A sports watch with an AI coach? I tried it and found it surprisingly useful

Amazfit continues to release new watches every month, and it’s becoming more and more clear that the company wants to compete with the best in the world. Garmin, Coros, Polar, Suunto. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been running, walking, biking, sleeping, and living with my new one. amazfit cheetah.

Surprisingly, its biggest feature might be the one you least expect.

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amazfit cheetah

Mid-range smartwatch with GPS and satellite tracking, up to 14 days battery life, and an AI-generated running coach.

Let’s start with the hardware. The watch is fairly light at just 32 grams and features a beautiful 1.39 inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 454 x 454 pixels. The top right button also acts as a rotating crown for scrolling through lists, and the bottom right button is used to go back.

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The rest of the watch’s hardware matches what I’ve seen on other $200 sports watches. It is water resistant to 5 ATM and has a large battery capacity of 440mAh. Amazfit advertises a battery life of up to 14 days with normal usage. With special features like dual-band GNSS (most accurate mode), the battery life is close to 26 hours.

Amazfit Cheetah has a sportier look than its predecessor, smart watchprovides almost the same experience as GTR4 I tested in 2022. Like the GTR 4, the Amazfit Cheetah syncs with his Zepp smartphone app, and that’s where the real power of the experience lies.

The Zepp app is pretty overwhelming with its sheer number of screens, settings, and options, and you’ll have to spend hours exploring it. But once you know where your favorite menus and settings are, it’s one of the best companion apps out there.

A key addition to Cheetah’s software is the inclusion of the AI ​​Zepp Coach.It’s similar to Chat GPT, Zepp software will launch an interactive interface and chat to select the desired training plan. A training plan is created and automatically adapted as you complete your running activity.

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I haven’t completed the full training plan yet, otherwise it could take weeks, or longer, AI Here are some smart ways to develop a workout that best fits your needs. I’ve found this helpful for novice runners who need coaching, consistent feedback, or have questions about best practices for different types of workouts or running in general.

As mentioned before, dual-band GNSS is supported on Cheetah along with 6 satellite systems. Amazfit calls its satellite technology MaxTrack, and while it performs pretty well, it’s not as accurate as the ones I’ve tested with Garmin and Coros devices. Overall distances were still close and most of the GPS tracking issues were related to corners in wooded areas. For most people, this is perfectly fine.

Amazfit also includes a Track Run mode, where the algorithm corrects the GPS route to match the standard track and lane you’re driving in if your connection is unstable. You can also sync your running data to various services like Strava, Relive, Google Fit, and my favorite Apple Health.

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For a more robust running workout, you can choose between 4-6 metrics to display on different data pages during your exercise. These categories include duration, distance, pace, steps, speed, altitude, heart rate, and more. We found the heart rate monitoring to be fairly consistent with Garmin and Coros results, but you can also connect the Amazfit Cheetah to an external chest strap if you want the most accurate readings.

Offline maps, offline music (MP3 manual loading) and Amazon Alexa via connected smartphone are also supported. One of my favorite Garmin features is the Morning Report, and Amazfit offers a similar experience on the dial called Morning Update. Data available in this morning update includes weather, battery status, sleep, PAI and schedule.

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as a whole, Amazfit Cheetah, $229reminds me of mid-range smartphones where if you’re happy with what you get out of the box, you’ll be happy with the watch as well. Occasionally, you may see something that bothers you. Smartphone apps need to be improved for general users. But considering the price and the unique AI training coach feature, this might be the best starter watch for aspiring runners and athletes.