Amazfit Bip U Pro review: Another budget powerhouse

The new Amazfit Bip U Pro is the company's latest budget smartwatch, with a super-charged spec sheet and super-affordable price.

There's also a standard Bip U, which offers the same build without GPS and Alexa, for just $59 in the US (not yet widely available elsewhere).

It's now been replaced by the Amazfit Bip 3 Pro – so we implore you to read our full review.

It's an excellent package for such a low cost, but do those hifalutin features deliver?

• Best budget smartwatch 2023
• Best smartwatches from our reviews

Amazfit Bip U Pro key specs

• iOS and Android
• 1.43 inches TFT LCD display
• 320 x 302 pixels
• 41mm case
• 230 mAh, 9 days battery life
• BioTracker 2 PPG sensor
• SpO2
• 5 ATM water resistance
• GPS

Design and build

• 1.43-inch HD color screen
• 5ATM water resistance with swim tracking
• 24/7 HR monitoring
• Blood oxygen monitor

Wareable

The Amazfit Bip U comes with a number of features that, on paper, defy its price point.

A vivid 1.43-inch HD color screen, 5ATM water resistance with swim tracking, 24/7 HR monitoring, and even a blood oxygen monitor.

The Bip U Pro also promises 60 dedicated sports modes, along with sleep and stress monitoring plus a custom health evaluation system based upon several biometric recordings.

Beyond the fitness realm, there’s an excellent nine-day battery life and some decent smartphone connectivity options.

If the feature list disregards the price tag, the design and build doesn’t. The silicone strap with plastic fastening is flimsy and doesn’t feel like it will hold up to abuse. The strap can also get clammy.

The plastic body construction has large bezels surrounding the 1.43-inch display and there’s a Digital Crown-style button on the right side. It twizzles, but that doesn’t carry any functionality.

Wareable

At just 31g, you can easily forget you’re wearing this device. But the design lacks an identity and, overall, looks like an Apple Watch knock-off, so be ready to field the “oh is that an Apple Watch?” The Bip U Pro comes in black, pink, and a rather fetching green.

The digital TFT display has a 302 x 302 resolution, is coated by Gorilla Glass 3 and, like the Bip U, drops the transflective display we saw on the Bip S series. It’s a big boost in quality, but it’s weaker than the punchy AMOLED found on the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini.

The touch response is decent, but it can seem a little fiddly at times given the lack of room to operate.

You can also freshen up the look and feel of the watch face from within the watch or download loads of others from the companion Zepp app. It’s also possible to create a personalized face using your own photos.

Activity and sports tracking

• GPS
• PAI score of activity
• Advanced sleep tracking

Wareable

Amazfit smartwatches are geared towards activity and fitness tracking, and the Bip U and Bip U Pro have a wide set of features.

Step tracking is handled with aplomb and accuracy was indistinguishable from that of rivals.

Your activity tracking feeds into the physiological activity indicator, which encourages you to hit a PAI score of 100 each week through heart rate-based training.

As you get fitter, it’ll be harder to earn points and you’ll need to train harder to keep your score over 100. It’s a good, generic system for beginners, albeit not as motivating as the Apple Watch activity rings.

Wareable

Of course, the 5ATM water resistance makes swim tracking possible at depths of up to 50m. It feels like Casio had this figured out 30 years ago with digital watches, so we won’t go overboard on the praise here.

Naturally, you’ll also get sleep tracking here, which delves into sleep stages, total sleep, and time awake. It will also track naps.

We found the overall total sleep was within ten minutes and registered deep sleep time within six minutes when compared with the Whoop Strap 3.0. But against the gold standard sleep tracking of Fitbit and Withings we did find it tended to over-estimate sleep.

Wareable

You can also turn on advanced sleep tracking, which will impact battery life. You’ll get a sleep score out of 100. Over time, you’ll begin to see trends in sleep duration, time to fall asleep and average deep sleep performance, and whether you’re trending up or down.

However, if you don’t want to be disturbed all night, you’re going to have to turn off the motion-based screen wake, which comes in so handy during the day. I almost blinded my wife a couple of times just by turning over in the night. Turning on Do Not Disturb does not prevent the screen from waking when the watch detects motion. Annoying.

Wareable

It’s a good sleep-tracking performance, and while we’d urge those looking to make meaningful change to consider Fitbit or Withings, this is superb performance and data for the price.

There’s also menstrual cycle tracking, which estimates the next fertile period and estimated ovulation date based on the information you register. It’s good to see this feature become as much of a staple as step tracking on these devices.

Amazfit Bip U Pro: Workout tracking

• 60 sports modes
• GPS
• Strava support

Wareable

Hold down the crown and you enter workout mode. You can select from over 60 sports modes, from all of the conventional options to dance, cricket, equestrian, and curling. Yes, curling. Amazfit is nothing if not inclusive.

After selecting the activity, you can hit start. GPS will be automatically registered if you’re outdoors and we found no issue with its accuracy or performance.

While heart rate detection is within a good margin of a high-end fitness tracker like Whoop, the estimated calorie burn can be significantly off for certain activities.

In a 55-minute light yoga session, it estimated a whopping calorie burn of 415kcal. The Whoop, meanwhile, went conservative with 134 calories – which is much more realistic.

There’s no real explanation for this anomaly considering both devices registered the average and max HR within a few beats. It seems the disparity may be due to the how the individual Amazfit sport modes calculate the data. We’ve requested an answer from Amazfit.

Wareable

I tried again using the Outdoor Cycling mode on the watch, using the Polar H-10 chest strap and Polar Beat app, as well as the wrist-based Whoop.

For a 25-minute, 4.5-mile cycle the Bip U Pro estimated 286 calories, compared to the stingy Whoop (250kcal). Much closer. However, the most accurate Polar H-10 chest-strap measured 394 calories.

For a newcomer to smart fitness tracking, trusting this calorie burn could present a false sense of accomplishment or even an undercount, if you’re managing calories in/out as part of your fitness and weight loss efforts.

We’d happily recommend this as a fitness tracker for those starting their smart fitness journey, but it’s not quite up to scratch as a dedicated sports watch, if you’re seeking pinpoint accurate next-gen stats.

Amazfit Bip U Pro: Heart rate, stress, and blood oxygen tracking

• SpO2 sensor
• Stress tracking
• Accurate resting heart rate
• Inaccurate HR at higher load

Wareable

The Bip U Pro offers near-continuous heart rate tracking during everyday life. You can pick from several intervals, from every minute to every half an hour. The last measurement will sit on the home screen depending on the watch face used. You can also manually measure your heartrate at any time too. It takes around 10 seconds.

Resting heart rate, when measured, was more or less in line with the optical heart-rate sensor on the Whoop Strap 3.0.

Occasionally, it ticked a beat-per-minute or two lower. The same applies to the Polar H-10 hardware when it comes to resting heart-rate. 

Wareable

When it comes to more intensive exercise, things go downhill quickly. Our cycle comparison against the H-10 chest strap saw a difference in average HR of 10 bpm for the session. The Amazfit averaged 136bpm while the chest strap recorded 150 bpm. It makes the data less useful for proper analysis or HR zone training – but as this is clearly aimed at casual users, it's still interesting data for showing how hard you worked.

The ability to measure blood oxygen level is newsworthy. Those suffering from Covid-19 have experienced dangerously-low blood oxygen levels. Like respiration rate and HRV with other trackers, your blood oxygen level can be a vital indicator of your overall wellness.

The oxygen saturation level is measured manually and takes around a minute. After measuring, you’ll be informed if your SpO2 drops below the optimum level. Be sure to follow the on-screen instructions to the letter to ensure an accurate reading.

The stress tracking feature works similarly. It’s measured manually (all-day monitoring can be enabled to the detriment of battery life) and pairs with the onboard breathing exercises you can take if high stress is registered. Haptic feedback and visual cues guide your inhales and exhales.

Amazfit Bip U Pro: Watch UI and experience

Wareable

This is a well-thought-out interface that is highly customisable and intuitive. Raise your wrist and you’ll see the watch face pop up.

Swiping left and right from the watch face takes you through commonly-used features (Activity Goal progress, HR, SpO2, stress, PAI progress, weather, music controls, Alexa). A swipe down summons quick settings, and a swipe up shows smartphone notifications.

Press the crown for a list of features. Hold it to enter workout mode. The touchscreen is used to confirm selections. Pretty standard stuff, but it’s also pleasing to see an interface get out of its way.

You can get dozens of watch faces to keep the look and feel fresh, four live on the watch and the rest can be synced via the Zepp app.

They’re well suited to different use cases. The activity-themed face shows your HR graph, PAI progress and activity rings, for example. Many can be edited directly from the watch's face.

The HR curve graph can be replaced with daily steps, for example.

Amazfit Bip U Pro: Smartwatch features

• Alexa on the wrist
• Notifications from smartphone
• No music/payments/calling

Wareable

Alexa integration is a key upgrade over the Bip U watch (GPS is the other). There’s no built-in Wi-Fi or LTE, so voice commands are sent via your phone. You access Alexa with a swipe right from the home screen and don’t have to use the wake word. Of course, that means there’s a microphone on board, which picks up your voice without any trouble.

When this feature works, it’s handy. However, too often we received a “network busy try again later” message. We’ve asked Amazfit to offer some feedback on this.

If you’re playing music via your connected phone, you can control it from a dedicated screen. However, there’s no option to transfer music to the watch for offline playback, no option to add music apps or to connect Bluetooth headphones. You’ll have to look to the Amazfit GTS/GTR 2 for this, at double the price – and in our testing found the experience to be clunky. Best avoided.

Smartphone notifications like incoming calls or WhatsApp/Messenger can be turned on via the app, which offers options depending on the apps you have installed.

You can’t act upon the notifications, but they are handy and help you keep the phone lodged in your pocket.

Notifications are generally easy to read and clear, but there are a couple of annoying quirks: they can’t display emojis and apostrophes have an unwarranted space after them, which looks a bit untidy.

Amazfit Bip U Pro: Battery life and charging

• 9 day quoted battery life

Wareable

Overall, we were really impressed with the battery life offered by the Bip U Pro. The nine-day pledge was accurate with some limited use of GPS for running and cycling and heart rate monitoring set to every five minutes. We kept the screen brightness relatively low throughout.

Charging comes via two magnetic pins that click satisfyingly to the rear of the watch. From a 13% charge, we got back to 99% in around 85 minutes. Not the fastest charging in the world, for sure, but we’re more forgiving based on how long the battery lasts.