Man, the last time I reviewed an Amazfit product was back in April for the GTR Mini so almost half a year and when Amazfit Malaysia knocked the door and saying they are sending something over for review I thought it would be nice if it is from another series.
And yup, the Amazfit Bip 5 is here and to be honest, the smartwatch has been out in Malaysia since August therefore still relatively new and fresh in the market.
So let’s find out what it has to offer in retail packaging.
First, we got the box. The layout for the logos and box art are literally the same as the GTR Mini but hey if it works, I ain’t complaining much.
The usual bundle items aside from the watch itself – charging cable and manual.
After pulling out the watch and powering it up, the screen immediately grabbed my attention as this might be one of the largest I’ve encountered so far.
Due to this factor, my initial thoughts of its price would put it in the “reasonable but still a bit high” kind of range but we’ll get to that in the end.
The 1.91-inch LCD panel is big and bright enough to work outdoors easily but of course not to the extreme cases of standing under direct bursting sunlight (those will be handled by the rugged models).
So as long as you don’t work primarily in open spaces and under bright conditions, you can easily lift your arm up and check the time without much issues.
Comparing the Bip 5 to the GTR Mini you’ll find the design is pretty straightforward or can I say “stealthy and no style”.
There’s one button on the right side that serves as the Select key which “replaces” the crown the GTS and GTR models are known for.
So it might seem like a little small downgrade here but it’s fine by me if simplicity is what it is gunning for.
The strap, on the other hand, is sweaty skin friendly and doesn’t cause rashes after some workout sessions.
The magnetic pogo pin-based charging is the bread and butter of essentially all decent smartwatches and you can use other model’s charging cable providing the position of the pins are the same.
The software within the watch is Zepp OS 2.0 but the fundamentals are the same.
You get the shortcut panel by dragging from top to bottom for easy access of various one-click functions while doing the reverse will pull up the “dashboard” that you can customize what sort of info cards are displayed at once.
Sliding horizontally is the per-page style parameter tracking including fitness and sleeping alongside things like music control and weather forecast.
Now moving onto the software part, the Zepp app on Android still looks fairly the same in general but thanks to the Zepp OS 2.0 on the watch, the app also got a bit of extra sauces as well.
The Home Page is your main dashboard here as always with mostly physical fitness parameters tracked over the day and recorded for quick reference.
The set of tools you’ve enabled in your watch can also be accessed here under the My Tools section.
Because I’m not the type of person to wear a watch and go to sleep (except for the occasional noon naps) there’s no data here but if you do, your “performance” would be plotted here.
I like the fact that there are multiple factors that it can record to determine whether you got a rest or not and even breathing quality to see if you have any sleeping chokes.
After that, you can do a bit of self-record as in how you feel after waking up, whether its feeling refreshed or sluggishly down.
On the Workout type, you can see all your sessions here but I’ll just select one of the Treadmill records here.
There are all the essential yet important numbers that I and perhaps you too, prioritize the most such as calories burned and distance moved.
However, there’s the usual “Amazfit” problem where if you just put your arm in a stationary position like grabbing the side rails, the absence of movement means no distance traveled so you’ll have to keep the arm moving (or at least swaying a bit on the sides) to keep records as accurate as possible.
The Profile page hosts any watch that has been connected to the phone and for this case, by clicking Bip 5 you’ll be brought to the device’s management page where you can mess around with tons of stuff mainly for personalization.
And kid you not, I used the Find Watch on the app and also Find My Phone on the watch more often than you think.
One point to note down is that you’ll need to keep your Bluetooth on all the time for the detection to work. If it somehow broke off due to distance or inactivity, then bad luck for you.
For the “functionality is king” gang, the health monitoring tab will be your first destination in determining how often the sensor screens for your body which can affect battery life to an extent but not by a lot.
There’s also the Sleep Breathing Quality Monitoring that I mentioned just now in the Sleeping Page and it seems that it is still in the Beta but give it a try nonetheless.
Lastly, thanks to Zepp OS 2.0 supporting all sorts of in-watch apps, there’s been a whole lot more ever since the update arrived so you can download whatever you need and use them to the fullest or just hop onto the watch face store and grab the ones that match your taste.
Conclusion
After rocking the watch for a couple of weeks, my verdict for the Amazfit Bip 5 is positive in almost all categories as I am familiar with the Zepp OS and have had no issue with it from the start.
Judging from the physical appearance, the choice to forgo some styling and shift that budget towards a bigger screen and lower price compared to other series from Amazfit seems to be the main direction here.
And this is especially good for the people who want big screens first and then other things later as the pricing is quite fitted for the aesthetics “compromise”.
For the price of RM329, it is not really hard to jump the gun to try out the Amazfit ecosystem to see if it matches your needs.
Thus, this is a very compelling option for the budget-restrained who wants to seek something that can be used long-term, looks simple, acts straightforward, and has no chronic pain points to deal with (Except that workout mistrack thing, of course).
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