd be willing to pay a little more to have. Budget conscious buyers may not mind this omission. However, if you are one who has used a Samsung Gear, Apple Watch or Fitbit, this may take an adjustment period for muscle memory. 

The Amazfit Bip S is also waterproof up to 50 meters and while I did not get the chance to test the swimming mode due to Covid-19, I did find tracking features like heart rate monitoring and step counting to be pretty accurate. The Bip S also seamlessly syncs with Google Fit, which then syncs to other apps like My Fitness Pal allowing for a holistic fitness experience. Once again that is essential to fitness regiment and I was not disappointed. 

Battery Life

Perhaps the most touted feature the Bip S watch has is its impressive battery life. With a 200 mAh battery, Amazfit advertises a typical 15 day usage scenario with up to 40 days on basic use. The Bip S most definitely impressed in this category and despite averaging over 700 notifications a day, I averaged just shy of 12 days without a charge. This includes workout tracking on top of its “smartwatch” duty. This alone is worth the omission of other things I mentioned above simply for the convenience and entry price point.

Perfect For the Everyday

One of the best features of the Bip S is just its overall ease of use for the everyday user. The interface is easy to understand, customizable with watch faces and provides an overall better-connected experience. GPS, heart rate monitoring and workout tracking maintained solid accuracy when compared with other competitors. The reliability and functionality of the Amazfit Bip S along with its affordable $70 price point makes it a winning package.

---

---