The Amazfit Balance is the best smartwatch you can buy
I’ve used many Android smartwatches over the years, and I’ve loved these wrist computers for over a decade. During this time, I’ve honed in on what makes a wearable good or bad.
About four years ago, OEMs realized that Wear OS needed at least 1GB of RAM to run smoothly. Since then, most smartwatches have been solid. The software has matured since the “new” Wear OS was introduced three years ago and is being put into great hardware. Still, for as good as Android smartwatches have become, I think the best wearable for most people doesn’t use Wear OS. Instead, it runs the Zepp OS and is the Amazfit Balance.
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This Amazfit Balance smartwatch has battery for weeks
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What’s on the surface matters
The Balance strikes the perfect balance
Great software won’t save bad hardware, and the Amazfit Balance doesn’t need saving. Its lightweight aluminum alloy midframe is supported by a fiber-reinforced bottom shell encasing a 475mAh battery, which lasts me five to seven days with the always-on-display activated and all health sensors tracking at all times. Weighing only 35g, the Balance is just over 1g heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, which only has a 425mAh battery.
Its 1.5-inch AMOLED display, with over a 73% screen-to-body ratio, can reach up to 1,500 nits, making it easy to read outdoors. You get two buttons on Amazfit’s watch. The top one is a pusher and a rotating crown, unlike the OnePlus Watch 2. While I like the ruggedness of the Amazfit T-Rex 3, the slimmer profile of the Balance is preferred, coming in at 10.8mm thick, less than 1mm thicker than the Galaxy Watch 7.
The Amazfit Balance has excellent hardware materials, is slim and lightweight, has a large and bright display, and includes a battery that regularly lasts longer than any Wear OS watch. Now, we can dig into the health tracking sensors because the Balance also checks those boxes. Amazfit uses the in-house-designed BioTracker 5.0 PPG biometric sensor to monitor your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and more. The BIA bioelectric impedance sensor in the Balance measures your body composition, much like what Samsung offers on its premium smartwatches.
The Balance also has excellent location tracking. It uses a unique circularly polarized GPS antenna with dual-band positioning using six satellites to aid in accuracy. Amazfit doesn’t cut corners with the Balance. In addition to the main health sensors, it has an acceleration sensor, a gyroscope, a geomagnetic sensor, an air pressure sensor, an Ambient light sensor, and a temperature sensor.
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What surprises me most, and part of what makes this smartwatch stand out, is that Amazfit includes a microphone and speaker in the Balance. This checks off an essential smartwatch feature I need because it allows for making phone calls, voice-to-text messaging, and using the onboard AI assistant or Alexa.
The Balance is the most complete smartwatch from a hardware perspective. It has a classic look in a well-manicured case, a battery that lasts days or weeks, depending on your setup, and is slim and lightweight. The health sensors provide readings and monitor metrics that wearables like the Google Pixel Watch 3 can’t. Plus, the Balance costs $200.
How about what’s inside?
Snappy and full-featured
The Amazfit Balance flies. It runs the in-house designed Zepp OS 4, a real-time operating system, instead of Wear OS. While there are some UI quirks that I’m not a fan of, the OS is great. In the last year, Zepp OS improved significantly. My main complaints centered around notifications and how disconnected they felt from my phone compared to other wearables. But that has largely been fixed.
Before Zepp OS 4, many notifications said “App” instead of the actual app name, and the only reply options were canned responses. While those options remain, you can now use voice-to-text or the onboard AI, Zepp Flow, for Smart Replies. Regardless of the option, it’s great that there are now choices. Those options extend to the voice assistant you use because you can go with Alexa or the robust Zepp Flow to control watch functions and other uses.
As for the rest of Zepp OS, you won’t find Google Play Services on the Amazfit Balance, but it has a growing app store with a range of options. The same goes for watch faces. Amazfit provides a good selection on the device, but the Zepp App has a watch face store with many choices. Amazfit also offers a night mode for the watch face that lets you schedule a time to activate the feature automatically, making the watch face red, green, or orange.
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What else could you want?
Outpacing the rest
There isn’t a smartwatch that lasts days on a single charge and has premium build quality, fast performance, top-tier health tracking features, Alexa built-in, and more for under $200 other than the Amazfit Balance. While you can get some of these features across various devices, none are priced like this, and you’ll use multiple devices to get all that Balance offers.
The closest smartwatches to the Amazfit Balance are the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 and maybe the Google Pixel Watch 3. Both cost more, last less on a charge, and come with other compromises. These are fantastic devices. Still, if I’m asked what smartwatch to buy, I will suggest the Amazfit Balance for most users.
Amazfit Balance
The Amazfit Balance packs a 1.5-AMOLED display, 475 mAh battery, loads of sensors, and more, all into a 10.6mm thick case that only weighs 35g. Plus, it has a microphone and speaker for calls, replying to messages, and accessing Alexa.
