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When choosing a smartwatch, although most people do not have special professional sports needs, they often hope that the sports functions of the watch are as powerful as possible, especially the GPS and heart rate must be accurate, and at the same time, they hope that the watch has as many functions as possible. It can cover as many application scenarios as possible to improve the utilization rate of the daily use of the watch, rather than a piece of sports equipment used only for running. However, the products on the market are usually on one side, and everyone can only choose between sports brands and smart device brands. So is there a cost-effective product that takes both into account?
The product reviewed this time is such a "bucket machine" with comprehensive positioning: Amazfit GTR4 from Huami, a manufacturer that has been cultivating smart watches for many years
Product Details and Parameters
Amazfit GTR4 uses a 1.43-inch AMOLED round screen, the front is a whole piece of glass, the screen ratio is satisfactory, there is no annoying big black border, and the edge of the screen is treated with AG chemical etching process to get the details of frosted + scale, I think the texture improvement is more than practicality.
The 326ppi retina screen display effect is very good, the automatic backlight response speed is good, the display is clear in the sun, and it will not be too dazzling when running at night.
The watch body is an integrated aluminum alloy cut out by CNC, and the texture is quite good. The only two buttons are on the left, and one of them retains the traditional crown style, which is turned and pressed together. A little bit of red is just right on the all-black watch body,
The back is a huge biosensor part. Amazfit GTR4 is equipped with the latest biosensor BioTracker 4.0 developed by Huami. In addition to heart rate, it also supports blood oxygen, pressure, sleep, and other health data monitoring.
Practical and professional sports functions
Most users who buy smart watches mainly use them as sports equipment. Traditional sports watches mainly rely on GPS and heart rate sensors to help users perform aerobic exercises such as running and cycling.
Let me talk about the basic hardware performance first:
Dual Frequency GPS
Amazfit GTR4, like the current mainstream flagship smartwatches, is equipped with L1+L5 dual-frequency GPS and uses the first patented design of the right-handed circularly polarized GPS antenna with a metal body. The principle does not need to be understood too much, and the effect is in High-rise buildings and dense forests are very unfriendly to GPS to obtain more accurate positioning.
Friends who have used the previous generation of single-frequency GPS Garmin devices must know that when running and passing under tall buildings, the GPS will drift in all likelihood, and after upgrading to dual-frequency GPS, there will be basically no such problem
The performance of GTR4’s dual-band + right-hand rotation is indeed very powerful. I chose to run in the buildings of the community for the first test. It was still a rainy day which greatly affected the GPS signal. According to my previous experience, it took at least half a minute to search for satellites on rainy days. Starting, the GTR4 only took about 10-15 seconds, which is quite fast.
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Looking at the trajectory again, several watches I have used before will drift on sunny days. The GTR4's route is quite accurate. Basically, the route difference of each lap is within the width of the road. It can be seen that the density of GPS dots is very high. As a comparison, I chose the same rainy day with the Garmin 245 route, basically drifting badly.
Afterward, I took my watch to climb Huangshan Mountain. The watch accurately recorded the walking track of the day, and the coincidence rate with the satellite map was quite good. On October 7, it was raining non-stop in Huangshan Mountain, which is very impressive.
heart rate
In Huami’s Zepp App, the speed and heart rate are superimposed, because when climbing a mountain, you walk for a while, which is quite similar to interval training. You can see that the heart rate and speed curves overlap almost completely, and the heart rate response speed is good.
However, the accuracy and response speed of wrist optical heart rate detection is always limited by its principle, which is the worst among all kinds of heart rate measurements. For those who need more accurate heart rate measurements, GTR4 also supports access to external Bluetooth heart rate devices. This function is Usually only found on professional running watches
For relatively professional users, it can be matched with such a heart rate chest belt to obtain an accurate heart rate.
In addition to supporting common aerobic exercises, Amazfit GTR4 also relies on stronger computing power and sensors to support many more practical exercise modes.
The first is the air pressure sensor to measure the altitude. For me who likes outdoor mountaineering, the altitude is very valuable information. Compared with distance, you can know the current location and climbing progress more accurately. Although the air pressure sensor will be affected by the weather, GTR4 supports two calibration modes: manual input and GPS. After calibration, the altitude measurement is very accurate, and you can see it on your phone. The altitude change in the last 4 hours, you can also see the VAM (average rate of climb) in the exercise data to evaluate your ability when hiking or cycling.
The frequency of measurement is very high, and the altitude is refreshed every second on the cable car
This route is my record of climbing the 1864.8-meter Lotus Peak, the highest peak in Huangshan. You can see that the altitude in the record is almost the same as the real altitude.
GTR4 also supports the most common gym exercise scenarios for modern people, including skipping rope, rowing machine, elliptical machine, and strength training. I think these scenes are more practical than running and cycling, and most watches do not support them.
Jumping rope counting is a function of the Apple Watch that I drool before, and GTR4 also supports it. The measured counting is quite accurate. I jumped 2 times to 100, and the record was 100 once, and the record was 105 once.
Strength training also supports practical functions such as recording the number of weight groups and rest timing between groups. However, it is advertised that it can automatically identify the type and frequency of strength training, but it should require future firmware support. My watch does not support it yet. If it can be realized, that would be great (I can delete the instruction directly)
Also not supported is the line import function. Currently, when using the App to import lines, it will prompt that the current device is not supported.
GTR4 also supports many quite professional functions
For example e, the cucustomsata column:
The data page during exercise can be modified like a professional sports watch, and the content is also very rich.
For running, it also supports step frequency reminders, which is very useful. After customizing the step frequency, the watch will remind you regularly through sound or vibration, which can help users train with an efficient step frequency such as 180.
Altitude distance conversion, traditional GPS distance is calculated on two-dimensional plane data, and trail running will be accompanied by a lot of climbing, people walk on slopes, the distance and speed recorded by traditional GPS are inaccurate, GTR4 supports real-time The altitude corrects the real distance, which is more practical for trail runners.
Unexpectedly, the supporting App Zepp actually supports Strava. Strava is the most mainstream sports social platform. Zapp can be bound to Strava to synchronize sports records in real-time. This is very important to me. Devices that do not support Strava will be blocked by me. One-vote veto.
After talking about exercise, let’s talk about daily use
The biggest fear of sports watches is that they are useless for daily use. GTR4 supports quite a few intelligent functions. I will just mention a few that I think are practical.
The first is sleep monitoring + alarm clock. Everyone knows that sleep monitoring is to monitor the quality of sleep such as the length of deep sleep and light sleep, as well as heart rate and breathing monitoring during sleep to discover potential health risks. The smart alarm clock function of GTR4 can be combined with sleep monitoring. Cooperate and wake you up when you are in a light sleep state near the set time. Because the timing of waking up is very important to the quality of sleep, if you are awakened by the alarm clock in a deep sleep state, it is easy to enter that drowsy state, feeling that you have not woken up and you are a bad state in the morning. And being woken up in light sleep feels like waking up naturally from sleep. GTR4 can help you wake up in light sleep to improve sleep quality. I have actually measured that it is really effective because wearing it to travel to Huangshan requires getting up early, the timing of waking up is very good every time, and the vibration through the watch is a hundred times stronger than the scary alarm clock sound of the iPhone. I have deleted all the alarm clocks on my phone and set them entirely on my watch.
The Pomodoro clock is used to help me realize the Pomodoro Technique, that is, a focus time of 25 minutes. After the completion, take a break to enter the next focus time. The watch can use vibration to indicate that the focus time is up. Compared with the Pomodoro Work software on mobile phones and computers easy to use
Local music storage, carrying a mobile phone while running is always a hassle, especially since the weight of mobile phones nowadays is not small, but running without a mobile phone and listening to music is always a bit boring. GTR4 can store music on the watch, and then connect the watch with a Bluetooth headset,o that you can go running with only a watch.
Of course, there are other functions such as mobile phone reminders, WeChat reminders, NFC bus cards, and WeChat Alipay watch payment, but I think these functions are not particularly practical or common, so I won’t go into details.
It is a pity that although the watch supports schedules and to-do items, these need to be added manually in Zepp, and they are still on the second-level page, which is not practical. It would be nice to be able to sync from the phone's calendar and to-do list.
The interaction needs to be improved, and the battery life is surprising
The watch is equipped with the latest Zepp OS 2.0, the fluency is very good, and the interactive logic of the UI is clear and sensitive to touch, so it is very comfortable to use.
Because the watch has many functions, in addition to finding it slowly from the menu, you can also quickly access commonly used functions through custom cards. In short, it is easy to quickly find the functions you need.
The whole system is quite smooth
Although Zepp OS2.0 is doing very well, GTR4 has obvious deficiencies in the combination of software and hardware. This is also the most dissatisfying part of this watch, which is the function of the two buttons in the interaction.
GTR4 has 2 hardware buttons, one is the upper crown that can be rotated and pressed, and the other is the lower button, pressing the crown in the default state will return to the main menu, and the lower button can be customized as various function entrances, the default is to enter Sports menu.
The crown can be rotated to anchorage-turning ing menu-sliding-ding effects. Although it has no damping and scale sense, it is still very good to use with the vibration feedback of the watch. However, the problem lies in the crown. The crown can slide into the menu, but the GTR4 cannot be selected and determined by pressing the buttons. That is to say, it can only be viewed but not entered. Press the button on the screen, if you naturally press the crown to select the current function, you will directly return to the main menu, which is very awkward. This logic is very strange. Since I need to tap the screen, why should I use the crown instead of swiping the screen? ,
This problem is more obvious in sports mode. Touch operation is more laborious during sports, especially when wearing gloves. Therefore, sports watches usually support buttons to start and end sports, but GTR4 must press the button to start sports. The screen, fortunately, you can use the crown button to start and pause the exercise after starting.
These interaction logic problems have caused the two hardware buttons of GTR4 to not be fully utilized. Although the touch screen is very useful and fully sufficient, it always feels a bit pity
The battery life is very amazing to me. I traveled to Huangshan Mountain for 5 days and 4 nights during National Day. I left the watch charger fully charged and threw it at home. I turned on the sleep monitor and alarm clock every night. I spent almost 3 days outdoutdoorsing all the way. Turn on the sports mode, and when you get home at 12 o'clock in the evening on the fifth day, the watch still has 30% of the battery, don't be too cool. If you only exercise for 1 hour a day, you will lose less than 10% of the battery in a day, and it will be no problem to use it for a week.
Summarize
This Amazfit GTR4 is a watch whose overall performance exceeds my expectations. As the main product line of Huami, the Amazfit GTR series has been updated to the fourth generation. Compared with the previous generation, this generation has a significant improvement in hardware, specially equipped with Dual-frequency GPS, and a new generation of biosensors make it a big leap in sports performance, completely surpassing my old Garmin 245, especially the accuracy of dual-frequency GPS is outstanding. It will be perfect if it can support the strength training action recognition and line import of the promotion after the future upgrade
In terms of intelligence, although it is a third-party manufacturer, it cannot be perfectly integrated with mobile phones like Apple Watch, but health monitoring + smart alarm clock, as well as basic call reminders and information pus,h are, very useful, making people willing to wear it all day it.
Considering the price of only 1,000 yuan, this watch is undoubtedly a well-balanced bucket machine at this price.