Smartwatch Fitness tracker in India- Amazfit Bip S Lite

Smartwatch Fitness tracker in India

Amazfit Bip S Lite smartwatch review: Good fitness tracker under Rs 5,000

There are a lot of wearables out there under the Rs 5,000 segment in India. Amazfit is one of the most popular brands that offer good choices at low prices. A few weeks back, Amazfit launched its newest Bip S smartwatch, and now it has unwrapped a more affordable version of the same device. This is not the first time that the company has done something like this. 

Last year, the brand took the curtains off its Amazfit Bip Lite watch, which was a slightly cheaper version of the original Bip wearable from the company. All four fitness trackers have the same design blueprint, and the latest Amazfit Bip S Lite is just mix and match of them. The new fitness wearable still offers heart rate and sleep tracking, a bunch of sports mode, water-resistance rating, and more. There is very little difference between Amazfit Bip S and Bip S Lite, and it mainly lies in distance tracking and battery life. Yes, you have guessed it right, the smartwatch lacks GPS + GLONASS. So, is the new offering from Amazfit the best in the Rs 5,000 price segment? Well to find out about that you need to read our full review of Amazfit Bip S Lite.

Design, Display, Navigation

In the design department, there isn’t anything new we are looking at. Although, the smartwatch has an attractive design and will steal many glances. But, Amazfit should now consider changing the design or at least the display as this is the fourth budget fitness tracker from the brand with the same screen. The panel is a bit dull, and the color reproduction is not that great, especially the black levels are too bad. Here we cannot even say that if you apply a watch face with a black background, you will not notice the big bezels surrounding the small screen. It even has average viewing angles.

The Amazfit Bip S Lite sports a 1.28-inch touchscreen color TFT display. The company has ditched AMOLED panel in favor of a transflective screen. While the former would have offered much better colors and experience, the transflective display has its own benefits as well as disadvantages. It not only offers a good viewing experience in direct sunlight, but is also the reason for impressive battery life with the always-on feature. The transflective display looks much brighter outdoors when a good amount of light falls on it.

This watch is for outdoor sports activities and for those who just want decent fitness data and display, long battery life, as well as an always-on display feature. If you are looking for a vibrant panel with fancy design, you need to look elsewhere. It is worth mentioning that under Rs 5,000 price segment, the Urban Fit smartwatch offers one of the best LCD displays with colors popping out very nicely.

The touchscreen of the Amazfit wearable is responsive, and we did not have any issues using it. You need to swipe on the display to navigate through the UI. Swiping left or right on the watch gives you access to features like Music Control, Steps, heart rate, weather, and other options. Swiping upwards gives you notifications. The side button offers you tracking features like heart rate monitor, sleep quality, training modes, and more.

The panel is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to keep scratches at bay. It has an anti-fingerprint coating as well. Amazfit added a 5ATM water resistance rating, which is a welcome feature. The smartwatch can withstand pressures to a depth of 50 meters, so even if you take this for swimming there shouldn’t be an issue. Due to its plastic build, the AmazFit Bip S Lite is very lightweight, and one can wear it comfortably all day and at night too.

At the back, there is a heart-rate sensor and two pins for charging. You will find a single button on the right side, which is the wake/back dial. As usual, Amazfit is offering the smartwatch with silicone straps having a watch-like clasp, which ensures that the device doesn’t get dropped.

Smartwatch Fitness tracker Amazfit Bip S Lite- Performance

Due to the ongoing lockdown, we weren’t able to test a few things. But, we can say that the Amazfit Bip S Lite smartwatch can offer you close to accurate results when it comes to steps counting. We manually counted 500 steps and the watch registered 507 steps, which is fine. You can rely on this fitness watch for tracking heart rate as well. Note that you don’t get very accurate results, which is the case with all budget fitness trackers. But, the smartwatch at least gives a good idea of your heart rate. I must say, Amazfit watches offers you much more detailed data not only for your heart rate, but in every scenario than other fitness trackers under Rs 5,000.

It gives you maximum, minimum, and average heart rates as well as its zones, which are helpful. I like the fact that the smartwatch didn’t register heart rate data when the watch was not worn, which is not the case with other budget fitness trackers. In the settings, you can change how often the watch should check out heart rate. But you don’t get the option to set alert feature when the heart rate reaches maximum. You can set different intervals between 1 minute and 30 minutes for continuous tracking. You can turn off this if you feel that this feature is draining your battery. Needless to say, the device gives heart rate data for every activity.

The Amazfit Bip S Lite did not record steps while we were driving. This one doesn’t have in-built GPS like the Amazfit Bip S, and relies on your phone for providing data on total distance covered. It can offer you a nearly accurate idea but not an exact result, which is not surprising for a low-priced tracker. I was happy that the wearable offered me expected results for sleeping patterns. Here too you get detailed data, including sleep regularity and quality details. The app even lets you know that you didn’t have enough sleep and what could be its causes.

The device offers you 8 sports modes, including treadmill, outdoor running, walking, indoor and outdoor cycling, yoga, elliptical trainer, and freestyle. The watch allows you to change tracks, play/pause, and adjust volume, which is nice. While you can set alarm or event reminders, you don’t get water or food consumption tracking. You can at least manually set reminders to drink water. There is no feature to monitor your blood pressure as well. The addition of these two would have made the deal merrier.

There is an Unlock Phone feature on the watch, so that you can unlock your phone using the watch. But, this didn’t work out for me, and hence it does require some work from Amazfit’s end. Similarly, the idle alert feature isn’t of much use either. The interesting part is you get around 150 watch faces, but not all of them are customizable. Also, you don’t get an option to create your own watch face. The smartwatch successfully shows all the messages and notifications of most of the apps. You cannot reply to these directly, but you at least allowed to reject calls.

Smartwatch Fitness tracker - Amazfit Bip S Lite:- Amazfit app

The Amazfit app is easy to use, but is not very quick enough to sync the watch with the phone. Once connected, you will see three sections, one of which shows information about steps taken, sleeping patterns, heart rate, and other training data. There is a second section, which gives you the option to set a daily target, event reminders, alarm clock, and other things. The app lets you choose what all apps should alert you on the smartwatch. The Watch Face settings, continuous heart rate, weather, app alerts options can be found in the profile section. Needless to say, the app runs in the background, but doesn’t seem to consume much battery life.

Smartwatch Fitness tracker - Amazfit Bip S Lite- Battery

Amazfit is claiming that users will get 30-day battery life with the Bip S Lite, which doesn’t seem to be true. But, it totally depends on your usage. If you are not using all the features, then you should get close to 20 days of battery life. With continuous heart rate on, always-on display feature, usage of music player, alarm and reminder occasionally enabled, and tracking sleeping and steps, we got close to 12 days of battery life. This even includes checking messages on watch. The brightness levels were also set to 100 percent. This is commendable. The charger takes around two hours to fully top up the battery.

Amazfit Bip S Lite review: Should you buy it?

The Amazfit Bip S Lite is one of the good deals that you can get under Rs 5,000 segment. The only problem is the display is not vibrant and is a bit dull too. But, the wearable offers you good sunlight visibility and longer battery life than AMOLED devices – all thanks to the transflective panel. You might not be getting a very great display, but this is a good fitness tracking watch at a budget price. What you get is excellent battery life, always-on display, and detailed fitness data in comparison to other basic wearables. However, there is no onboard GPS. If you’re just looking for a budget fitness watch with a decent display (outdoors) and can offer detailed enough data, then this is a good deal. The Amazfit Bip S Lite price in India is set at Rs 3,799.