Welcome back to the channel everybody i’m dave from chase the summit, and today we’re going to be taking a close look at the amaze fit stratos 3.. Last week i checked out another amazefit device called the amazefit t rex pro, and you guys really liked that video. So i thought it might be worth checking out the bigger brother, the stratos 3.. This is an entirely different device that really isn’t anything like the amaze trx pro that’s, both good and bad and we’ll. Take a closer look today on paper. The amazefit stratos 3 is quite amazing. It features offline music, it has navigation features, it’s got great sport profiles. Good battery life and a great build quality all for just 200, but is that too good to be true? We’Re gon na find out today, i’m, actually just using the box for demo purposes right now. I’Ve actually had the watch out of the box for a couple of weeks and been using it. So we don’t really need that anymore before we dive into this video. I do want to remind you that if you enjoy it, if you get anything out of it, please give me a thumbs up down below. I really appreciate it and consider subscribing so you don’t miss more videos from me in the future. Also, i will have links down in description for all the watches that i show in this video and those links do help support my channel, but they cost nothing extra to you and finally, for disclosures.
I bought the amazefit stratos 3 with my own money. This product was not given to me. This video is not sponsored and i’m just going to give you my honest opinion about it. Okay, so let’s take a look at the hardware of the amazefit stratos 3.. When you look at this device, you do see a pretty nice looking watch. It looks like a premium timepiece of some sort, even though it’s just 200 bucks around the front of the watch. We do have a stainless steel bezel, which has proven to be pretty durable. So far in my testing, i’ve taken the amazefit stratos 3 out on several trail runs so far, and i haven’t put one scratch on it yet, which is pretty good and around the back of the watch. We do have a full plastic case. However, it does have sort of a carbon fiber, looking coating to it, to give it a more premium, look love it or hate it. I think it’s a pretty cool look overall, of course, in the middle here we do have an optical heart rate sensor and i’ll get into the heart rate accuracy. A little later in this video above the heart rate sensor, do we we do have some pogo pin connectors for the charging cradle and we’ve also got a quick release band, so you can pop it off with your fingernail and swap it out with any other 22 Millimeter band the amaze fit stratos 3 is waterproof down to 50 meters, so you can go swimming with it in the pool or open water without an issue.
The amazfit stratos 3 has a rather interesting button layout, instead of a typical five button or four button layout around the perimeter of the watch. They put all the buttons on one side and you can see here. We’Ve got one two three four buttons: the top is a start, stop button, then you’ve got a rocker for up and down and then below that you do have a back button. The display of the amaze fits stratos 3 is a corning gorilla glass 3, and it is fully touch enabled you can see here. If i unlock the display, i can swipe around to do various actions on the screen. Overall, the user interface on the stratos 3 is pretty snappy for a transfective display it’s, not quite like the amazefit t rex pro that i checked out last week, but it’s still pretty responsive and i don’t have any issues with the touch operations on it and as A whole the amazefit stratos 3 does feel pretty robust and durable. It’S got a good weight to it, although it’s not overly heavy. The amaze fit stratus 3 is on the larger spectrum for a gps watch. This is a 48 millimeter diameter watch and it’s. Also about 13 and a half millimeters thick, despite this larger size, it does come in at a pretty light weight at just 40 grams and for a quick size. Comparison i’ve got a few other watches on the table. Here, i’ve got the stratos 3 on the left.
Then we’ve got the garmin fenix 6s that’s, the 42 millimeter version. Second, in line here, then we’ve got the tsunto 9 barrow here in the garmin enduro, which is a 51 millimeter watch, and you can see when they’re side by side with the suto 9 barrow and the garmin enduro they’re, all kind of in that larger watch category. But, like i said, the stratos is super light at just 40 grams, pretty impressive and here’s. What the amazefit stratos 3 looks like on my 165 millimeter circumference wrist. Next to it, i’ve also got the garmin venue 2 for reference in terms of the actual display on the amazefit stratos 3 we’ve got a memory and pixel transflective display much like some of the garmin’s and tsumtos out there and it’s a 1.3 inch diameter display. This is not an overly vibrant display, like something you’d find on an apple watch, or even this garmin venue that i’m wearing right now it’s a pretty dull display indoors. But when you’re in direct sunlight, it’s super functional, you can read this very easily at a glance when you’re in direct sunlight, it’s also always on. So you never have to worry about waking the screen up in terms of actual usability out in the trail. Using this thing, i thought it was pretty good it’s easy to read the screen’s, nice and big and in direct sunlight, it’s, very crisp. The amazefit stratos 3 also offers an adjustable backlight.
There are different intensity levels, so you can go from a pretty dim back light to conserve battery life or you can go up to max brightness for the best visibility in the dark in terms of the sensors on board the amazefit stratos 3. Of course, we’ve got the optical heart rate sensor on the back here. We’Ve also got a barometric altimeter on board an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The image fits stratus 3 is compatible with all four of the popular satellite networks. That’S gps, glonass, beidou and galileo did. I get them yeah, i got them right, diving into the user. Interface of the amazefit, stratos 3 simply unlock the screen and then you’ve got touch gestures to do the rest of the work or you can actually use the buttons on the side. Like i said, we’ve got that rocker here, which allows you to scroll up and down pages and it’s kind of nice. The home screen on the stratos 3 is fully customizable and you can choose from quite a variety on the watch itself and within the smartphone app there’s, actually hundreds to choose from so there’s, definitely something for everybody there. I like this simple one that shows your battery life steps for the day and how much distance you’ve accrued for the week. If you click the lower button here, you drop into the main menu. This allows you to go through all your various kind of app things. So there’s something for checking the weather.
You can check the weather forecast here. You can see right now, it’s 48 degrees with a high of 64. Today we can also go a little bit deeper and see a forecast for upcoming days. Here there are various apps on here for checking things like your heart rate stats. You can also check your previous activities and see a full list of all the activities that you’ve done so far, there’s an app for a barometer and to see your current altitude in air pressure. There’S simple things like stop: watches and timers there’s the sleep tracking app, which we’ll talk about in a little bit and there’s, actually a feature here to find your phone, which is pretty nice. You can click this little button. Your phone will start vibrating and buzzing and you can find it if you like, left it in the couch or something, and here we actually have the music app, which is pretty unique to the amaze fit stratos 3.. This watch does feature offline music capabilities. You can actually load music onto the watch pair, your earbuds or your wireless headphones to the watch itself and play music without the need of having your phone on you, that’s, pretty rare on the market right now and really the only ones doing it are companies, like Apple and garmin, however, there is one thing to take into consideration here: the amazfit stratos 3 only works with mp3s that you’ve previously purchased, and i don’t know about you, but i really don’t deal with mp3s anymore.
I’Ve got a spotify subscription in google music and i don’t really mess around with regular old mp3s anymore. But if you do have a collection of mp3s, you can load them on the watch peer, your earbuds to it, and it works quite well. It’S kind of funky. The way you have to do this, you actually use the charging cradle, which i haven’t showed you yet, which we’ll do right now here it is, and this cradle is just a simple magnetic connection. It clicks onto the back and the pins connect and it’s quite secure. You can dangle the watch and then you plug that into your computer. The watch actually turns into a sort of usb drive at that point and you literally just click and drag files from your computer onto the music folder in the watch and that’s how you get the music on board the watch pretty simple, but for modern day people. I feel like no one’s really doing that anymore, so it feels a little bit cave managed to be dragging music onto the watch, but it does work from the home screen. You can do a swipe down to drop into a sort of widget menu. The first widget that pops up is kind of a health summary of your day. That gives you an overview of your steps. Your calories burned and your stairs climbed dropping down again brings you into the heart rate widget, which gives you a little graph of your maximum and min heart rate for the day.
And finally, when you click the top right button here that drops you into the activity, menu and here’s, where you can choose an activity to pursue and just like the amaze fit t rex pro i previously reviewed there are a ton of activities on the stratos 3. There’S, really something for everybody from running to cycling, to climbing there’s a proper triathlon mode on here for multi sport activities, skiing tennis, soccer multi, sport jumping rope, and you can also add and remove them as you please, there’s also things like ballet belly, dancing square dancing Street dancing ballroom, dancing zumba if you’re doing an activity that you can’t find in this menu. You’Ve got something pretty unique going on when you go to start an activity, it’ll give you your gps status. It’Ll, give you your heart rate status. It’Ll. Also give you your estimated battery life remaining before you start the activity swiping down. You can set up activity goals for amount of calories, burn, distance or even duration, there’s also a menu here to go into a workout or training session, and it does actually have a recommended workout for me, it’s telling me to run 3.72 miles, and that should help Me maintain my fitness there’s, also a running vo2 max test built in and there’s also interval training built in from within the settings of your activity. You can also pair an external heart rate sensor and that can be ant plus or bluetooth.
When you start an activity. You’Ve got six data fields chosen for you up at the top here. You’Ve got the current time. Then you’ve got the distance uh, your current heart rate pace average pace and time, and when you swipe down, you do have additional pages with more information on them and i find there’s plenty of information for me here. You’Ve got things like elevation gain and descent you’ve. Also got a heart rate graph here that shows you which zone you’re currently in when you’re out on a run, you will actually see a little breadcrumb map of where you’ve run and that’ll be a little trail that you can follow back to your car. If you get lost in a pinch, this isn’t full offline mapping like what you’d find on a garmin fenix 6, or something similar to that. But it is a pretty good form of navigation. If you need it in a pinch, you can zoom in and out of the map using the plus and minus buttons at the bottom here and there’s, a little north indicator up here to help you, with your orienteering and on the navigation topic, there’s, actually more to Choose from here, if you go into the pause menu when you’re in your activity, you can actually scroll down and you can click head back, and this is a back to start function. If you click head back, it’ll, give you options for shortcut or back to start shortcut is just projecting a straight line back to the beginning of your activity.
If you want to try to beeline your way there or you can use the back to start function, which actually will follow your footsteps back to the beginning of the activity, there is also an option here for enter address, which doesn’t do anything if you click that It just brings you to the save location menu. I think you can actually save your latitude and longitude and that’ll use it as a form of projecting a waypoint, but i don’t know why they call it address that’s kind of weird the amazefit stratos 3. Also. Has the ability to navigate a predefined route? You can design a route on gaia, gps or any of those online resources. You can actually upload it to the watch itself. The map will display that gpx file on a breadcrumb map and you can actually follow it in real time. The watts will also alert you if you go off course for any given reason and it’s pretty cool feature to have much like the amazefit t rex pro. I previously reviewed the stratos 3 is also compatible with the smartphone app called zap z, e, p p. However, this is kind of where my first complaint comes in with the stratos three syncing, the amazefit stratus three is much slower than syncing. The t rex pro i don’t know why it’s not real time just a minor frustration for me. It’S, definitely a little bit slower in the sync department on the home screen here.
You’Ve got your current steps for the day with your goals. You’Ve also got your calories burned for the day and then you’ve got your sleep for the previous night below that you’ve got your heart rate graph and under that you’ve got your training load, which is pretty cool to see on a 200 watch, the training load and Vo2 max metrics on the stratos 3 are actually derived from first beat technology and that’s the same technology used on garmin devices, so in theory these should be pretty accurate or in line with what you see on a garmin device. As long as your heart rate, accuracy is good, which we’ll talk about in a minute from within the zep app. You can also dive into previous activities and you get a full map of the activity. It shows you a pace and a heat map below the map. You’Ve got all of your stats. Like duration, average pace calories, burned, average heart rate average cadence and stride. You’Ve got a nice piece graph below that uh heart rate graph below that, under that you do have an altitude graph and it’s pretty cool that they break it down into what percentage was uphill downhill and flat there’s a lot of information here to look at and There’S no shortage of metrics to get nerdy about in terms of battery life on the amazefit stratos 3 you’re. Looking at seven days in standard smart watch mode or up to 14 days in endurance mode, which just means you’re not using the watch as much as you usually would in regular standard mode and when it comes to battery life during a gps activity.
There’S, a few options to choose from you can have 35 hours in accurate mode, which will give you the best accuracy or you can dial it back to balanced mode and that’ll, give you up to 45 hours in a gps activity in that balanced mode. It takes a gps sample every five seconds instead of every one second, in the higher accuracy mode and for those ultra runners out there, you can pop it into battery saver mode and get up to 70 hours in a gps activity. However, this will kill your accuracy because it only takes a gps sample every one minute during your activity. Let’S talk about accuracy. I found in terms of general wellness data like sleep tracking, step, counting and calories burned. The stratos 3 was actually pretty good and it was in line with most of my garmin devices. However, on one occasion, while i was sleeping, it reported that i only slept for two hours when in fact i slept for almost eight hours. I don’t know what happened there, but that was one night out of the past week or so. Okay, let’s talk about gps accuracy. The amaze fit stratos 3 has been pretty good in this department, it’s on par with something like my garmin fenix 6s or my garmin foreigner, 945. that’s to say, it’s, not perfect, but it’s. Definitely not bad and it’s right in line with a lot of my other devices, i’m, pretty sure they’re using the same sony chipset in the stratos 3, that a lot of other watches have these days, so it’s not surprising that they’re pretty similar results.
However, when it comes to heart rate, accuracy, that’s, where we run into a pretty major problem, i would bet to say that the amaze fit stratus 3 has the worst heart rate accuracy, i’ve tested on any watch on this channel. It is wildly off, i mean it’s, you might as well just be guessing. I took the stratos 3 out with several other devices, like my garmin fenix 6s. I also tried it with the chorus paste 2 and i also wore a chest strap for all of those activities and in all cases, in every single activity the stratos 3 was way out there i mean way way way out there. The good news is that the stratos 3 is compatible with external sensors, so you can pair this with a chest, strap or an armband and get more accurate data, and this is important because the first beat metrics inside, like the vo2 max estimator and the training load And all that kind of rely on the heart rate data and this heart rate data is so bad that it’ll just throw all the metrics way off. I don’t know if it’s just my unit, if you’ve got one of these things and you’re getting good heart rate data. Let me know in the comments down below because i’m, certainly not getting that final thoughts on the amazefit stratos 3.. Is it worth picking up? Maybe i feel like this review is a lot like my amazefit t rex pro video, because i kind of feel the same way about the stratos 3, as i did with the t rex pro it’s got a lot of interesting features like having navigation features and breadcrumb Mapping and gpx file, import and offline music and all that stuff built into a 200 watch, it’s pretty darn impressive.
On top of that, you get great battery life and it looks pretty slick too. However, the heart rate sensor in this thing is so bad. I wish they just took it out completely and made it like 30 bucks cheaper, because they’re probably more compelling at that price point than it is at 200. That said, if you can get by that heart rate sensor – and you typically wear a chest – strap in our armband, this might be a good option for you, because it does sync with strava it’s got a pretty solid app. It does seem to do wellness tracking, pretty good, and it does have the first beat metrics built in which is pretty rare in a 200 watch. But we can’t forget that there’s other watches on the market in the 200 price point that are competitive, like i’ve, got the coros pace 2. Here this is 200. It does most of what this thing does, but in a package that has a much more accurate heart rate sensor, then again, the pace 2 doesn’t have any form of navigation or offline music, so there’s definitely a leg up to the stratos 3 as well. So yeah i’m a little wishy washy on this one it’s pretty cool. It does have a lot of interesting features but i’m, not quite there because of that heart rate sensor, anyways that’s, all i’ve got for this one. I just want to share my thoughts on the amazefit stratos 3, after running with it for a little over a week, if you’re interested in a stratus 3 – and you want to pick one up – there will be links down below to check out and those links to Help support my channel and if you found this video, helpful or funny or whatever, please give me a thumbs up down below, really helps me out and consider subscribing.
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