Amazfit smartwatches get a big software upgrade – and it’s just what the doctor ordered

I’ve been testing Amazfit smartwatches for a good few years now so I have a good idea about what’s good and not so good about wearing one.

On the good front, I’m always surprised by the sheer level of features it manages to cram in. Sometimes at the detriment of the experience you’ll enjoy, but at least it offers plenty in all departments.

At times the wearables offer better sports and fitness tracking than considerably more expensive smartwatches and also promise (and typically deliver) strong battery life. Crucially, the firm is continually evolving to be better smartwatches both in design and in smarts.

One of my biggest gripes with pretty much every smartwatch Zepp has launched has been with the companion app. Now the clue is in the name here. It’s a companion, which in my eyes should be something that works in tandem with your smartwatch. A great companion app should help keep your time spent there to a minimum whether it’s checking your health stats or changing a watch setting.

The problem was that I didn’t want to spend a great deal of time inside that app of which you can see versions of above. It was busy, not all that intuitive and overall was a cumbersome experience.

Thankfully, Zepp Health has realised it was time to fix things and with the recent launch of its Zepp App 9 update, it feels like it’s been listening. 

The update arrived at a time when I was back living with the Amazfit T-Rex 3, one of the best new Amazfit smartwatches you can buy right now.

The headline changes to that app according to Zepp Health was the redesigned interface, the addition of new exertion scores to help users assess whether they were in good shape to exercise, a dedicated dashboard to heart health and stronger focus on its AI-fuelled sleep and fitness coaches.

A sight for sore eyes

Changing the interface was an absolute priority and now what you have is something that feels more grown up and visually, more glanceable. It’s cleaner, simplified and now feels like it’s giving you a clear choice to get a snapshot of your data or go deeper into it.

It’s an app that’s clearly taken some inspiration from the apps tied to the Whoop and Oura, which is good to see. Those two screen-less wearables place a huge emphasis on spending time in those apps, so Zepp’s looked at the right apps for inspiration.

The workout tab has always been one of the messier aspects of the previous versions of the app and while I’m not yet seeing the value in using Zepp’s AI Coach Chat features right now, being able to see a clearer breakdown of exercise-fuelled metrics and making sure your workout history is clearly positioned at the top of this section makes it easier to see the data that matters.

While I remained unconvinced by Zepp’s AI-fuelled fitness features, I’m glad to see that its sleep-focused Aura ones get their own tab. I know most smartwatch owners that track day and night really care about sleep and this offers a way to bypass everything else in the app to see those metrics, insights and features that want to help you get a better night’s sleep.

Zepp’s device section remains the place to tinker with watch settings, find watch faces and get access to Zepp’s App Store, which isn’t up to Apple or Google’s standards as an app store, but is getting better.

There are actually apps here that I’d want to download and use on an Amazfit smartwatch! It was this section of the app that’s needed tidying and labelling better, both of which Zepp Health has done here.

While it’s easy to overlook the importance of a good companion app when you aim to spend the least amount of time in it, it’s part of the package. If part of that package isn’t quite right, the overall experience is going to be either.

That’s why it was important Zepp Health made changes did. It should’ve been done a long time ago, but it’s better to do it than never at all.

At a time when great, budget smartwatches are as much of a battleground as the high end ones, these software changes give Amazfit smartwatches another weapon in its armoury to make them a more desirable buy.