My name is dave kayaker i’m. Here with a fresh review for you today. Hopefully this will be the amaze fit stratos there. It is it’s a beautiful watch. Now i decided to buy my next fitness watch and this is the one i selected i bought this with my own money. I bought it from aliexpress. It cost a little under 100 and uh just arrived today. I’Ve been waiting for this for about a month. I was looking for a fitness tracker or a smart watch that has an always on display, which this one does something that has gps built into it and uh, something that is what is waterproof and will track open water swimming, because i am an avid kayaker and I’M, looking for something that will interpret a kayak stroke as a swimming stroke and give me some statistics and the the feature that pushed me over the edge on this particular watch was the fact that i can put music on it mp3 files and play it directly To my bluetooth, earbuds in the gym, let’s get this guy out of the box, so here it is out of the box. This is a beautiful time. Piece it’s got the protective cover on there and the most satisfying thing on any new piece of technology is taking that screen cover off. Oh yeah, that’s, so good uh, beautiful watch it’s got a faux carbon fiber, looking type body to it here, um really beautiful.
I, like it already the looks of it. Hopefully it won’t look too big on my wrist. I don’t think so. I think that looks really good let’s see if it’s got any juice in it. I’Ll press and hold the button see if anything happens or comes to life. Actually i want the top button. I believe so let’s turn that on hold it in and it’s doing something there is some juice in here. So i like the fact this has an always on display. It actually gets easier to read when you’re out outside in bright sunlight. I have the amaze fit bip. I love that watch. I love the always on display. I just thought i’d get the next generation uh. This is generation one of the stratos it’s, an older model, it’s a couple years old already, but that’s what made it affordable. I paid about 85 87. For this we have an instruction manual and we have a charging cradle, and that is it and it looks like the watch will snap into the cradle um, just like so and i’ll get this guy charged up here. I think it’ll take about an hour and then get back to you. I’Ll wear it for a few days and then get back to you with my full review. If you’re new to this channel, i am an avid kayaker. I started this channel to share my kayaking videos. It has since expanded to do any kind of product reviews, fitness, trackers, smart, watches, anything that’s, health and fitness related.
I try to get my hands on it and test it and bring it to you. You can go to my channel look at my playlist. There you’ll see all my fitness tracker and smart watch reviews all my product reviews or if you just want to catch some kayaking videos go check those out as well i’m gon na charge. This up wear it for several days, run it through the features and then get back to you with a full review: okay, i’m. Getting ready to shove off here on a paddling adventure. I’Ve got my amaze fit bip strapped onto my life jacket. That has been my go to gps watch for a long time now. I love the way. It’S got that transflective display that you can see even better in bright sunlight, which is really important when you’re out kayaking for hours now a lot of times. I will clip it to the front combing of my kayak on a little piece of foam if i’m racing and i want to see it and be able to glance down and look at it, because when you’re kayak racing, your hands are on the paddle and you’re Paddling away and you never stop so you don’t want to take a hand off the paddle to look at your wrist that’s. The reason i rarely wear these things but i’ve got the amaze fit stratos. Today, gps watch it’s got the same trans reflective display this one. Also has a sports mode for swimming, so i’m, hoping it will recognize kayak strokes as swim, strokes, that’s, one of the main main reasons i bought this watch um.
Now this is a kayaking channel. I had an astute viewer. Tell me that this kokat life jacket that i have uh reviewed before there are little neoprene pouches here for you to put the ends of the straps into to keep them nice and tight and clean. I had no idea that was a thing. So thank you for telling me that one, the the power of youtube comments and what you learned. I spent a couple hours just playing with the stratos last night. The instruction manual is very basic. It basically tells you how to set up the watch and pair it with your phone. It was not terribly straightforward that took some time and beyond that, the manual really doesn’t tell you anything so i’ve had to just play with it and learn the functions and features. So the instruction manual is really pitiful, but it is a great watch. I love the looks of it um, but i’m i’m hoping i can teach it and and track uh kayaking. Today i don’t know i haven’t tried any of the sports features yet and i think i’m going to have to go, go online to find out how in the world to pair this with bluetooth, uh headset. So i can listen to music in the gym. It’S not apparent to me at all how to do that so uh. This is not even 24 hours into this watch. Yet this is my first real outing with it.
So i’m gon na put it through its paces for days here and then finish this complete review. All right so, i’m on day, two with the uh amazefit stratos yesterday dave paddling, buddy dave and i went kayaking and uh. This thing did really well. It kept track of the stroke rate. It even gave me a swolf score. That’S s, w o l, f i’ve talked about that in a previous review, it’s like a golf score but it’s for swimming. So if you’re swimming a known distance, the lower that number the more efficient you are. So you want your slow score to be low over a known distance. That means your stroke is efficient. Fortunately, the amaze fit straddles actually measured a paddle stroke as a swim stroke. So i got great statistics from that. One thing about the user manual for this watch: it doesn’t come with the watch. You get a basic instruction manual that will show you how to essentially install the software and turn it on and that’s about it. You need to go to the amazefit website and download the full user manual to figure out this menu system to pair it with a bluetooth device. You have to go into like walking exercise mode to find accessories. Additional connections it’s like in an obscure place and even just to turn on um continuous heart rate you have to like, take a heart rate measurement and then, like click on the graph and then toggle continuous heart rate, on very non intuitive.
However, i understand they packed a lot of features into kind of a pretty small form factor, so i get it and when you’re engaged in activity, the touch screen basically disables itself and you have to use the buttons on the side. First time i encountered that i thought it was kind of weird, but then i appreciated it because you’re not going to accidentally bump the screen face and get out of the function mode or whatnot. You have to physically press the button, so that’s. Actually, a really good thing. I appreciate that now. Um just did my first gym workout tethered to this thing, with my bluetooth, earbuds incredible to play music and not have to carry a phone or an mp3 player around. Usually, i would take a little mp3 player and strap it to my shoelace. Don’T have to do that anymore, so this is great it’s one of the features i was really looking forward to this watch for and it works flawlessly now. My workout was in the big box, gym and i’ll go ahead and name it it’s planet, fitness, and if you know what that place, is you know how much electronic interference there is? How many other people there are with bluetooth connections and all kinds of interference? This worked flawlessly. I listened to my music, the whole time. Sound quality was great. I could turn the volume up and down right from the watch so day. Two of this thing – i’m, loving it uh.
The transflective display is great um it’s it’s. You know i’ll come back and do a full review, walk you through the software. I just wanted to touch in here on day, two um i’m loving this thing, it’s really really cool okay. So the app here is called zep z, e p p at the top of the screen. Here you see your total steps for the day, your kilocalorie burn your sleep and then just below that you see your sleep, your sleep score and you can scroll back through the previous days and you get an analysis of your deep sleep versus light sleep. Your exercise capacity, something called an epoch score, that is, the excess post oxygen consumption. Think of this, as like an after burn effect, it’s the amount of oxygen required to restore your body to its normal resting level back to your normal metabolism after exercise, this is a new statistic for me: it’s kind of neat so i’m going to be start tracking. That your heart rate, i have continuous heart rate tracking, turned off right now, but you know earlier this week i had it turned on and it’s really cool to see your you know your resting heart rate. What your heart rate is doing throughout the day during exercise. All good stuff, and then down at the bottom here your exercise data, your your health tracking. This is my outdoor hike that i did a couple days ago, it’s gps, so it gives you the map below that it gives you all kinds of great statistics.
Statistics calorie burn elevation, descending uh. How much was flat all kinds of you know, like your average steps per mile your rate per mile great data, great statistics here – tells you your anaerobic, your aerobic, your intensive and light activity zones and altitude, whether you’re, climbing or descending percentage of time, uphill downhill and On the flats, this was a perfect 25 25 50 here, which is, i guess, not surprising, since i did a loop and went out and came back and of course, you would expect that to be the same out as it was in your cadence steps per minute. Your strides uh great statistics here aerobic training effect that gives you a score here, all really neat stuff: great data open water. This was the kayaking trip i did last weekend uh, i called it open water swimming, but it tracked my kayaking just like it would uh swimming. It gives me my stroke, counts average stroke, speed, swoll score. That is that golf score. I talked about earlier, where the lower that number is the better over a known distance or over a mile. So the the fewer number of strokes you take, the more efficient you are per, i guess: it’s 100 yards or 100 meters. So these are all statistics that i’m going to incorporate in my training my maximum stroke rate, my average, how many strokes i took this is all going to be very useful to me to analyze what’s going on in my training and then down below here.
There’S an interesting window, none of this stuff applies, but they’ve got a little ecosystem here, where you could actually attach this to a smart scale and um pull in statistics such as body fat, bmi your weight and and track all that again, the watch does not do This, but you can attach other accessories to get this type of data, so that’s, pretty cool, so i’m, actually looking into getting one of their mace fit smart scales uh to see if i could get a trial on one of those to see how that all comes Together and you can set alarms, you can change. Your watch faces there’s a bunch to choose from um. You know you can set your step targets and whatnot all this is great your profile, and this actually does connect with strava. So you can upload your things automatically. After your workout to go to strava and share that with friends, everybody’s familiar with strava app, i think this is what the watch face looks like this display is always on. It actually gets brighter and easier to read in the sunlight, which i love. This is waterproof to 50 meters. Again i love it. Um, the home button is at the top right here. You press that that brings on that backlight display you scroll through your menu system here and um. It gets you through your various sports modes and yes, this did recognize outdoor swimming as kayaking. So i got all kinds of statistics for that.
You get your time. This has a five day weather forecast, which i love syncs, with your phone, obviously continuous heart rate measurements. Music player absolutely love this. I can just load my mp3s on here hit shuffle pair it with my earbuds and listen to it in the gym. Absolutely wonderful feature. So this has really ticked all my boxes. You see it’s got a compass stopwatch feature. This is your sleep tracking, you can, you know tap in there for deeper analysis and go back through all your days and um. You know there’s some other features here. Timer uh and here you can go through and see your activities. This was a hike. I did the uh the other day a little under six miles and you can scroll through and see all your statistics here, um kayaking, it recorded that as a swim and then each and every mile it gives you your pace. It vibrates to let you know: you’ve done another mile, it gives you your pace and number of steps, and it gives you some other things that i talked about the software. So what i recommend this watch absolutely is for this price point it’s. Amazing again, this is the first generation device these can be had for under a hundred dollars. Now so, with a combination of mp3 music player, gps unit, uh waterproof easy to read in the sun, always on display and it counts, kayaking as uh swimming, absolutely love, it it’s a wonderful buy.
So overall i love this watch. I think it is a great value for under 100 um. I would highly recommend this again. I paid for this with my own money, so this is a fair and honest review i’m. Not doing this for anybody. I paid for this with my own money, i’d highly recommend this watch it’s going to be great for i’d, say anybody who does outdoor sports um hikers runners will especially love it because of the always on display and the fact that it’s brighter in sunlight it’s easy To read: it’s always on it’s, going to give you good mapping. Good statistics, give you your pace and it’s, just a wonderful, wonderful watch and i would highly recommend it. You know what to do like this video subscribe to this channel. Let me know what reviews you’d like to see and i’ll try to get those products and bring them to you um. This is the amaze fit stratos.-0kWKxL1sRQ
