Amazfit Balance: The Perfect 2023 Smartwatch
Amazfit is here with another excellent smartwatch of 2023. It is a stunning and affordable smartwatch featuring contactless payment, AI-based physical and recovery recommendations, phenomenal battery life, over a hundred workouts, and more. The watch is called Amazfit Balance, which is an unusual name because searching Amazfit Balance on Amazon will bring some weighing scales in the search results.
The smartwatch is been on my wrist 24/7 for the last few weeks. So, here is a comprehensive review of Amazfit Balance covering every aspect of the WearOS smartwatch.
Let’s Inspect!
Summary
Pros
- Beautiful and sleek body
- Long-lasting battery
- Specially designed GPS antenna
- NFC for contactless payment
- Splendid Zepp App
Cons
- Zepp Pay Limitations
- Very few Wear OS apps
Amazfit Balance – Price
The smartwatch is priced at 249$. The price is on the positive side and costs the same as the Huawei GT4 and less than the App Watch and functional versions of the Garmin smartwatch.
Amazfit Balance – Unboxing
The unboxing experience is excellent, as it has always been with Amazfit devices. The package is small, it seems like Amazfit is also working to reduce its carbon footprint. Removing the sleeve will reveal the main box that does not have any branding. The smartwatch is safely packed, and the package has the magnetic charging cable and instruction manual. I have the midnight color with a 22mm silicon strap.
Appearance and Build Quality
Amazfit Balance is a beautiful smartwatch. It has a sleek design with an aluminum frame, tempered glass screen, and fiber-reinforced polymer bottom shell. It has a stunning, slim, lightweight body with quick-release metal lugs. The midnight edition I have comes with a 22mm silicon strap, while the other variant has a 22mm nylon strap. Both of them feel quite nice and comfortable on hand. Another feature of the body I like is the thin bezels; the screen looks a little exposed and beautiful.
Talking about the controls, it has a rotating crown and a button on the right side. I like the implementation; it’s convenient, accessible, and responsive. Moreover, the crown button can also be programmed to open the desired app with double click; by default, it’s set on contactless payments. Instead of using the crown and buttons, you can switch to touch control swipes and clicks.
Overall, it has a slight touch of Amazfit Cheetah launched a few months back.
Technical Specifications
- OS: Zepp OS
- Display: 1.5-inch AMOLED screen with 480×480 resolution
- Body: Aluminum Alloy Frame, Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Bottom Shell, Tempered Glass Screen
- Weight: 35 grams without strap
- Sensors: BioTracker 5.0, BIA Bioelectric Impedance Sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Geomagnetic Sensor, Air Pressure Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Temperature Sensor.
- Battery: 475mAh with magnetic charging
- NFC: Yes
- Connectivity: WLAN 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 5.0
- GPS: Circularly Polarized GPS Antenna with dual-band positioning and 6 satellite Positioning System
- Speaker and Microphone: Yes
- Smartphone App: Zepp App
Amazfit Balance – Features
Amazfit Balance is an incredible smartwatch; from a great design to excellent specs and handy features, the smartwatch has everything. One of the biggest inclusions in terms of features is the NFC. It is excellent, but the feature comes with a slight drawback. Being a Xiaomi sub-brand, Zepp Pay also has a similar implementation to Xiaomi Pay. So, you can only use a Master Card or Maestro Card for contactless payment. Visa and AMEX cards are only possible if you live in Europe, where you can use a service called Curve to bypass the limitations.
Next, we have the GPS, which itself is not a feature, but the accuracy and responsiveness it brings to the table are great. The 6-band positioning system has a specially designed antenna to provide better communication with the satellites. The performance is fast, reliable, and very accurate.
Amazfit is getting better and better with Zepp OS. With every version and new smartwatch, it gets significantly better, enhancing the overall experience of the smartwatch. The interface is friendly, rich, fluid and comes with a lot of functions and customizations.
In addition, Amazfit Balance also has tons of productivity tools to make the smartwatch user-friendly. It also has hundreds of watch faces that are pretty functional and colorful. The apps on the App Store are not as good as Google Play and Apple App Store, but you get some good options like the GoPro Remote app.
Amazfit Balance – Fitness Tracking
Amazfit smartwatches have always been quite good with fitness tracking; this time, they have improved even. Balance has significantly better GPS and sensors that make the reading way more precise.
The steps tracking and calorie counter are on par. HR tracking is as great as it has been for years, and you can set intervals to take readings on a regular basis, like every 1, 5, 10, or 30 minutes. The sleep tracking is also pretty good. Amazfit Balance precisely fetches deep sleep, awake time, and REM.
Sports tracking is exceptional partly because of incredible GPS. It can track over 100 sports, and the results are very accurate. The data representation in both the smartwatch and Zepp App is excellent and fairly detailed.
Battery Endurance
Amazfit Balance has a solid 475mAh battery that can easily last two weeks with considerate usage. With everything on and always being on display, the endurance comes down to 6 days, which is still very respectable for a smartwatch.
Zepp App
Zepp App is getting better and better with every version. It is even smoother and more reliable and has significantly more options. In my opinion, it is one of the best smartwatch companion apps in the industry.
The only problem that it used to have in the past was battery consumption. Amazfit has optimized the app to be efficient for Android.
Drawbacks
- Zepp Pay is limited to Master Card only
- Very few Wear OS apps
- No LTE variant
- Still using magnetic charging
Conclusion
Despite the drawbacks, the Amazfit Balance is an incredible smartwatch. It has exceptional battery life, buttery smooth OS and interface, fantastic and precise GPS, excellent fitness tracking, and much more. It provides an incredible balance between functionality, style, and fitness tracking at a great price, which truly makes it an excellent smartwatch.
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