I used to think that the Apple Watch was the epitome of smartwatches. Sure, it was expensive and only paired with iPhones, but it tracked everything I needed and did so reliably. With the Amazfit Active 2, I learned that smartwatches could be so much better.

Amazfit Active 2

9
/
10

The Active 2 smartwatch is designed for fashion-conscious, health-focused people who value style and functionality. With BioTracker technology for precise heart rate and sleep tracking, 160+ workout modes, and up to 10 days of battery life, this smartwatch will track everything you want and then some.

Pros & Cons

• Looks like an analog watch
• Fantastic battery life
• Provides good insights into your health

• Zepp OS’s Calendar App is finicky
• Runs into syncing issues if connected to more than one device

$100 at Amazon

$99.99 at Amazfit

Price And Availability

The Amazfit Active 2 is available in two versions: the normal edition with a sports band for $99.99 and the Premium Edition, which comes with a second leather band for $129.99. The Premium version will officially be available in late February.

A Refined Look

When I first opened the Amazfit Active 2, I was impressed with its slick look. At first glance, the Premium Edition’s leather band looked like an analog watch, and that’s just the sort of aesthetic I like in my smartwatches. I want them to look nice on my wrist, not like bulky fitness trackers. The Premium Edition also comes with a silicone band you can switch to when you’re ready to work out.

I was worried that the Active 2 would look comically huge on my wrist—given I have such small wrists, that would often be the case with any smartwatch bigger than the Apple Watch, which the Active 2 was. Thankfully, this was not the case here, as it fits on my wrist well. The watch’s display looks great and easy to read, and it’s easy to navigate various menus with the touch screen and two side buttons. The buttons themselves are thin and sit flush with the watch case, and I never managed to accidentally press down on them, unlike my Apple Watch. Even the default watch face has a classic minimalist look, though you can download a different watch face on the Zepp app.

Amazfit’s smartwatch is impressive even beyond its looks, however. The battery life is simply unbeatable, lasting nearly 10 days before needing a charge when not using the always-on display. For comparison, my Apple Watch Series 9 lasts a day and a half (maybe two days if I’m lucky) before needing to charge it—and that’s with the display off. The Active 2 will also charge quickly, and the proprietary charger is easy to use, though it’s small enough that there is a risk of losing it if you’re not keeping it plugged in.

But most people buy a smartwatch to track various metrics, whether it’s health, sleep, or just notifications, and that’s where the Amazfit Active 2 really shines.

Track It All and Sync With Other Health Apps

Nowadays, smartwatches are expected to track some basic metrics. It’s unusual to find a smartwatch on the market that can’t track your heart rate, step count, and basic workout metrics, even if it’s not a fitness tracker. Unsurprisingly, the Amazit Active 2 covers these vitals, but it also tracks your blood oxygen and respiratory rate, and there is advanced workout tracking with various activities you can choose from. The watch will also give you an idea of your stress level and calculate a PAI score based on heart rate changes over a week. Finally, you can use Zepp watch apps to track your cycles and medications and set up notifications to remind you to take your pills.

This is a lot of helpful information and about on par with what my Apple Watch Series 9 can track, minus Apple’s EKG reader. Stress and PAI tracking are not available on the Apple Watch, but admittedly, these are more vague statistics that aren’t always very actionable or accurate,

Amazfit watches use Zepp OS instead of the more common Wear OS from Google, and that has its own advantages and disadvantages. The Zepp app feels pretty clunky to navigate, and sometimes I’d have trouble with the watch syncing with the app—though I believe it mostly has to do with the number of devices I paired Amazfit’s watch for review. On that note, you can use the Active 2 with both Android and iOS devices, and I was even able to connect it to my iPad, which I can’t do with my Apple Watch. Despite some clunkiness, though, the OS works fine. It’s not flashy, but it is functional.

The more important feature of Zepp, though, is that it integrates well with Google Fit, Apple Health, and other popular health-tracking apps. I was skeptical about this at first, as many smartwatches have these claims but tend to fail at syncing all of their metrics or just syncing in general. Not only that, but Apple Health, in particular, measures a lot of different health metrics, and I couldn’t imagine the app properly syncing up, even if the Active 2 does track everything my Apple Watch Series 9 does.

But Zepp lived up to my expectations. Whenever the app synced with the smartwatch, I would get the data in Apple Health just moments after, properly uploaded and recorded as if I used the Apple Watch itself. The sleep data, heart rate, and so on were all in the right places with the right dates and times attached. I didn’t need to complete the tedious task of exporting my data from Apple Health and importing it into the Zepp app to have all of my data in the right place. It just worked.

The only actual syncing issue I had was not with any of my statistics or health metrics—it was with syncing up with the Zepp Calendar watch app. Some unusual settings would make holidays and events repeat, and even after following the instructions to turn off holidays in Google Calendar, I was still having issues with it. However, the repeating events and holidays did eventually clear themselves on their own. I’m still baffled as to why the changes weren’t showing after tinkering with the settings on the iPhone SE while the watch was connected and syncing up in real-time.

Zepp is a Bit of A Bully, But That’s a Good Thing

One interesting thing I noticed about the Amazfit Active 2 is that it bullies you a bit. Every morning after you wake up, the smartwatch and Zepp app will give you a Readiness score, which takes your sleep data into account to determine how well-rested you are. After my first night sleeping with the smartwatch on, I got a notification that said that “I could do better.”

It was rather blunt for a tracker, given that most smartwatches, in my experience, either send positive messages or nothing at all. But as it chided me daily for my poor sleep, the Readiness summary started providing more information—namely, the watch consistently believed I was snoring. At first, I waved it off as a fluke of the smartwatch picking up ambient noise since I play white noise at night. But it regularly kept asking if I was snoring and that I might be experiencing hypopnea.

Does that mean I’m actually snoring or having shallow breathing episodes? Not at all, as smartwatches can’t perfectly track metrics like this, especially when they’re on the wrist. But the consistent notices are enough for me to see if other apps also mention snoring. Even if none of this is the case and I don’t snore, the notifications were enough for me to consider my sleeping conditions and possibly how to improve them. Ultimately, bringing attention and awareness to your health is what smartwatches are supposed to do.

Should You Buy the Amazfit Active 2 Smartwatch?

If you’re in the market for a smartwatch, you don’t need to read any further—just go and buy the Amazfit Active 2. The battery life is top-notch, you can connect to Android and iOS, and the level of tracking it offers is on par with the far more premium-priced Apple Watch. While there are a few small sticking points, you won’t do much better than the Active 2, especially at this price point.

Amazfit Active 2

9
/
10

The Active 2 smartwatch is designed for fashion-conscious, health-focused people who value style and functionality. With BioTracker technology for precise heart rate and sleep tracking, 160+ workout modes, and up to 10 days of battery life, this smartwatch will track everything you want and then some.

$100 at Amazon

$99.99 at Amazfit