Amazfit Pace Review : the affordable smartwatch

Amazfit Pace Design

The design of the Amazfit Pace could go either way depending on who you ask. Personally I like the look and feel of the unit while some others in our team weren’t too enthusiastic of the design. My opinion is that it culminates a decent balance between sporty and elegance. The top circular bezel is made out of polished ceramic while the rear has a matte finish ceramic bezel giving it a unique appeal and the overall design quality of the Amazfit Pace is surprisingly good given its price tag US$140.

On first appearance the Amazfit Pace looks as if it’ll outgrow your arm due to its size, however we found that this wasn’t the case during our testing. However we would have had much greater respect for the Amazfit Pace had the design been thinner.

If you’re into red and black, then this is your lucky day. The Amazfit wrist straps are offered in black/red or red/black combination. Our unit came in a Red/Black combination, although I would have preferred an all black design. You can also purchase extra wrist straps from the Amazfit online store and replacing them is pretty straightforward and easy.

Tiny On/Off Switch

A small button on the side of the Amazfit Pace acts as the home button as well as the on/off switch. The initial release of the Amazfit Pace required the home button to be pressed to activate its touch screen, and you may have read many complaints from users as a result. The good thing though is, since we received this unit from Xiaomi, the makers of the Amazfit Pace, there have been many software updates that took place and one of the improvements made was to enable a double tap system to enable the touch screen of the watch.

It’s good to see manufactures paying attention to their users and we have seen significant improvements introduced to make the Amazfit Pace more versatile in the past few weeks. While the double tap approach is certainly a welcome feature, we found it wouldn’t respond smoothly as expected all the time. Hopefully we can expect further refinements in the coming months and this certainly isn’t a deal breaker.

Looking to the rear of the Amazfit Pace you find the heart rate sensor along with 4 connectors that connects with the provided charging dock.  The wrist straps provided with the Amazfit Pace is extremely comfortable and made of  rubber making them quite flexible and tolerable in sweaty conditions.

The Display

The Pace comes with an always-on transflective colour LCD display with a resolution of 320 x 300. What this means is the watch screen will be always on showing you time and other vital stats. The resolution I wouldn’t consider it the best and it’s certainly not at all bad. I would have liked to see better brightness controls on the watch as it gets a bit hard at times to read the display when outdoors in bright sun. Considering the price tag however we’re quite pleased at what is being offered.

Under the hood there’s a 1.2Ghz processor with 512MB of RAM and an impressive 4GB of storage to keep things operating smoothly. When you consider these specs it’s certainly awesome to find the Amazfit Pace offered at this price point. There’s no lag when browsing through any of the menu items and all functions come to life with zero lag.

The watch is also IP67 water and dust resistant, so you can pretty much wear the Pace in most daily situations. Sadly though this rating means you cannot go swim training with the Pace and it doesn’t include that training on its app suite either. I have had it on while doing most common tasks around the house like washing car, washing dishes etc and had no issues with its operation.

Connectivity

The Amazfit Pace communicates with the phone using Bluetooth 4.0 and can also connect through Wi-Fi in case you’re out of Bluetooth range. Wi-Fi is also used to download firmware updates to the phone directly. All data collected on the watch syncs to the phone and uploaded to the Amazafit cloud soon as they’re paired along with any weather forecast updates.

There’s also a GPS built into the Amazfit Pace which can be used to measure distance traveled, route taken etc. We had issues getting a GPS signal indoors however everything worked fine outdoors.