Review: Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch

A versatile, waterproof and salt resistant smartwatch for multi-sports and health tracking

With GPS tracking, sleep and health monitoring, and a vast array of sport specific stat recording, the Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch is an outdoor fanatic’s dream. It’s also one tough cookie of a watch that is waterproof as well as salt resistant. Ideal for fun on and in the water as well as land-based activities.

Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch: The stats

Features of the Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch

Screen and buttons

The Amazfit T-Rex Pro uses a 1.3-inch AMOLED colour screen which supports all-day display. The buttons are a really useful addition as there are times when I’m too sweaty or wet from the sea for the touchscreen to operate optimally. They’re also big enough to use with gloves on but not so big that they protrude too much.

Strap

The strap is made from silicone with holes in it to keep air moving. This helps to prevent the strap from becoming sticky and uncomfortable when it’s not tight around my wrist. However, I do find that it gets a bit sticky when I wear it tightly.

Charger

The watch comes with a USB charging cable that has a 2 pin pogo charging port on which the watch sits to recharge. This is, very usefully, magnetic to ensure you get the charge connection.

Sports modes

100 built-in professional sports modes come with the watch. 100?! Amazing. These track your heart rate, workload, calories burned, distance and speed (amongst other things). Some of the functions also track your route via GPS.

GPS

The watch uses a high-end Sony GPS chip and built-in highly precise dual-satellite positioning system. As mentioned, GPS tracking automatically kicks in when you opt for certain sport functions. These routes can then be viewed in more detail via the app.

Bio tracker

The built-in bio tracker offers 24-hour ceaseless high-precision heart-rate monitoring and functions. These include vibration alerts when heart rate becomes too high or at times when you’re out of your heart rate range while exercising. The Amazfit T-Rex Pro also monitors sleep status if you wear it overnight. It tracks your levels of light, deep and REM sleep, as well as awake time.

Notifications

As well as fitness, health and route racking, the T-Rex Pro also features an alarm clock, weather forecast, world clock and incoming call notifications, should you want them! You also can control phone music playback from it.

Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch review

In a previous life, I LOVED recording, timing and tracking my activities. Thankfully, this was before Strava really took off. Otherwise I would have been lured into that overly competitive, pressurised world of nonsense that, as you may have guessed, just doesn’t float my boat these days. For me, it’s much more about the enjoyment and feel-good factor rather than the stats and competition.

That said, I really enjoy looking back on the routes I’ve done. Plus, I go through phases of pushing myself in sport, whilst at other times I’d rather just enjoy the view. Which is where smartwatches really come into their own; you can just dip in and out of monitoring it all. You don’t have to wear it all the time and you can turn off all alerts when you’re not wanting the constant reminder that you’ll never achieve your goals if you continue at this pace!

Fit and comfort

I’ve not been a watch-wearer for many years. So wearing the T-Rex Pro has taken a little getting used to. This isn’t helped by the fact that it’s a large watch and I have fairly small wrists. With this in mind, plus its fairly burly looking design, I wouldn’t call it a unisex watch. But I’m certainly getting used to the bulkiness and find that I don’t notice it most of the time when exercising.

It’s also decently comfortable, for its size. Nothing to write home about and I prefer not to wear it in bed. But it doesn’t rub or dig in at all.

Waterproofness

The T-Rex Pro is not only waterproof down to 50 meters – making it suitable for scuba diving – but it’s also salt resistant. This is a huge plus for me. Living right by the sea means that I’m often jumping in the water for a surf in the middle of a work day or with somewhere to be, post-surf. And I think most surfers will tell you that time moves at a different pace when you’re in the water! Some days I go in for a power hour and come out after 2 hours thinking and feeling like it was just a quick session! So, wearing the T-Rex Pro when I surf means that I really can jump in for an hour and not be worried or stressed about getting out in time.

Fitness and sport monitoring

I really love recording my routes. So to have a watch that records data that is relevant and specific to each sport suits me nicely and is a feature that the T-Rex Pro does very well. When surfing, it records the route, distance paddled and speed, amongst other things. The result is that you can see how many waves you caught, their length and how much paddling you did to get those precious few rides!

For ball sports the recording is more related to heart rate, calories burned and training effect. Whereas the cycling, running and hiking settings record elevation variations as well as a GPS tracked record of the routes.

There are settings you can play around with, like auto-pause and the recording metrics. You can also edit the list of sports and activities that you can track / record so that you don’t have to scroll through a long list each time you do something different. And there are lots to choose from!

Usability

I’m not much of a tech-head. But I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the watch was to initially set up. Intuitive and generally pretty straight-forward. It also didn’t take long to set up. Additionally, linking it the app, where you can clearly see all your activities and stats, was really easy. You can add more data to each activity via the app as well as monitor long-term sleep, fitness and health goals.

Battery life

In basic watch mode, the battery lasts for 66 days. When used with all the functions running this is reduced to 20 days. And with GPS continually on the battery will last for 20 hours. However, it is really quick to recharge taking only an hour or so. There’s also a battery life indicator on most of the watch faces you can choose from.

What I love the most about the Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch

I really love how specific the activity monitoring is for each sport. You don’t have to spend ages setting up each separate function with all the stats you want recorded. It’s all there for you. The watch is also really easy to set up and use.

What I don’t love so much about the Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch

It’s a rather big and bulky watch for my skinny wrists. The watch face also doesn’t come on easily when you raise your wrist. So I end up having to press a button to activate it. This is slightly annoying when you don’t have a spare hand available. You can set the screen to be always on, but this affects the battery life quite a lot.

Verdict

If you’re after a watch that will monitor very specific activities, from yoga and stretching to rock climbing and snowboarding (and almost everything in between), the Amazfit T-Rex Pro Smartwatch will not fail to impress. It’s designed to withstand water, salt and the rough and tumble of outdoor life, as well as keep your health and fitness goals on track without being too demanding of your attention (like some smartwatches can be).

It’s a fairly masculine style that is big and bulky, making it less well suited to skinny-wristed folk like me! But the strap adjusts to fit all adult wrist sizes and its aesthetics and design are certainly well-suited to extreme activities, wherever they may take you!

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Disclaimer: Cool of the Wild received this product free in return for an honest review. We only recommend gear that we love from companies we trust and we are under no obligation to give a positive review. All thoughts and opinions are that of the reviewer and we are in no way influenced by the brand or company.

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