GoKawiilZepp Health, the company behind the Amazfit brand, has made some wise decisions with its push into smartwatches—like getting in early with the hybrid fitness crowd. It remains one of the few smartwatch brands to offer dedicated modes for Hyrox training and racing. Zepp Health's main draw, though, is offering desirable features for a lot less than the competition.
Even as the brand dips a toe into the premium end of the smartwatch market with the Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra, its most expensive model yet, it still manages to undercut Garmin, Suunto, and Apple.
The Cheetah 2 Ultra is a watch pitched at trail runners, with the capability to monitor much more than pace, time, and distance. It includes multi-band GPS (which the brand calls dual-band) to track movements with increased precision. You can glance down at detailed color maps and trail-running-centric data, and it offers 80 hours of battery life in ultra-trail-running mode, more than enough to cover the average finish time at Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc.
It does cost just shy of $600, and that’s not the pricing norm for Amazfit smartwatches. The next priciest model after the Cheetah 2 Ultra is the T-Rex 3, which is roughly $200 cheaper but has less battery life and storage space. The Amazfit range is already extensive, and the T-Rex meets similar needs for trail runners and outdoor lovers. So do we really need the Cheetah 2 Ultra?
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Photograph: Michael Sawh
While I don’t think you’d mistake the Cheetah 2 Ultra as a Garmin Fenix clone, it’s clearly playing from a similar design playbook.