All of the reviews I can find for this device are now 6-7 months old, but the common thread seemed to be that the heart rate monitor and pedometer sensors can by wildly inaccurate.
Has this been improved since launch? If so, how accurate would you say the device is now?
Also, does it integrate nicely with S Health on the note 4?
cpete47 said:
All of the reviews I can find for this device are now 6-7 months old, but the common thread seemed to be that the heart rate monitor and pedometer sensors can by wildly inaccurate.
Has this been improved since launch? If so, how accurate would you say the device is now?
Also, does it integrate nicely with S Health on the note 4?
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Click to collapse
HR is accurate when you're in calm state. When you are doing some exercise it's really inaccurate. I can't compare GF with chest belt, but from my experience those values are not accurate.
Pedometer is doing quite well, but also it's recording other hand movements than only walking.
Another words. GF is not good device for fitness at all.
pRo_lama said:
HR is accurate when you're in calm state. When you are doing some exercise it's really inaccurate. I can't compare GF with chest belt, but from my experience those values are not accurate.
Pedometer is doing quite well, but also it's recording other hand movements than only walking.
Another words. GF is not good device for fitness at all.
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I think it has improved a little with the newest update but it's true that if you type heavily on a keyboard or do like drumming on the table with your hands it will count that as steps.
But I think that generally it shouldn't be that far off from other trackers.
After quite some time of using Amazfit 2 as sportstracker mostly for running, I would like to share my experiences and comment on issues I have found. I have bought Amazfit 2 as a cheap replacement for garmin forerunner 220 I have used in the past. My feelings are quite mixed in the end. One of the highlights of amazfit is its build. It is build to last, looks nicely and fells durable in comparison with low to mid class garmin devices. However, there is lot of issues that in my opinion render it unusable for serious sport tracking:
GPS recording - There is discrepancy between mileage showed on watches (and in Amazfit app) vs mileage actually written in GPX file. So when your activity gets uploaded into Strava (or you then export it to Endomondo etc.), there is major difference (up to 2 %) in total mileage and thus also in pace etc. This is critical flaw.
Pace - One of the most important features of running sport tester is its ability to indicate current tempo. However, Amazfit readings fluctuate wildly, so it is really of not much use. For example, when jogging at constant pace, it quickly jumps between 4:00-5:30 min per km. In garmin devices, this get averaged and probably even anticipates hand movement, so you get quite good impression of how fast are you running at the moment. This is another major drawback of amazfit.
Altitude - I have noticed that for running, amazfit uses altitude from GPS only. Therefore, it is very inaccurate and completely useless - serves more like a random number generator. If you use "trail run" acitivity, altitude is measured through barometric sensor only, which is also less accurate. On garmin devices with barometer, altitude is measeured through combination of both sensors and measurements are very accurate (I got this impression after using Strava's correct elevation functionality).
Heart rate - For me, heart rate measurement during activity provides very poor readings. Even though i am having watches tightened fairly strong. For my regular runs at 150-160 bpm (measured through chest strap), typical stratos reading is around 120. Only sporadically, it gets closer to real values for certain period of workout. But in general, it is useless. It works same for my friend who also bought Amazfit for running. It seems to perform better when cycling (maybe because there is not that much hand movement - I dunno). However at this price tag, it is not realistic to expect any kind of accuracy from optical sensor. It is probably something very basic, it can be compared with garmin devices, which provide kind of realistic measurements. Downside of stratos is also the fact that it does not support ANT+ protocol, so most quality chest straps are not supported.
First beat features - These are in theory very nice. However as they are mostly based on HR readings, which are totaly offshot in Amazfit, they are not of much use.
However, this is something you might expect, as amazfit costs fraction of most other comparable devices, that can actually be used as sports tracker. In general, I would say, for a price it is still good buy for a nice looking smartwatch. For usage as sport tester, it has very nice hardware, however lacks proper software, which is probably not going to get changed.
Abandonned my Stratos because steps count are totaly wrong. Works if you start a fitness exercice with continuous walk or run but unusable as daily tracker. Steps are at minimum 2 time below real steps. I have real steps with a Fitbit One wich count only steps and not arm movement. Stratos daily steps also totally wrong compared to : Apple Watch, Gear Watch, Fitbit Watch, Garmin Watch.
Other thing is the current temp. Works sometime but often no data and display only min/max of the forecast for the day so unusable to have a forecast and not current temps. When we have a feature it must works or deleted
Notifications truncated but works on Android phone but ramdomly on IOS phone.
Not ready for prime time, just as prototype for tester.
thanks great review
Poborak said:
After quite some time of using Amazfit 2 as sportstracker mostly for running, I would like to share my experiences and comment on issues I have found. I have bought Amazfit 2 as a cheap replacement for garmin forerunner 220 I have used in the past. My feelings are quite mixed in the end. One of the highlights of amazfit is its build. It is build to last, looks nicely and fells durable in comparison with low to mid class garmin devices. However, there is lot of issues that in my opinion render it unusable for serious sport tracking:
GPS recording - There is discrepancy between mileage showed on watches (and in Amazfit app) vs mileage actually written in GPX file. So when your activity gets uploaded into Strava (or you then export it to Endomondo etc.), there is major difference (up to 2 %) in total mileage and thus also in pace etc. This is critical flaw.
Pace - One of the most important features of running sport tester is its ability to indicate current tempo. However, Amazfit readings fluctuate wildly, so it is really of not much use. For example, when jogging at constant pace, it quickly jumps between 4:00-5:30 min per km. In garmin devices, this get averaged and probably even anticipates hand movement, so you get quite good impression of how fast are you running at the moment. This is another major drawback of amazfit.
Altitude - I have noticed that for running, amazfit uses altitude from GPS only. Therefore, it is very inaccurate and completely useless - serves more like a random number generator. If you use "trail run" acitivity, altitude is measured through barometric sensor only, which is also less accurate. On garmin devices with barometer, altitude is measeured through combination of both sensors and measurements are very accurate (I got this impression after using Strava's correct elevation functionality).
Heart rate - For me, heart rate measurement during activity provides very poor readings. Even though i am having watches tightened fairly strong. For my regular runs at 150-160 bpm (measured through chest strap), typical stratos reading is around 120. Only sporadically, it gets closer to real values for certain period of workout. But in general, it is useless. It works same for my friend who also bought Amazfit for running. It seems to perform better when cycling (maybe because there is not that much hand movement - I dunno). However at this price tag, it is not realistic to expect any kind of accuracy from optical sensor. It is probably something very basic, it can be compared with garmin devices, which provide kind of realistic measurements. Downside of stratos is also the fact that it does not support ANT+ protocol, so most quality chest straps are not supported.
First beat features - These are in theory very nice. However as they are mostly based on HR readings, which are totaly offshot in Amazfit, they are not of much use.
However, this is something you might expect, as amazfit costs fraction of most other comparable devices, that can actually be used as sports tracker. In general, I would say, for a price it is still good buy for a nice looking smartwatch. For usage as sport tester, it has very nice hardware, however lacks proper software, which is probably not going to get changed.
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Its great to have a review from sport tracker point of view . After watching many youtube reviews I was in impression that this watch is a steal but now I think they have compromised on GPS , Optical heart sensor and software . I think now I will stick to my TomTom Spark as its fairly accurate in both department and wait for AmazeFit 3. Thanks for the great review :good:
I love my Stratos 2S...
I am not a professional athlete and for my use it is more than ideal! A great price for what it offers, without mentioning the battery life.
Guto ViP said:
I love my Stratos 2S...
I am not a professional athlete and for my use it is more than ideal! A great price for what it offers, without mentioning the battery life.
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These are my thoughts exactly. I recently ordered the Stratos and saw this thread thinking "Oh no, should I cancel my order?" but reading the details, the concerns raised by OP are likely not of concern for anyone that is not particularly "serious" about their athletics. In other-words, it's exactly what it looks like - an lower cost alternative to professional sports tracking devices. 2% inaccuracies in the distance traveled is actually ideal for my purposes - I may run about 5 miles at a time, so if it indicates I ran 4.9 or 5.1 miles (~2% is 0.1 miles), I would have no problems there since I likely set my stop point based on Google maps to begin with!
All the other metrics such as altitude, pace, and HR, I would treat as relative to my initial readings. Eg, if I started a run at 100 ft elevation and 70BPM, I would simply look at how much of a difference from that I varied and only care if I saw absurdly huge variances.
I appreciate the insights, and the details provided by OP, but I think it actually sends a different message to some users - instead of saying "it's quite useless", it's really just quite useless for OP and serious (or professional) athletic tracking. For every day, average joe/casual users, we're mostly glad to hear there's only a 2% variance.
Thanks for the details analysis! Looking forward to receiving my watch.
Individuals have different expectation. For its price, I will never think it can be as good as Garmin or much more expensive trackers. Serious athletes should never consider this Stratos watch unless you can accept certain flaws for its much lower price tag. It's quite unfair to compare it with those trackers and come with the conclusion that it's useless while many others are happy with it.
I will never think it can be as good as Garmin or much more expensive trackers
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Bingo. There's a reason a Garmin costs 2, 3 times as much. It's not that the Amazfits are bad they just may lack some of the refinement/accuracy of more expensive devices.
On a value-for-money count, they score high.
Poborak said:
After quite some time of using Amazfit 2 [...].
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I agree to all points. I have each experience the same after few weeks and several activities with this watch already performed.
I can only wish that firmware updates will improve most of weaknesses.
I have compared vivoactive 3/gamin fenix 5/polar m430/amazfit stratos and I will keep only the stratos, I explain shortly my decision:
Calories burned in all the day and training in gym (I'm bodybuilder) with a chest strap are the same (+/- 50) than the garmin.
Y use elpitical profile to track the gym activity and problem solved.
Amazing product for this price, the app is very good. 130 Euros VS..... no VS.
cons
nice watches, though i will get rid of tomtom spark 3 cardio, but Stratos showing wrong hr even with hr belt, instead of 48 showing high 70... even with belt the optical diode is still flashing. looks like bugged evo model to me...
Poborak said:
GPS recording - There is discrepancy between mileage showed on watches (and in Amazfit app) vs mileage actually written in GPX file. So when your activity gets uploaded into Strava (or you then export it to Endomondo etc.), there is major difference (up to 2 %) in total mileage and thus also in pace etc. This is critical flaw.
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Click to collapse
For GPS is pretty accurate. I have a track that I use for years now. Ran it with different watches (Vivoactive, Fitbit Ionic, TomTom etc). All of them had different mileage. And the Stratos is in the range of the others. Same for Strava: As far as I know Strava is automaticly correcting the length of the run based on their own algorithms.
I had an Garmin Vivoactive 3 before which costs twice as Stratos and was returned and refunded because of 2 hardware defects. I can only compare my Stratos to the VA3.
Distance: Same on both devices but little difference to Strava (both).
Pace: Same on both devices but Vivoactive 3 is updating move frequently and giving more pace alerts.
Altitude: Good to OK for Stratos, totally off for VA3. Strava corrects it anyway so I do not mind. For accurate altitude one needs to have a Suunto or Polar watch.
Step count: Only fine in walking activities on Stratos. For whole day it is counting much less than VA3. Amazfit should use a different algorithm for all day steps as others do. But I do not care about steps that much and VA3 is also not counting baby stroller steps.
Intensity minutes: The only reliable measurement on the VA3 but not available at Stratos.
Floor count: Garmin VA3 was OK but omitting some. Stratos stopped to count my floors since now the threshold seems to be much higher than 3 m.
Activities: Stratos missing important activity types as cardio or yoga. I am using elliptical for that which has almost same calorie count.
Heart rate sensor: Garmin has one of the best (it not the best) and because Vivoactive 3 is small and light it is the best watch at Garmin for recording. But still one needs to use a chest strap for high intensity activities or intervals. Stratos sensor is really bad but OK for resting heart rate and if one puts it higher on the arm and makes it tight than good enough for running or cycling.
Usage: Garmins VA3 has a crappy touch interface with a lot of annoyances and no mood to fix it. Stratos is more easy to operate but to slow and sometimes buggy.
App: Garmins Connect app is not really an app but just a web view. It holds a lot of data which is sometimes confusing but only works while having an active internet connection. Without internet is is not possible so sync activities to the smartphone nor checking data on the smartphone app. Stratos app is functional without internet but can only sync to Strava.
Verdict: I would be totally happy with the Stratos if the bugs are fixed and it had cardio and yoga activity types. I also like the Firstbeat features like recovery time and training effect. Garmins Vivoactive 3 is doing OK as an expensive activity tracker but has no training features and an annoying user interface and also some bugs like wrong altitude.
battery life with HR belt
guys whats your battery life with HR belt? I get -38% of battery after 2hr run with HR belt + GPS /optical switched off/, no backlight.
any hints?
my tomtom spark 3 runs for 8h15m with gps and HR belt, 7hr when skitouring /sub 0`C temp/
Hr measurements are completely off i take jabbra sport earbud for this and they connect to the stratos so ok
What annoys me the more is the altitude completely off hope they will introduce a manual input for this ... and sometimes it freeze ?
Great review of real runner, thank you!
Jabbra sport earbud
pbxl said:
Hr measurements are completely off i take jabbra sport earbud for this and they connect to the stratos so ok
What annoys me the more is the altitude completely off hope they will introduce a manual input for this ... and sometimes it freeze
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Hi could you share the exact model, would like to get the same earbuds for heart rate measurements.
Thanks
Having liked the BIP so much it was soon joined by a Stratos and, most recently, by a 47mm Amazfit GTR. Reading the forum, of which I am a very new member, I saw that the GTR has been criticised for the performance of its GPS, something which is important to me.
The first thing I did was to check the 'static' accuracy of the GTR against a known standard. The readout from the GTR is only available to the nearest second of arc and when compared with a device with a known accuracy of 1/10th second of arc, it was accurate to the nearest second of arc. Here in the tropics a second of arc is pretty close to 30m in any direction. In short, the GPS is certainly accurate to that extent, but whether it has greater accuracy is a question I cannot answer.
Stationary, with my arm held out in front of me, time to fix is between 12 and 17 seconds in a less than perfect location. Time to fix with my arm held out in front of me while walking is longer. Time to fix with my arm swinging (ex-military) is a good deal longer. I use the walking exercise exclusively (at my age that's about the limit) so, having got a gps fix, my arm is swinging all the time and the resulting track is rather like that of a drunken man. As an experiment, while walking along the edge of a straight main highway, I held my arm out in front of me for a period of time and when later I looked at the track it was very accurate indeed, showing me exactly on the edge of the highway. An excellent result. This was repeated later during the walk, in a location that was less than ideal, with similar results.
As someone who has been involved in the reception of weak radio signals for almost 60 years, I am well aware of the extraordinary demands made on a tiny device but other, rather more expensive, watches seem to do better by all accounts. The inference that I draw from all of this is that the device has adequate accuracy but needs some tweaking to handle irregular motion of the watch on the wrist.... if that is possible.
In respect of the HR monitor, I see a considerable improvement over the Stratos and, over the normal range for resting heart rates 60-100 bpm, I have found it to be very accurate. This all assumes that it is worn correctly. To check its accuracy I simply performed simultaneous ECGs.
Sai Lang Kham
sailangkham said:
Having liked the BIP so much it was soon joined by a Stratos and, most recently, by a 47mm Amazfit GTR. Reading the forum, of which I am a very new member, I saw that the GTR has been criticised for the performance of its GPS, something which is important to me.
The first thing I did was to check the 'static' accuracy of the GTR against a known standard. The readout from the GTR is only available to the nearest second of arc and when compared with a device with a known accuracy of 1/10th second of arc, it was accurate to the nearest second of arc. Here in the tropics a second of arc is pretty close to 30m in any direction. In short, the GPS is certainly accurate to that extent, but whether it has greater accuracy is a question I cannot answer.
Stationary, with my arm held out in front of me, time to fix is between 12 and 17 seconds in a less than perfect location. Time to fix with my arm held out in front of me while walking is longer. Time to fix with my arm swinging (ex-military) is a good deal longer. I use the walking exercise exclusively (at my age that's about the limit) so, having got a gps fix, my arm is swinging all the time and the resulting track is rather like that of a drunken man. As an experiment, while walking along the edge of a straight main highway, I held my arm out in front of me for a period of time and when later I looked at the track it was very accurate indeed, showing me exactly on the edge of the highway. An excellent result. This was repeated later during the walk, in a location that was less than ideal, with similar results.
As someone who has been involved in the reception of weak radio signals for almost 60 years, I am well aware of the extraordinary demands made on a tiny device but other, rather more expensive, watches seem to do better by all accounts. The inference that I draw from all of this is that the device has adequate accuracy but needs some tweaking to handle irregular motion of the watch on the wrist.... if that is possible.
In respect of the HR monitor, I see a considerable improvement over the Stratos and, over the normal range for resting heart rates 60-100 bpm, I have found it to be very accurate. This all assumes that it is worn correctly. To check its accuracy I simply performed simultaneous ECGs.
Sai Lang Kham
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Got me thinking. If there was a way to disable the motion step monitor, would it stop interfiering?
Hi All,
Have been using my GTR 42mm for a couple of weeks now and I've been trying to enable the heart rate sharing but my apps (mostly Adidas Runtastic) won't find the Smart HR bluetooth device. Funny thing is that I could make it work on my girlfriend's iphone (with her GTR unit), but didn't work with any of my Android phones. I've activated the heart rate sharing option in the Amazifit app and also the discoverable function, but none of them seem to work. The logic behind all that is that I have my runs logged in the Adidas Runtastic for many years, all with my heart rate, and would like to keep it like that without the need of the chest band that I have been using for many years. Any clues?
Some facts about my experience with the GTR firmware V0.1.1.13 as of July 2020:
- GPS will take maybe a couple of minutes to fix before you can start working out;
- GPS precision compared with my phone is VERY accurate, but I am not surrounded by tall buildings (never used with tall buildings around),
- Heart Rate compared with my Polar Bluetooth chest heart rate monitor was not more than 2bpm of difference, ever! I have been (VERY) skeptical about those light sensors, but I was wrong! Two weeks checking it side-by-side on my runs and it is as precise as the chest from Polar.
- Notifications are working well after I have permitted the Amazfit app to be running on the background of my phone
- Never emptied my battery, but I believe it would keep going for 3 or 4 days with my usage (notifications -- not many -- but on, smart heart rate and 10 sec of screen timeout)
Final thoughts: From what I've read on the few posts about the GTR, they have come a long way from where they have started. GPS and heart rate seem to have improved a lot OR there were changes to the hardware (not probable!). Nice watch for $129 on Amazon!
What do you think?