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
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