Amazfit Pop 2 review: a mixed bag | 91mobiles.com

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The India-exclusive Amazfit Pop 2 is sure to turn some heads. It has almost everything one would expect from a wearable smartwatch. The Amazfit Pop 2 offers a premium design, Bluetooth voice calls and a bunch of fitness-tracking features and comes with an affordable price tag. But, does it provide a fruitful experience? Read the full review to find out how the budget-centric Amazfit Pop 2 performed in daily use and whether you should buy one.

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  • First, the Amazfit Pop 2 paired with my iPhone via the newly launched Zepp Active app. The app is exclusive to the Pop 2 smartwatch, at least for now, and also supports devices running Android 5.0 or higher. I am using version 1.0.4 of the Zepp Active app and it looks very similar to the original Zepp app to me. Like the latter, the Zepp Active app asked me to login with my registered email ID to start. After that, I was able to pair the Pop 2 with my smartphone via the QR code Bluetooth pairing process, which worked flawlessly. The app also offers a good old search and pair option.
  • Once setup is complete, the app fetches the details from the smartwatch and shows widgets of my activities, workouts, heart rate, SpO2 and sleep on the home screen. I’m able to interact with those widgets to see how active I’ve been over the week, month or year, check sleep patterns and review workouts, which is very useful. Apart from this, the app has ‘Exercise’ and ‘Me’ tabs right next to the home screen. The former provides location-based tracking for my workouts, including cycling, running and walking, using my phone’s GPS, while the Me tab pulls up Watch settings, dial center, reminder settings and more. Although the app is easy to use, I found it to be very basic and missing key features like dark mode.

  • Now, talking about the smartwatch, the Amazfit Pop 2 is crafted from a metal body for a premium look and feel. This makes the watch a bit heavy, but I was comfortable wearing the Pop 2 for hours on end. It helps that the watch has rounded edges and soft and comfortable straps that don’t itch or bite. The straps feature quick-release pins for easy swapping with similarly sized straps and changing the look of the watch on the go. Furthermore, like many other smartwatches, the Amazfit Pop 2 has a rectangular dial that houses a 1.78-inch touchscreen AMOLED display. The latter has 368 x 448p resolution, 326 PPI, support for raise-to-wake gesture and always-on. Everything is fine and I have no problem using the watch even in direct sunlight. The screen is bright enough, but I had to manually adjust it as there is no auto-brightness support on this wearable.
  • The Amazfit Pop 2’s rise-to-wake gesture also works seamlessly. I was able to check the date and time without using my other hand or the always-on screen. The latter is disabled by default, but it can be enabled using watch settings. The always-on screen isn’t customizable, but there is an option to choose between digital and analog clocks. However, the feature is a real battery hogger and I would advise you to disable it. Speaking of battery life, the wearable can easily last 7-8 days between charges with normal usage and always-on screen off. It’s an impressive performance, with the company promising 10 days of battery life on a single charge. The Amazfit Pop 2 went from zero to 100 percent using the proprietary charger in about an hour and a half.

  • On the fitness front, the Amazfit Pop 2 packs a bunch of health-tracking features, which worked satisfactorily for me. The wearable did a good job of tracking my vitals, including steps, heart rate, and sleep. The data is a bit off at times, but for the price, I can’t ask for more. This smartwatch offers 100 different sports modes including free training, running, walking, cycling, football, basketball and more. I mostly used the watch to track my workouts, which it did by actively tracking my heart rate and calories burned throughout the duration. Unfortunately, the watch doesn’t give me an overview of my workout after a workout.
  • This is one of the many limitations of the Amazfit Pop 2’s OS. Without missing a workout overview, watch Smartphone notifications cannot be emulated properly. Not only did the watch lack a reply option and support for emojis, it also showed me WhatsApp messages shared in groups as DMs, which made me look at my phone more times than I used to. The watch doesn’t automatically stop buzzing for notifications and calls when the phone is silent. I had to manually enable Do Not Disturb mode to pause all alerts on the Pop 2. Also, Amazfit Smartwatch didn’t tell me the exact battery left in the tank. It reflects the battery percentage in 10 increments only. This worried me at first because I had trouble figuring out how long the watch would last. Amazfit Pop 2 worked for me with zero percent battery. But, after using the device for a while you will get used to it.

  • As for the UI, it looked similar to other smartwatches in the segment. Like its counterparts, the Pop 2 offers step counter, heart rate, SpO2 and sleep data along with music control, weather information and voice assistant with a simple swipe left or right on the home screen. Swiping up shows the notification panel on the screen, while swiping down gives access to quick controls to adjust brightness, enable/disable sleep mode, deactivate the raise to wake gesture, go to settings and more. A physical button on the right spine pulls up pre-installed apps including dial pad, contact person, call records, workout, camera, weather, sleep and more. The button can also be used to go to the home screen or pause a workout.
  • The Amazfit Pop 2 comes with a Bluetooth voice-calling feature, but for that, the watch needs to be within range of the smartphone. As for the quality, it seems average at best. Apart from this, the wearable supports a range of watch faces that can be downloaded from the Zepp Active app. The latter also offers an option to customize watch faces using preset options to your liking. That said, the watch can only store five watch faces at a time.

judgment

Amazfit Pop 2 is an affordable smartwatch priced in India at Rs. 3,999. Many of the features on the Amazfit watch can be found on similar priced and some affordable wearables in the country, but very few come with a metal design and AMOLED screen. The Amazfit Pop 2 has them both and the watch looks a lot sleeker than its competitors. Apart from this, the tracking ability of the watch is quite accurate, while its Bluetooth voice calling works well. The OS has some flaws and if the company can fix those with a future software update(s), the Amazfit Pop 2 will be a good buy for the price.

Note: At the time of writing this review, Amazfit Pop 2 is on V1.10 306D firmware version.

Editor’s Rating: 3.5 / 5

Pros

  • Good design
  • Nice show
  • Feature-rich
  • Good battery life

Disadvantages

  • No women’s health symptoms
  • OS needs improvement

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Source by 91 Mobiles

Written By Sabhitech

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