Amazfit GTR 2e & GTS 2e: 24 days of battery life, anyone?

Amazfit is the brand under which Huami sells their wearables—which is a significant fact, because Huami is also the manufacturing partner of Xiaomi for a lot of their popular wearables. The company has continued to release a slew of solid, affordable smartwatches, with the latest models, the Amazfit GTR 2e and GTS 2e, just being launched at CES 2021.

Both devices are priced identically, although there are a number of significant differences. In fact, I’d argue that one of these models is the clear winner between the GTR 2e and GTS 2e. Here’s what you need to know.

Price and availability

Both devices are identically priced, and the Amazfit GTR 2e and GTS 2e are both now available for purchase on Lazada and Shopee. Unfortunately, there are no early bird/pre-order promos here, although pricing is already relatively affordable for what you’re getting.

Official pricing in Malaysia is as follows:

Amazfit GTR 2e – RM549
Amazfit GTS 2e – RM549

To help you decide between the two, let’s move onto the specs.

Amazfit GTR 2e specs

The most obvious difference between the GTR 2e and GTS 2e—just like the GTR 2 and the GTS 2—is the round-faced 1.39″ AMOLED display on the GTR 2e. However, putting aesthetic preferences aside, the Amazfit GTR 2e also has one very, very impressive spec: battery life.

Amazfit promises up to 24 days with “typical use” on a single charge, and with “basic use”, you’re looking at something closer to 45 days of usage. Of course, you should refer to the first figure for an idea, which would probably be a lot closer to real-life results than “basic use”.

In any case, the Amazfit GTR 2e features a lot of the same functionality that the more expensive GTR 2 has. This includes 90 built-in sports modes,over 50 watch faces that you can play around with, and 5ATM water resistance. Meanwhile, there is an always-on display feature, although you might want to turn that off to get the best possible battery life.

There’s built-in GPS, which will be handy for those of you who want to track your journeys/runs/hikes, and you can also use the GTR 2e to measure your blood oxygen (SpO2). As for voice assistants, XiaoAi is supported for users in China, and Amazon Alexa is available for global users in select regions.

Sadly, Amazfit has yet to extend Alexa support to users in Malaysia, so there will be no voice assistant on the Amazfit GTR 2e. Additionally, you won’t be able to make calls via the wearable—despite the presence of a built-in microphone.

Amazfit GTS 2e specs

Meanwhile, the GTS 2e is basically a square-faced version of the GTR 2e—with some small, but significant differences. You get a larger 1.65″ AMOLED display, while battery life figures are significantly different: 14 days on the GTS 2e on a single charge with typical use.

Besides that, you’re looking at an identical spec sheet to the GTR 2e. This includes 5ATM water resistance which means that the wearable should be able to withstand up to 50m of submersion, built-in GPS, and you’ll also get Huami’s BioTracker 2 PPG sensor that can measure your blood oxygen.

Other features include 90 built-in sports modes, intelligent sport recognition, the Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) metric, and other standard health tracking features such as sleep and stress monitoring. Ultimately, however, the GTR 2e looks to be a better option here, which is mainly down to its much-improved battery life.

If you prefer a square-faced smartwatch, the GTS 2e isn’t a bad option at all. However, at an identical price point, the GTR 2e offers a little more value for your money.

In any case, if you’re looking for a new wearable, we recently released two buyer’s guides! One that covers conventional smartwatches, and another that discusses fitness bands. Meanwhile, we’ll also be sharing a buyer’s guide to cover “pseudo-smartwatches”, a category of wearable that looks and feels like a smartwatch—without the app market that regular smartwatches have access to. The Amazfit GTR 2e and GTS 2e fall squarely into this category.

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