New Amazfit GTR 3 Pro smartwatch leaves Apple Watch 7 in the dust on battery life and cost

You can’t even buy the Apple Watch Series 7 yet, but other smartwatch brands have already started churning out their ‘Apple Watch 7 rivals’, including Amazfit. The brand announced three new smartwatches, including the GTS 3, the GTR 3 and its new flagship wearable, the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro, all built on the Zepp OS platform.

Fans of the best smartwatches must be having a great time right now. As well as the Apple Watch 7 announcement, Withings also introduced the world to its luxury ScanWatch Horizon watch and just recently, Polar rolled out the Grit X Pro, a premium outdoor watch to cater to lovers of the Great Outdoors.

Now it’s Amazfit’s turn to… dazzle us with its new wearable line. And dazzle it does!

Amazfit GTR 3 Pro, GTR 3 and GTS 3: price and release date

The Amazfit GTR 3 and GTS 3 Series will launch globally on 11 October 2021. 

In the UK, pricing will start from £149.99 for the Amazfit GTR 3 and GTS 3, and from £179.99 for the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro.

In the US, pricing will start from $179.99 for the Amazfit GTR 3 and GTS 3, and from $229.99 for the Amazfit GTR 3 Pro. The GTS 3 won’t be available in the US on 11 October.

AUS price and availability TBC.

Amazfit GTR 3: stunning screen, impressive battery life

Sure, the GTR 3 Pro has a rather handsome display – 1.45-inch, 331 PPI AMOLED ultra HD – but what really made me think ‘wow!’ was the battery life. According to Amazfit, the 450 mAh cell provides “up to 12 days of non-stop battery life on a single charge”.

Now, I’m not even going to compare this to the Apple Watch 7’s 18-hour battery life but I will mention that the Garmin Venu 2, one of my personal favourite fitness trackers-cum-smartwatch at the moment, has an ‘up to’ 11-day battery life. And I was pretty amazed by that, let alone the 12 days the GTR 3 Pro has to offer.

Even more surprisingly, the GTR 3 Pro has an impressive 70.6% screen-to-body ratio and weighs only 32 grams. There are two physical buttons on the edge of the case, a watch crown and a push-button below. Of course, the watch itself is fully touch-enabled.

One interesting feature is the “4-in-1 easy health measurement” option. This measures four health metrics (heart rate, blood-oxygen, stress level and breathing rate) in one tap in as little as 45 seconds thanks to the built-in 6PD (photodiodes) BioTrackerTM PPG 3.0. We’ll have to wait and see how accurate this is.

There is some internal storage, not a lot but enough to store “up to 470 songs”, according to Amazfit. There are also 150+ built-in sports modes, although I’m sure most of these are a variation on a theme, we can assume the basics are covered.

You also get built-in GPS (five-satellite system), voice control (Offline Voice Assistant to open a sports mode or health feature), advanced sleep and menstrual tracking and more. Nothing we haven’t seen before but the addition of a multi-satellite system might make the GTR 3 Pro rival proper running watches such as the Garmin Forerunner 745. 

Amazfit GTR 3 and GTS 3: be there or be square (or round)

The Amazfit GTR 3 is the lite version of the GTR 3 Pro but thanks to the slightly smaller screen size (1.39”), the same battery that powers the flagship watch delivers even longer battery life: up to 21 days in the GTR 3’s case.

The GTR 3 hasn’t got a speaker, WiFi or music storage, but it has all the other perks of its bigger sibling, including the 150+ sport modes, automatic sport recognition and more. The screen resolution is almost as high as the GTR 3 Pro (326 ppi vs 331 ppi).

The Amazfit GTS 3 has a square watch face and this version sports the most impressive screen of the lot: a 1.75-inch, ultra HD AMOLED display with 341 ppi resolution. The square watch face is an obvious nod to the Apple Watch and reminiscent of the Amazfit GTS 2e, a watch I quite liked. The GTS 3 looks even more competent than its predecessor which is great news. Not to mention, it’s pretty cheap too.