There’s plenty of choice if you are looking for a smartwatch for fitness tracking priced at or below Rs. 15,000. While most smartwatches and fitness trackers at this price level won’t offer Google’s Wear OS ecosystem, you can find products that deliver a lot of value in terms of hardware, features, and more importantly, battery life.

2. Amazfit GTS 3 review: Old Wine in a
New Bottle

3. There’s plenty of choice if you are looking for a smartwatch for
fitness tracking priced at or below Rs. 15,000. While most smart
watches and fitness trackers at this price level won’t offer Google’s
Wear OS ecosystem, you can find products that deliver a lot of value
in terms of hardware, features, and more importantly, battery life.
With that in mind, Amazfit’s GTS 3 is a very capable fitness
tracker. There’s a new display, new software, a refreshed design,
and a digital crown for navigation, but all of these seem to have
come at a cost. The tiny jump in battery capacity means that this
model is positioned below the GTR 3 and GTR 3 Pro. The GTS 3 also
lacks Bluetooth calling and internal storage, which were available
on the GTS 2 (Review). Considering these minor updates and the
missing features, should you choose the Amazfit GTS 3, or are there
better fitness trackers at this price?

4. Amazfit GTS 3 price in India
The Amazfit GTS 3 is priced at Rs. 13,999 in India. It’s available in
a single version, and has no user-accessible internal storage. There
are three finishes to choose from: Graphite Black, Ivory White, and
Terra Rosa. I received a Terra Rosa GTS 3 unit for review. It comes
with a silicon strap and a magnetic charging base in the box.
Amazfit GTS 3 design and specifications
The Amazfit GTS 3 looks very similar to the GTS 2. The single
pusher on the right side of the GTS 2 has now been upgraded to a
navigation crown, which can be used as a home button when
pressed and released quickly, and shows you a list of apps with a
second press. Its primary purpose is to let you scroll through lists
and pages, and it generates haptic feedback as you do that. Long-
pressing the crown lets you access any function of your choosing. I
set it to pull up Amazon Alexa’s voice interface.

5. The navigation crown works much like the one on Apple Watches,
but it’s not as refined from a software perspective. Twisting the
crown with the watch unlocked results in haptic feedback with the
linear vibration motor, but this feels more like vibrations than
mechanical clicks. Scrolling feels responsive, but the crown is very
sensitive, which makes it a bit annoying to scroll to an exact item
in a list or a page in an app. There’s always a bit of adjustment
required to reach a spot. Since the UI does not have a selection
system or a highlight to show selected items in a list or in an app,
you have to take your finger off the crown and tap on the display to
select something, which I found counterintuitive. After a few days
of use, I ended up using the touchscreen display for navigation
most of the time, as all apps and functions work well with gestures.
You will only really need the navigation crown to access the list of
apps when you are at the watch face.
The Amazfit GTS 3 features a 1.75-inch OLED display with a
resolution of 390×450 pixels. It has a slim bezel all around. The
front glass is tempered for protection and also has an and
fingerprint coating, which worked well throughout the review
period.

6. The 42mm watch case is rectangular with rounded corners and is
made of aluminium alloy. At just 24.4g (without straps) it feels very
light and almost like a smart band. The device is water-resistant up
to 5ATM, so you will be able to take it for a swim. There is no
speaker but you do get a mic that can be used for voice commands
for the built-in voice assistant or Amazon’s Alexa.
The bottom of the case is made of plastic and has the sensors for
heart rate and SpO2 tracking. Above and below them are two metal
contacts that connect to the magnetic charging base. The watch
comes with a silicon strap that can be attached and removed easily
with quick-release pins. The strap feels soft and has a classic pin
buckle that remained secure and never came off accidentally
during the review period. I had no trouble wearing the GTS 3 all
day and even sleeping while wearing it.
The Amazfit GTS 3 communicates with its phone app, called Zepp,
via Bluetooth. The watch does not have built-in Wi-Fi so it cannot
directly connect to the Internet. There’s no local storage like on the
GTS 2, so storing music on the watch is not possible. Because of its
slim overall design (8.8mm thick), Amazfit engineers only
managed to squeeze in a 250mAh battery. This is still a minor

7. upgrade over the 246mAh battery on the GTS 2, but it’s only close
to half the capacities that the GTR 3 and the GTR 3 Pro models have.
Amazfit GTS 3 software
Amazfit, with its new GTS 3 and GTR 3 models, has upgraded to a
new software platform called Zepp OS. This is a custom operating
system and communicates with the Zepp app on an Android or iOS
smartphone. I tested the GTS 3 with a Google Pixel 4a, and right off
the bat, I noticed that I was not able to receive any app
notifications. The solution was to turn off battery optimisations for
the Zepp companion app. This basically makes the Zepp app
remain in memory and run in the background indefinitely (good or
bad, you decide). Post this, I had to select all the apps I wanted to
receive notifications from, and then I was good to go.
The UI is quite basic, and navigating through it on the GTS 3 is fairly
easy to understand. From the watch face, you can swipe right to
open Shortcut Cards, swipe left to access preselected widgets
(which Amazfit calls Quick Access Apps), swipe up to see your

8. notifications, and swipe down to access important settings. There
are buttons here to let you quickly toggle DND and Theatre modes,
adjust the display brightness, and more.
The Shortcut Cards section is a customisable list of apps that show
relevant information and actions. I could interact with these, for
example to take a quick heart rate reading or glance through a
weather forecast. A tap on each one will open its respective app.
The Quick Access Apps (or widgets) on the other hand relay
information from the built-in apps in a visually appealing way.
Indeed, both these sections ended up showing the same
information in different ways, so choosing which way to go from
the watch face is mainly about how you like to view such
information.
There are plenty of built-in apps, and Amazfit has an App Store in
the Zepp companion app that lets you download some additional
mini apps. These range from extremely useful, such as the Watch
Storage Space app, to something as useless as the Brush Teeth app
that tells you how to brush your teeth. The apps in this mini store

9. don’t come from third-party developers, so they all look consistent
and stick to the overall design and theme of the Zepp OS interface.
The Storage Space app let me know that I had about 3GB of internal
storage, of which I had used about 784MB after two weeks. It’s a
bit odd that Amazfit does not let users do anything with the other
2GB of local storage, such as storing music.
The watch has two voice assistants. There’s one that is developed
by Amazfit and the other which is by Amazon. Amazfit’s own voice
assistant works offline (and is even called Offline Voice Control)
but is very limited in terms of capabilities and requires very
specific commands. Most of the time it opened the wrong app
because it could not understand my commands correctly. In
contrast, Amazon’s Alexa is a lot smarter, but needs to be
connected to the internet to operate.
Positives aside, there are a few things that I did not like about the
Amazfit GTS 3. The built-in watch faces (and those from the Zepp
store) do show complications (data from apps) and even let you
customise what data you want to see in them. However, tapping on
these complications will not take you to their respective apps.
Clearing notifications from the notifications tray is not a good

10. experience. Instead of being able to simply swipe away a particular
notification, I had to open each one, tap on a delete button (located
at the end of the message), and then swipe right to get back to the
notifications tray. This has to be done for each notification
individually. Notifications from some apps such as WhatsApp do
not show up with an icon, so it’s hard to tell which app or service
they came from.
There are other basic UI flaws too, like the inability to quickly
access tools or apps that are active in the background. For example,
if I start the stopwatch and then view a notification or open another
app, I have to come back to the watch face, press the crown to show
the app drawer, scroll down to the stopwatch app, open it, and then
hit stop. A similar problem occurs when a workout is active – all
other functions of the watch remain blocked (save for the drop-
down notifications shade and music controls). You have to finish a
workout in order to access other functions or tools. While this
doesn’t matter if you are in the middle of an intense workout
session, I could not access the watch during my daily walk or while
jogging, forcing me to pull out my phone.

11. Amazfit GTS 3 performance and battery life
The whole OS appears to run smoothly, which makes it quite
responsive, whether you are interacting with it using the
navigation crown or the touchscreen. The AMOLED display got
quite bright even in direct sunlight, and the black background
that’s all over the UI helps text and graphics stand out.
If you do buy an Amazfit GTS 3, do remember to update it to the
latest software version (7.23.5.2 at the time of this review), which
ran smoothly and was mostly bug-free, compared to the experience
I had with the software that it came with out of the box.
Most of the fitness tracking features were quite accurate, save for
sleep tracking. The SpO2 reading was spot on when compared that
of to a blood oximeter, and the watch was also quite quick to take
measurements and display a reading. Heart rate readings were also
quite accurate. There’s a nice One-tap Measuring feature that
conducts a number of tests in one go. This takes about 45 seconds,
so you will have to remain motionless for that long.

12. As for workouts, step tracking was impressively accurate. I
counted 1,000 steps manually during my daily walk and the watch
showed exactly 1,000 steps. This was with 2D tracking switched
on; there’s also a 3D tracking mode that takes elevation into
account. GPS tracking was also almost perfect, even though my
route had a lot of trees and plenty of buildings.
While most of the tracking features were on point, sleep tracking
was not. There are a couple of ground rules you need to keep in
mind when reading sleep data. Daytime naps of less than 20
minutes do not get recorded. Sleep time between 10:00pm and
8:00am will only be counted as night sleep, including short naps.
I wore the watch to bed for a few nights and found that it was
inaccurate for the most part, except for instances when I woke up
during the night, which it detected accurately. The GTS 3 for some
reason decided that I was in a light sleep state from 9:00pm to
when I actually called it a day and shut my eyes at 12:30am. It even
marked me as awake for a good 45 minutes before deep sleep and
REM sleep began. My best guess is that it assumed that I was asleep
when lying relatively motionless while watching movies.
Regardless, it was still inaccurate.

13. As for the Amazfit GTS 3’s 250mAh battery, I tested this in two
ways. With the Always-On Display (AOD) enabled plus regular
heart rate, blood O2, and stress monitoring, all notifications
switched on, and sleep monitoring with theatre mode turned on at
night, this device lasted 3 days on a single charge. With no auto
monitoring of any sort turned on, AOD switched off, and with all
notifications enabled, a full charge stretched for about 5 days.
While these numbers do sound impressive compared to an Apple
Watch or a WearOS device which would have to be charged every
night, Amazfit’s GTR 3 (which is priced the same as the GTS 3) and
GTR 3 Pro (priced higher) have much bigger batteries and should
last a lot longer. As for charging, the watch touched 53 percent in
30 minutes and took about 1 hour and 19 minutes to get to 100
percent, which is not bad.
Verdict
The Amazfit GTS 3 is a minor update over the GTS 2 (Review), and
is fine if you are in the market for a slim smart watch that weighs
only as much as a fitness band. Zepp OS is a smooth and fluid
experience (with a few bugs), but the digital crown is very limited
in terms of function. Fitness and health tracking is quite good save

14. for sleep tracking, which was just not up to the mark. There’s no
local storage (for music files or Bluetooth calling like on the GTS 2,
which some might find to be a deal breaker. In short, if you own a
GTS 2 (which currently retails at Rs. 11,999) there is no reason to
upgrade to the GTS 3.
If you are looking for a budget-friendly smart watch, there are
several options to choose from at this price level. There’s Amazfit’s
GTR 3, which offers a bigger battery and the same set of features at
the same price. If you are looking for storage and a bigger battery,
there’s the One Plus Watch (Review) at Rs. 14,999. And if Wear OS
is on your mind, then the Oppo Watch (41mm) (Rs. 14,999) might
not be a bad idea.
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