Last year I officially gave up on my Fitbit Charge 4. It was great until it wasn’t. Since I’m a glutton for punishment, I got yet another fitness watch. This time, the Amazfit GTR-3 on a recommendation from a co-worker.
The pros and cons? Pros: great battery life, customizable color screen, built-in GPS. My only real complaint is around the face automatically turning on/off. When I look at the face it won’t always automatically turn on, so I’ll go to press the button on the side and a split second before I press the button, the face will self-activate.
What happens is similar to “Layout Shift” on websites. Your finger or cursor is over a button, then bam! Something else loads and moves something (that you didn’t intent to tap) right where you were.
What happens with the watch is it displays the face for a split second, then goes into the menu system because I technically pressed the button while the screen was active 😖
The workaround for me has been to enable the always-on screen functionality, which lessens the battery life from 21-days to 7, but I’m OK with that because it beats charging every day.
GPS
What I really got it for was the GPS. I’ve only used for fitness tracking twice, but I can already tell it’s going to be a better experience. My first ride was on a company retreat in Mexico. There was a resort “Bike Tour” which I use in quotes because we rode bikes from the resort up the road to the adjacent marina town, and then went to the grocery store 🏪
| Elapsed Time | Moving Time | Distance | Average Speed | Max Speed | Elevation Gain | Calories Burned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
01:04:42
hours
|
00:19:50
hours
|
2.32
mi.
|
7.01
mph
|
11.24
mph
|
7.55
ft.
|
145
kcal
|
While I was in the grocery store, after a certain amount of time, it warned me about turning the GPS off to save battery while my activity was paused. Then when I unpaused it there were no issues 💪 (unlike my Fitbit). The only real issue was I forgot to press start until halfway to Puerto Morelos 😓
Take 2
Now that I’m home and winter seems to have actually gone away, I tried it with a bike ride here and everything went as planned.
| Elapsed Time | Moving Time | Distance | Average Speed | Max Speed | Elevation Gain | Calories Burned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
00:30:31
hours
|
00:23:56
hours
|
3.40
mi.
|
8.51
mph
|
18.82
mph
|
121.39
ft.
|
171
kcal
|
I’m looking forward to seeing how it does out on the water. That was the death-blow for my fitbit. When I’m in the water I don’t want to be fiddling with my phone. So far, so good 🤞
My Charge 5 locked up for the last time a few days ago. I’m officially now in the Apple Watch cult. I enjoy all the gizmos, but charging it every day will be a pain.
I think once you get used to charging it daily (like your phone) it will seem like second nature. Charging every day would be weird logistically for me b/c I wear mine to bed for sleep data.
Same here. I’ve been topping off my watch when I shower/breakfast, and then once or twice more per day when I’m at my home computer.