This year some of our fitness routines might have fallen by the wayside for reasons well-known. As for the tenacious ones amongst us, no gym, no outdoor venture are lame excuses. All they need is a good fitness tracker, and determination to carry out home workout. So if you muster the latter, but don’t have a fitness logger, a budget smartwatch is prolly the best place to start.
Today, we have one such product with us — the Amazfit Bip S Lite, which comes at ₹3,799. It was anticipated ever since the vanilla variant launched the other month. Anyhoo, I have had it as a close companion for a little while now. And so here is my review of it.
But first, have a look at what’s different between the Bip S and the Lite edition —
Amazfit Bip S Lite vs Bip S Specs and Price
| Model | Bip S Lite | Bip S |
| Display | 1.28 Transflective Color 176 x 176 Pixels Always-On Touchscreen Display(with 2.5D Corning Gorilla 3 generation tempered glass + anti-fingerprint coating) | 1.28 Transflective Color 176 x 176 Pixel Always-On Touchscreen Display (with 2.5D Corning Gorilla 3 generation tempered glass + anti-fingerprint coating) |
| Dials | 2 Built-in Editable Dials and more than 150 Watch Faces (only 50 available right now) | 4 Built-in Dials (2 editable + 2 non-editable) and more than 40 dials to download |
| Band | Silicone | Silicone |
| Waterproof | 50 meters waterproof | 50 meters waterproof |
| Sensor | Huami-PAI Health Assessment System, BioTracker PPG Bio-tracking Optical Heart Rate Sensor, 3-axis Acceleration Sensor, 3-axis geomagnetic sensor, Sleep-tracking, Notifications, remote music control, alarm clock, sedentary reminders, weather forecast, and more. | High-precision Sony 28nm low power GPS, BioTracker PPG Bio-tracking Optical Heart Rate Sensor, xis accelerometer, Sleep-tracking, Notifications, remote music control, alarm clock, sedentary reminders, weather forecast, and more. |
| Sports mode | 8 | 10 |
Bluetooth | v5 BLE | v5 BLE |
| Battery Life | 30 days | 40 days |
Weight | 30g | 31.8g |
| Price | ₹3,799 | ₹4,999 |
Now that’s done, here are the inbox contents:
Amazfit Bip S Lite Unboxing
- The watch
- Charging cradle
- User guide and other papers
Amazfit Bip S Lite Design and Display
Much like its predecessors and several other watches, this one’s also a square watch. Upfront, it flaunts a 1.28 Transflective Color Display with 176 x 176 pixels resolution and 64 RGB color gamut. It is an Always-On touchscreen panel. Even when the screen locks, the main watch face is visible. It is also sufficiently bright outdoors. Indoors, when not in use, the screen dims. And when you need a glance, you just have to lift the wrist. Convenient!
As for protection, you get 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3 tempered glass along with an oleophobic coating. Look you would notice some smudges, but since the view isn’t spoiled, it’s gonna be alright. The only qualm with the screen is that the actual visual real estate is limited by the surrounding bezels.
Bip S Lite comes in three color options viz. Charcoal Black, Oxford Blue, and Sakura Pink. The overall finish feels smart and sturdy. The watch stays lite, fit, and intimate to the wrist. The plastic used offers a nice tactile sensation and you wouldn’t mind wearing them 24×7. Niceties include the detachable (hence replaceable) strap and the strap buckle.
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It supports 5ATM water resistance, which means it can be worn in shallow-water activities, like swimming.
Let’s now unlock the screen and get a vibe of what’s within.
Amazfit Bip S Lite Software Experience
Once unlocked, you get to sail through various functions laid across multiple screens. Here’s a quick rundown of the navigation options —
- Swipe Up to see the recent phone notifications (The text look jammed and ham-fisted. Plus, you can’t interact with them. So, it comes of use only as a notifier, nothing more.)
- Swipe Down to access 4 quick settings viz. Do Not Disturb for notifications, Lockscreen, Brightness Toggle, and Music controls.
- You can also Swipe Left/Right or press the Crown while on the homescreen to cycle through various health trackers, features, and settings.
- Anytime you want to return to the previous screen or directly jump to the main screen, just press the Crown.
- You can also long-press on the home screen to change the watch face. (BTW, the built-in designs are limited and clumsy.)
- You can set “Long Button Press” to swiftly start any activity tracker.
Let’s now get to the other half of the software experience, ie, the Amazfit app, which can be loaded from the app store.
It is feature-packed and easy to use. To deliver on the performance, it does collect a bunch of app-permissions. In case you need to know what they collect and why they collect, here’s the brand’s privacy statement.
Speaking of performance here is how it fared in my short stint.
Amazfit Bip S Lite Performance and battery
Coming to the main purpose of buying a smartwatch, the Bip S Lite brings onboard the following health and fitness features:
- It is capable of tracking 8 sports modes such as indoor running, outdoor running, cycling, walking, freestyle, yoga, treadmill, and elliptical training. Off these, I suppose I’ll be using just the walking tracker for the time being. The step-counting relies on the 3-axis Acceleration Sensor. But for mapping the distance and route triangulation, the phone’s GPS is used.
- It comes with a BioTracker PPG optical sensor for heart rate monitoring. You can see this sensor running constantly (thanks to a green LED indicator by the base), measuring the resting heart rate. This and the manual readings are listed inside the Amazfit app.
- Then, there is the PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) score, which also considers the heart rate (BPM) during the entirety of 7 days. Again, the app exhibits the results in easy-to-grasp graphs.
- Additional perks include the Find a device ringer, Sleep analysis, weather forecast, and sedentary reminder. You can push a ringtone from the watch and locate the phone if it’s somewhere inside the house like maybe under the huddle of clothes. On the contrary, if you click the Find Watch option from within the Amazfit app, it just vibrates the watch, which is pointless IMO. The sleep assessment and “Get your ass off the bed” prompt are nifty. Even weather data is on par with what Google tells.
It packs a 200mAh lithium-ion Battery and claims to last for 30 days. Now, the real-day mileage is likely to differ from lab data. Still, in our testing, the battery life on the Bip S Lite has been freaking awesome! As for charging, you get a proprietary USB magnetic dock which takes about 2 hours to top it up.
ALSO READ: Realme Watch Review
Finally, here’s my take on the Amazfit Bip S Lite —
Amazfit Bip S Lite Review: Verdict
There aren’t any surprises here. The Amazfit Bip S Lite looks and functions like most of the watches of its ilk. It alerts you of the phone notifications and even some basic health parameters like heart rate. Ergo, if you’re a person who works out in fits and starts, and are limited by budget, the options you get with the Bip S Lite should suffice.
However, if you’re an enthusiast, you may find this one to be more watch than a smart band, but with fewer smarts than your smartwatch expectation.
Pros
- Excellent battery life
- Always on Display is legible outdoors
- Decent build
- A fair set of features and functionality
Cons
- Lower display resolution and larger bezels
- Average-looking watch faces
- Spotty distance tracking for the lack of GPS
