Amazfit T-Rex 3

Santa was good to me this year, I got an Amazfit T-Rex 3 and it was a gift worth waiting for. It’s taken me a while to write this up (I know the yuletide season has passed), but it takes a while to get in gear with this watch… but once you do, it’s worth the learning curve.

Now then, I’m a huge smartwatch fan and I am fussy about what works and what doesn’t. 

Just to be clear, I’ve formed a close and personal bond with my Google Pixel Watch 2 which is outstanding for so many things, not least of which is its ability to allow the user to reply to emails and WhatsApp messages via voice recognition right off the wrist.

But the Google device has some limitations (no wonder they made the screen larger on subsequent versions) and its lack of upgradeability to third-party apps and inability to download music to onboard storage must rank up there as two of my most “oh I wish” functionalities.

Both of those functions are present on the Amazfit T-Rex 3 along with rather a lot more. To be clear, the answering email ability is not there, this is more of a life management and wellbeing device, but in an enterprise world where we’re all working too hard, this is a good thing.

Military-grade, enterprise tough

As well as being waterproof, this device is built with what its makers call military-grade durability with a large bright AMOLED display.

While the Google Pixel 2 sports battery life of about a day (to a day and a half, if you’re a light user) the Amazfit T-Rex claims to offer around up to 27 days of typical use (180 hours with GPS), which to be fair is an over-statement, but you can certainly get 10-days if not two weeks out of it, which is a real progression.

“The Amazfit T-Rex 3 is more than just a smartwatch; it’s a testament to our commitment to innovation and quality,” said Wayne Huang, CEO of Zepp Health. By integrating advanced technology with military-grade durability, we’ve created a device that not only meets the demands of extreme adventurers but also empowers everyday explorers to push their boundaries. The Amazfit T-Rex 3 is a versatile companion for anyone ready to take on life’s challenges, big or small.”

The software features free offline maps contour maps with turn directions and there are health features like “readiness” and heart rate variability.

Zapp with Zepp

You can’t reasonably expect to use this device without downloading the quite meaty Zepp app, which serves as the smartwatch device management portal and also helps with all the data scan reporting that the Amazfit carries out on the user. It takes a good amount of playing around with, but it’s intuitive enough to just click and experiment with from the get-go.

The body can resist 70℃ heat and -30℃ cold (but please don’t go anywhere that hot or cold) and the water resistance is up to 100m. 

Users can download free global, contour and snow maps. With contactless NFC Payment: Zepp Pay allows users to bind up to eight bank credit or debit cards at a time for password-protected contactless payment directly from your wrist. If you don’t want to pay with your watch, you can use the “Membership Card” app to upload all your loyalty card barcodes at the least. This function works great across UK cards including Nectar, Asda, Waitrose & Boots… but it fails on Tesco club membership in my case for some reason.

There are 170+ workout modes & AI training plans and I set mine up to ‘auto-recognise’ when I get out from the desk to take a brisk walk or run… or indeed when I use a static bike inside my office. Amazfit T-Rex 3 also offers top-tier data protection from Amazon Web Services, ensuring GDPR compliance, users can take full control of your privacy by choosing to enable or disable GPS data storage.

YouTube is your friend

Perhaps the biggest challenge with the Amazfit T-Rex 3 is that – because there are so many user function choices, so many app customisation options, so many personalisation and alignment decisions and so many overall tweaks possible – what you will really need is some help. This means YouTube is your friend here and countless people have posted customisation guides such as found at this search link here.

I had initial challenges uploading music at first due to the device not being comfortable with the mp3 formats of the saved music on my smartphone, but by playing with the personalisation and customisation options, I got it all sorted out. It’s a really nice smartwatch that can really help with work-life balance.

There are so many ‘life’ functions on this device it’s impossible to cover them all here, but just to add to what I have mentioned, the sleep tracker is good on this device. 

It really helped with dry January as sleep patterns kind of changed somewhat and I was able to refer to the device during the night to see if I had managed to rest enough, initially it seemed unable to join two sleep periods together into one total figure for the night (if you do happen to get up and use the loo), but its onboard AI may get used to the user behaviour profile after a while, as this seemed to rectify after about 10 days use.

The device itself is just over £200 at the time of writing on Amazon.