Review: Amazfit Active 2

Especially when compared to previous iterations, Amazfit has perfected the art of making a fitness tracker that looks much more expensive than it is. The Amazfit Active 2 looks and feels amazing. I spent some time trying to figure out why I liked it so much, then realized that it’s a low-key, understated copy of the Withings ScanWatch 2. This is less surprising than you might think, given that last year’s Amazfit Balance looked almost like a Galaxy Watch6.

Although my earlier complaints about Amazfit’s somewhat janky software and constant upselling still stand, you must rethink the value proposition entirely when a watch looks this good and is this cheap. If some things about it are still a little wonky, it’s worth overlooking at this price. It costs $100. $100!

Big, Bright Screen

Photograph: Adrienne So

There are two versions of the watch, one at the $100 price point with a silicone strap and a premium $130 version that comes with a leather strap and a sapphire glass face. In light of recent news that silicone watch straps have high levels of forever chemicals, or PFAS, I suggest shelling out the extra $30. I’m testing the premium version, and it looks almost indistinguishable from a classy, classic Seiko, Timex, or Casio.

The case is stainless steel and has two buttons on the side to control the watch—the Go/Back and Stop/Start buttons are the opposite of Garmin’s, which makes my mind melt a little but probably won’t be an issue if you’re not switching from another watch. It’s rated for water resistance up to 5 ATM, which means that it can withstand water pressure up to a depth of 50 meters. I take it off whenever I go into water because I don’t want to damage the leather band, but I have (accidentally) jumped into hot tubs and plunge pools while wearing it, and it hasn’t suffered any damage.

Photograph: Adrienne So

The 1.32-inch display is a bright, large, touchscreen AMOLED with 2,000 nits of peak brightness. I can easily see it both indoors and outside in bright sunlight. It’s important that you be able to check the screen easily, because you can download maps—including ski resort maps!—from the Zepp app to the watch. My local Oregon ski resorts aren’t on the list, but whatever.

To use the map, open the Zepp app and download the relevant maps to your watch. Mine took 9 minutes; hopefully your download time is shorter. OK, so the maps aren’t precise—the river running past my house covers my neighbor’s streets instead of rolling properly in place—but it looks stunning on the screen. You can zoom in or out, scroll around, and even import running routes. The watch will track your position via its five satellite positioning systems and can even read directions aloud. (I recommend not doing this, as the speaker sounds terrible.)

It has 164 workout modes and the usual array of sensors, including the optical photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, barometric altimeter, ambient light, and temperature sensors.

Screenshot courtesy of Adrienne So

It can track all the usual things, like your sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and skin temperature. You can also do One-Touch monitoring, which shows your heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and stress after a 45-second measurement. I have noticed that when it comes to tracking sleep and working out, it’s not nearly as sensitive as my Oura ring. The Active 2 just assumes that if you’re in bed, you’re sleeping, which, as anyone with sleep issues knows, is not always the case.

Problem Solving

A big difference from the last time I tested an Amazfit tracker is that you no longer need to buy additional subscriptions to unlock the watch’s functionality. That said, there’s still a lot of obnoxious upselling within the app.

For example, I accidentally paid $50 of my own personal money to subscribe to the premium version of Zepp Aura, since my free trial had expired and Aura said it provided more detailed sleep information. This was a mistake. Aura Premium is mostly chatbots, white noise machines, and a sleep assessment that showed me that I have no risk factors for sleep disorders. Great. Save yourself.

Amazfit’s partnership with Hyrox, the newest trendy CrossFit competitor, is also front and center, from ads within the app to a top suggested workout on the tracker. I paid extra money for a subscription to Wild.AI ($6 per month), the program that lets women optimize their workouts according to their monthly menstrual cycles. Cycle tracking on the watch is free, although Amazfit doesn't work with Natural Cycles, one of the most popular period-tracking apps. Zepp Coach, which offers you a daily suggested workout, is also now free. (Its previous iteration was Zepp Fitness, and it cost $30 a year.)

Another big difference is that with the last Amazfit watch I tested, the company seemed to have deliberately hidden its privacy policy. Now it’s front and center on the product page, along with notes that it has data protection via Amazon Web Services and is GDPR compliant.

The battery life is touted as up to 10 days, but with all the 24/7 health monitoring turned on—the sleep breathing monitor, low blood oxygen alerts—I got more like five. Like a Garmin, it does wake you up with a cheerful morning report, although Zepp’s is laughably inaccurate. The weather app in Zepp is sometimes as much as 20 degrees off the actual temperature outside. It also shows you Zepp’s PAI fitness metric, which totes up your heart rate, age, and gender and bears little to no relevancy to the real world. It slides further and further into the app as its irrelevancy becomes more pronounced.

Screenshots courtesy of Adrienne So

Finally, the automatic strength-training exercises don’t work quite as well as advertised. I’ve been strength training a lot lately, and it is incredibly annoying to have to click on your watch whenever you switch from one series of reps to another. The Active 2 can purportedly auto-recognize 25 strength-training exercises, but of these, it failed to recognize me doing pull-ups, bodyweight squats, and push-ups, among others.

With all that said, it defies belief that Amazfit has somehow managed to squeeze all this functionality into a tracker that costs only $100. For years, one version or another of the Fitbit Charge has topped my list of the best fitness trackers because it’s affordable. But the Active 2's functions blow the Charge 6's out of the water, and it looks nicer. It almost doesn’t matter that it doesn’t work quite as well and isn’t quite as reliable. Almost.

We'll have to see if Amazfit is capable of mopping up trivial problems like turning your neighborhood into the Dead Sea. When all the features on the Active 2 finally, uh, work, it will be over for the rest of the cheapos.