Amazfit Bip 6 Watch Review: By far the best Bip series fitness watch to date

Pros:

Reliable health and fitness tracking

Feature-rich watch with built-in GPS, Bluetooth calling

Good build quality and finish with 5ATM water resistance

Lightweight and comfortable to wear all day

Large, high-res AMOLED display

Good battery backup

Smooth and simple UI, fairly detailed companion app

Fitness data can be exported to several third party fitness apps

Cons:

Speaker on the watch should have been a little louder for calls

SpO2 measurement takes longer than ideal

Rating: 4.3/5

Price: Rs 7,999

It’s been a while since we reviewed an Amazfit watch but we have tried our hands on ample of them from different series to largely understand what to expect. The Bip series has been the company’s budget offering, but the Amazfit Bip 6 that we have for review today doesn’t seem typical to that series going by its feature list. Nor is it priced like one. Do the additional features and its performance justify the premium? Let’s find out.

Simple but elegant design, good build quality and comfortable to wear

Though the watch design is fairly standard with a rectangular dial and a couple of physical buttons along the right edge, the build quality and finish make it feel premium. So much so that the Amazfit Bip 6 can easily pass as a more premium GTS series watch from the company. The brushed aluminium frame looks elegant with just a hint of shine where it meets the screen, adding to the aesthetics. The display blends seamlessly into the frame with no rough edges to deal with.

Despite the aluminium frame, the watch is quite light, weighing less than 30 grams without straps, and comfortable to wear for long hours. The bundled perforated silicone straps don’t cause sweating or skin irritation. The locking mechanism, though pin-buckle type, is slightly different as the strap goes under the other strap. Not something we haven’t seen before but it’s much smoother than the rest. If you don’t like the default straps, you can always replace them with any third party 22 mm alternatives. The Bip 6 is available in five different colour options; we received the Stone variant which looks quite good.

Large and sharp AMOLED display with slots for multiple watch faces

The Amazfit Bip 6 now gets a vibrant 1.97-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 390 x 450 pixels; earlier Bip series watches had LCD screens. The 302 ppi pixel density display is sharp enough to read content on. It boasts of 2000 nits peak brightness. While we do not have the means to verify that fact, I can safely say that it is perfectly legible at 40% brightness when indoors and even under bright sunlight when you push the brightness slider further up. You also get an auto-brightness option here courtesy of an ambient light sensor.

The display has a layer of tempered glass (brand not specified) as well as oleophobic coating, and the latter largely keeps it free of smudge marks and fingerprints. However, I did notice one tiny scratch on the screen after almost a month of use, so best to handle it with a bit of care. You can flick your wrist to turn the screen on or tap on it or press a physical button; all options work well. Covering the screen turns it off. You can turn off the flick gesture during your sleep hours or when in a dark room like a theatre.

The watch comes bundled with a handful of watch faces and you get access to a lot more through the Zepp app that you need to install and sync this watch with before using it. The watch face collection is pretty decent and the transfer is fairly brisk. Even better, you can store quite a few watch faces on the watch and switch to them according to your mood or need. I stored a dozen of them in total during testing and the watch did not complain or slow down.

Simple and fluid user interface, clean and detailed companion app

To start things off, you need to download the Zepp app and sync your device with it over Bluetooth. The setup takes a couple of minutes but is fairly smooth. The app gives you access to watch faces and further breakdown/reports of the health metrics and workout data, in addition to what you can access on the watch screen itself. The UI is simple, fluid, lag-free and quite peppy with nice use of colours. It is easy to comprehend even for a novice.

You can swipe down on the home screen for quick settings, swipe up for notifications and swipe left or right to browse through various widgets like daily goals progress, heart rate, sleep and stress data, PAI score and many more. The top physical button acts as a shortcut for all the watch functions and also doubles up as a home button from any screen. The lower button, when pressed, gives you access to various workouts and sports you wish to track.

The Zepp app is highly useful yet uncomplicated with a clean user interface. All the health and fitness cards are neatly arranged on the home screen displaying the synopsis of respective functions. Tapping them gives you further details of the health parameter or workout. They display your heart rate, stress, blood oxygen levels, sleep data, steps count, workout details and more. The Zepp app also syncs with popular fitness apps like Google Fit, Strava, Apple Health etc.

Reliable health and fitness tracking with ample insights

The Bip 6 has a bunch of sensors that can monitor various health parameters like heart rate, blood oxygen, stress levels and sleep, and most of them round the clock if you choose to. The SpO2 readings take about 30 seconds and are generally comparable to a clinical oximeter. While half a minute was fine a couple of years ago, we expect things to be a little quicker now. You also have One-tap Measurement for gauging heart rate, stress, oxygen level and breathing rate at a go in 45 seconds. All day stress monitoring is available here and it doesn’t drain the battery much, which is great.

Sleep tracking works well. The overall sleep duration from the time I fell asleep till I was up seemed correct. It tracks the quantum of light sleep, deep sleep, REM periods and awake time. The breakup of sleep stages is available on the watch itself, while the app gives you a deeper analysis of your sleep and suggestions to improve it if necessary. Some of the insights that the watch and app provide are quite useful, like the Readiness score which factors in your resting heart rate, heart rate variability, breathing quality and more to tell you how well-rested you are physically and mentally when you wake up.

This watch claims to track 140+ different workouts that include your usual indoor and outdoor walking, running, cycling, swimming, strength training and their variations along with a bunch of sports like football, cricket, table tennis etc. One can even choose something as specific as a treadmill workout or jump rope. It tracks your movements quite well in strength training, and more often than not, counts the repetitions perfectly; something I haven’t seen many watches in this budget do.

The Amazfit Bip 6 has a built-in GPS module that is compliant with 5 satellite positioning systems to track your outdoor activities. It takes about half a minute to get a GPS lock, and post that the link stays strong as long as you stay outdoors. The distance tracking is on the money. The pedometer does a pretty good job too and the step count is generally accurate. The tracking begins shortly after you start moving and it does not add false steps. For a bit more serious fitness training, you also have the Zepp Coach option.

This Amazfit watch is 5ATM water resistant and can be worn for a swim without a worry. While a lot of fitness data can be checked on the watch screen, more details are available in the companion app with a daily, weekly and monthly breakdown of various activities you indulged in. You also get basic guided breathing exercises on the watch, which can help you calm down and lower stress levels. Menstrual tracking is also available. I found the health and fitness tracking on this watch quite reliable for the segment.

There’s Bluetooth calling and some more

Like most watches these days, the Amazfit Bip 6 also supports Bluetooth calling function, wherein you can make and receive calls from the watch itself as long as it is synced with a smartphone with an active connection. The built-in speaker and mic do a decent job when indoors, but I would have preferred the speaker to be a bit louder. The call quality is serviceable in quieter areas and it gets the job done when you can’t reach for your phone. But it’s best to stick to your phone or Bluetooth earphones for calling. It will also prolong the watch’s battery life.

You can also choose to receive notifications and messages from various apps installed on your synced phone or tablet on the watch screen. The messages are perfectly legible but one cannot reply from the watch. In addition, there are a bunch of utility apps preloaded on the Bip 6 like a calendar, alarm, stopwatch, weather updates, music control and a few more. The watch also has Zepp Flow, a virtual assistant that accepts voice inputs. The watch needs to be synced with the phone for it to work.

Good battery backup even after enabling most health monitoring features

The Amazfit Bip 6 has an impressive battery backup given the amount of tracking it does. The company claims a battery life of 14 days for typical usage and up to 6 days under heavy load. Your mileage will obviously vary depending on your usage pattern and the features you turn on. Since I got the chance to test this watch for almost a month, I indulged in various usage patterns to test its battery life.

During our test run simulating a real-world usage scenario with continuous heart rate and stress monitoring turned on, 3 hours of total GPS usage, live tracking of 5 hour-long indoor workouts, two SpO2 readings daily, sleep tracking almost daily, notifications limited to email and SMS and under 5 minutes of daily calling, the watch’s 340 mAh battery lasted a little over 11 days, which is impressive. An hour of GPS usage takes about 5 points off the battery reserves.

Without any GPS usage, and replacing outdoor walks and jogs with a few more indoor workouts, the battery did last for close to two full weeks. This usage scenario was forced upon me due to the unrelenting Mumbai rains, and I thought of making the most of it. All the above figures were obtained without turning on the Readiness feature. Enabling it does consume a bit more battery but it’s an acceptable tradeoff as it’s a handy feature. Even with the feature on, the watch did last for 9 to 10 days under normal load. The watch charges fully in about an hour with the bundled magnetic pin charging dock.

Price and verdict: A bit more expensive than prior Bip series watches but way better

The Amazfit Bip 6 is priced at just Rs 7,999 in India with a one year warranty, which is at least 30% more expensive than its predecessor or any other Bip series watch to date. Having said that, it also has more features, an AMOLED display, improved performance and better battery backup, in addition to a polished design to offset the price bump. Given its features and appearance, it could have easily passed for a GTS series watch which is more expensive.

Nomenclature aside, at that price, you get an elegant, swim-proof fitness watch with a sharp AMOLED display, built-in GPS, reliable health and fitness tracking, detailed companion app, Bluetooth calling and solid battery backup, making it one of the best fitness watches in the sub-10K category. Incidentally, the competition is not too stiff in the Rs 5,000 to 10,000 price band to pose a threat to the Bip 6. However, a couple of more affordable alternatives under 5K like the Honor Choice Watch and the Redmi Watch 5 Lite do have features to match if not the depth in tracking to keep the Amazfit watch on its toes. Choose one depending on your needs and budget.