The Amazfit STRATOS ‘budget’ triathlon watch has some quirks. A little bit like your slightly politically incorrect, but otherwise charming, uncle.
These quirks manifest themselves in a few places but the 2 that most deserve a mention are as follows
- Pairing a Bluetooth sensor
- Triathlon Mode
Pairing the bluetooth sensors caught me out for a while. Well; I say ‘sensors’, I mean bluetooth smart heart rate monitors and bluetooth headphones.
You pair the bluetooth headphones from the main watch options menu:
swipe down>gear icon>connection>bluetooth
It gets slightly confusing as SOMETIMES the bluetooth heart rate monitors show up here but either disappear quickly or won’t pair. The key point to note THEY WON’T PAIR HERE.
Instead you must pair them in a sport profile’s options: sport profile>settings>accessories
I tried all these
They all worked in the sense that a valid connection occurred. I’ve only used the OH1 and Scosche in a workout so far. And no problems were encountered there.
The Jabras I have all seem to pair easily enough as usual
QUIRK 1: The Bluetooth headphone can be paired in either of the two locations
QUIRK 2: My bluetooth headphones are also heart rate monitors in their own right. Maybe that’s why they pair in both places. I’ve not tested the heart rate being recorded from them by the STRATOS BUT the audio does work. When I paired the headphone from the system menu I’m reasonably sure that the HR did NOT work.
QUIRK 3: The Scosche Rhythm+, Polar OH1 and Wahoo TICKR FIT are all optical arm bands (all good)..no problems. They still pair up ie it deals with potentially quirky HRMs.
QUIRK 4: The 4iiii Viiiiva and the Wahoo TICKR-X are both dual band HRM and they both pair super fine ie it deals with potentially quirky HRMs.
QUIRK 5: With an external HRM connected and a workout being followed the optical sensor still continually fires up #BatteryLife.
QUIRK 6: You can have headphones AND a heart rate monitor simultaneously paired. However you cannot have a different heart rate monitor paired for different profiles. Only one heart rate monitor can be paired to the watch and that pairing does seem to carry over to other sport profiles that allow HR.
QUIRK 7: Well it’s not really a quirk. Apparently this can be paired with CADENCE sensors (others have found). I could not pair them…I will try again and update this.
TRIATHLON MODE
The triathlon mode is a bit weird. It works. transitions and all. But
- I can’t export any data from a triathlon workout on the watch in gpx format (like I can with other workouts)
- The triathlon profile does not appear on the sports profile on the app
- Of course there are the usual gripes about lack of support for brick workouts. Otillo and duathlon are also not supported but I somewhat forgive the STRATOS on that front … for now. Note IT IS MARKETED AS A MULTI SPORT WATCH…CHECK THE FRONT OF THE BOX IT CAME IN
Detailed Review – Available
The highly detailed review is now avaialble.
Links:
I had no problems pairing with any of my Jabra headphones. These are all top-notch (aka expensive) headphones with the exception of the Sennheiser. If you get any one of these from Amazon and you have pairing issues or dropout issues…send them back within a month. Sorted. The Sennheiser is probably an appropriate price bracket for the STRATOS but if the Jabra Elite Sport heart rate works with the STRATOS then buying those will deliver great audio quality AND avoid the need to buy an other heart rate monitor
- Jabra Elite Active 65t $170/£150
- Jabra Elite Sport £125/£110
- Bose SoundSport FREE $199/£160
- Jaybird X3 Wireless $120/£100
- Jaybird Run $159/£140
- Bose SoundSport Wireless $199/£180
- Sennheiser PMX 686G Sports $35/£30
- Aftershokz Trekz Air $180/£160
- JBL Under Armour Sport $120/£100
- LifeBEAM Vi $250/£210
- Apple AirPods $160/£140
I have this watch and coming from a Ticwatch S and before that a Garmin Vivoactive HR I’m very pleased with it. Especially at the price. Not sure if agree with all your quirks (3 and 4 are just an observation of the watch working correctly surely?) but otherwise handy to know.
Can I ask if you have a build quality issue? On my device the screen sits higher than the bezel on one side, and lower than the bezel on the other. A manufacturing issue perhaps? Would this affect the water resistance?
Might be worth noting if all units have this as it goes to show where the money is being saved. Otherwise I think it’s a brilliant watch and the Strava integration is great! (Accept a walk is recorded as a run. Doh!)
hi
thank you for the feedback
1. yes no quality/bezel issue here
2. a full review is to follow
3. quirk/normal operation..yep i guess so
i reviewed the ticwatch a while back. not great.. i reviewed the vivoactive a while back…flawed. actually so is the stratos but it’s great fun! i tried to count all the different screen display yesterday and lost count
I had my first stratos Tri experience this weekend (Wildflower Triathlon). It was quite annoying that none of the three activities can be exported. Normally it does NOT export indoor activities, but everything outdoors (until now) has been able to be exported. I did use a dedicated bike computer as well for the cycling leg (lezyne), so I could manage my power. That was obviously able to be synced like any other ride.
Other than the non-exportability, the Stratos performed really really really well. I was thoroughly impressed. I felt like the iterations through transitions were smooth. The tracking was pretty spot on from what I can tell via the Amazfit app. Elevation data was good (the bike elevation was much closer with the Strava corrected elevation data than even the Lezyne unit). As usual, heart rate on Stratos should basically be just thrown out the window. Open water swim mode seemed to track really well. Battery life was great. It went from 78 to 66% during my 2hr 51min race. Not too shabby.
I’ve had my statos for just over 1 month. Overall I’m really happy. HR stinks and I wish there was more options for third party sensors (power please Amazfit), it should be able to export any workout as a .fit to share on any platform I wish, but it mostly just works. It is versatile, has great battery, stays connected to my phone, mostly easy to use/intuitive. Besides the poor HR I am hoping most issues can be addressed via firmware…we’ll see.
yep i think you need a bit of gps in there somewhere to force the strava export. same is true on some other platforms eg fitbit
lezyne: yep i’ve found elevation not great on that at all. then again i found same on the amazfit
hr stinks-yep!
i don’t like the too-long press for t1/t2 changes. minor point
it’s wierd tho isn’t it. you and i both seem to notice the obvious flaws (that I would really not like at other times) and yet STRATOS has something that makes us want to like it ..a certain je ne sais quoi
Can i connect polar hr and bt headphones to work tohether in one time?
yes
thank you for your information man! looking forward to update about speed&cadence sensors and HR simultaneous performance!
i cant get speed/cadence sensors to work at all.
Same here. Really as shame and it would be goo update that Ilinthe review. This is a showstopper for me as I would need a separate computer for cadence data capture such as a Garmin Edge. Working in two different apps is inpractical.
Hi, I have Jabra Elite Sport.
Could you say me if it’s possible to pair Jabra to smartphone for audio and pair to Stratos for smart HRM?
Thanks in advance.
that wont work
Hi, can i ask if this will work with Polar H7 or other HRM of Polar?
I’m about to buy an external HRM, but I want to make sure it will work, because I will purchase it overseas. Thanks!
yep
hi, were you able to connect it to the polar H7?
the h7 is a standard ble chest strap and it should connect like any other
Any hacks to extend battery life while using HRM strap over BT.
It eats the battery as is 39% for a two he run approx
I have done some research on this recently.
using the oHR uses LESS battery than the battery required to run the BLE connection to a chest HRM
Anyway of minimising the drain on battery with chest strap HRM as more accurate?
Thanks
use a sport mode with no gps.
turn down the screen brightness or use a screen with more black in it
if you want the hr after the workout then use a hr strap that caches and do not link to the stratos
Any update on pairing a cadence sensor to this? Thx