Just announced is the Xiaomi Amazfit Verge 2 smart sports watch. Don’t get excited, you can only get one if you are in China. you will have to wait for a few more months (likely Sept/October) before you can buy it in the USA and, maybe the EU too.
It’s a nice-looking watch with a decent 454x454px colour screen and that’s enough to put your Garmin, Polar or Suunto to shame. That level of quality screen is similar to previous iterations from Amazfit as well as similar resolutions to WearOS and WatchOS watches.
It’s trying to copy the Apple Watch both with the crown-navigation button as well as the onboard ECG option, supposedly to detect atrial fibrillation. There is also the onboard eSIM which frees the watch from needing to be near to your smartphone for any kind of cellular connection. You now get to receive calls as you run…if that’s what you want to do.
The Verge 2 runs on Snapdragon Wear 2500 internals, even though that would work with Androd’s Wear OS I’m not 100% sure if it is a Wear OS device, though with a 28 hour battery life WearOS is likely.
So What?
Well. This is NOT going to be one of those silly little cheap and cheerful watches that we can easily dismiss, even though it will be ‘cheap’.The previous iteration models were the Verge and STRATOS, both being similar inside but with the STRATOS having very decent sporting functionality EVEN WHEN FIRST RELEASED on to the market. Apparently, the features improved through time with only the onboard GPS chip and oHR letting the party down from a sporty perspective. I pointed all that out in my super-long review of the STRATOS last year. If Amazfit listened to me (highly unlikely 😉 ) then they would have spent a little bit extra on some quality innards this time around and we would now have a Garmin Vivoactive-beating contender on our hands. As I say, most likely, we WON’T have a Garmin-beater but the STRATOS 2 is likely to be released relatively soon, so we shall soon find out. The only downside with the STRATOS 2 might be that it runs WearOS which, on this processor, isn’t going to make for pretty battery life figures.
The cost will be HIGHLY competitive at $145 with the ECG version coming in at $190
On a scale of 0 to exciting…it scores a 7 (if the wind is blowing in the right direction)
2 years time…watch out Garmin. Just sayin’.
Fancy a bargain? You can get the previous iteration VERGE or STRATOS for around Eu/£/$100 and Eu/£/$150 respectively.
Check your local store here for the Amazfit STRATOS
Check your local store here for the Amazfit VERGE
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