Amazfit Bip Max Review: The Anti-Whoop Smartwatch

At its core, the Amazfit Bip Max is everything the Whoop Band and the recently released Fitbit Air are not. While those fitness bands try to make fitness tracking a no-display, unobtrusive process, the Bip Max sits loud and proud on your wrist with its massive 2.07-inch, bigger-than-Apple Watch Ultra display. Rather intriguingly, it brings this big screen goodness to your wrist at the same price as the screenless Fitbit Air – USD 99. In India, it has been launched at Rs 10,999 (and in US for $99), which is close to what the Fitbit Air is expected to cost when it is released in the coming weeks. Can this biggie succeed in an era where many insist displays are not needed for tracking fitness?

Amazfit Bip Max appearance and design: Large and unabashedly peak geek gadget!

Most of the talk around the Bip Max has been about its display, and with good reason. That 2.07 AMOLED display just stands out in any watch party. Amazfit has made no attempt to disguise its size – it is a chunky half inch (13.2 mm) thick and almost two inches tall (49.58 mm). But it does not look cheap – the display is brilliant (AMOLED) and bright (3000 nits) and is covered by glass, while the frame around it is aluminum alloy. The back is plastic, and so is the slightly stiff strap that accompanies it, but neither looks nor feels cheap. There are two slightly raised, textured buttons on its side – a red one and a metal-colored one. There is no rotating crown. The glass on the display is “tempered glass” and comes with anti-fingerprint coating, and the watch itself comes with a 5 ATM water resistance, which means it should be good enough not just for workout sessions but also for swimming.

Given its size, the Amazfit Bip Max is not heavy. At about 52 grams with the strap, it is actually lighter than both the Galaxy Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch Ultra, which are both in the region of 60 grams or above. We would have liked a slightly more classy strap, but that can be changed as it is a standard 22 mm quick-release one. Charging is done via a magnetic disc that attaches to the back of the watch and has a USB Type-C port. There is no cable in the box, a move which Amazfit attributes to being eco-friendly. That’s not a major inconvenience, given that type-C cables are fairly common in most households.

We got the silver variant (dark blue and carbon gray are also available) of the Bip Max, and it turned a number of heads, mainly with its size and brightness, as well as the sheer amount of data displayed on its watch face. Amazfit has, by default, installed watch faces that display a truckload of fitness information as well as the time (one can see more than a dozen data points), all of which are easy to read on that large display.

Unlike the T-Rex series and even the new Balance series, there is no chance that you will mistake the Bip Max for a ‘normal’ watch. The size of the display and all that data on the default watchface scream “smartwatch”! Yes, one can opt for watchfaces that make the Bip Max appear more ‘conventional’, but we think that defeats its very purpose. This is not a gadget trying to be jewelry, but peak geek design. Classic watch lovers will frown, geeks will fawn.

Amazfit Bip Max Specs and features: Big watch, big feature list

The Bip Max maxes out on specs and features for its segment. It comes with sensors for tracking heart rate and blood oxygen, a gyroscope, 5 satellite GPS, and Bluetooth 5.3. The 2.07-inch display is AMOLED, has 3000 nits peak brightness, and has a resolution of 514 x 432, and a pixel density of 324 ppi. The watch also comes with 4 GB of storage and supports maps and navigation, and also lets you transfer music to it, if you wish.

The watch supports more than 150 sports modes and claims to automatically recognize 25 strength-training movements and 8 sports movements. One can also create training templates and arrange interval training, track runs, and use a virtual pacer mode. On the health front, it can track heart rate, sleep, blood oxygen, stress, and women’s cycle. and also the level of what Amazfit calls BioCharge (basically energy levels). The watch works with Amazfit’s Zepp app but can also sync data with Google Health, Strava, Adidas Running, and Apple Health.

On the smart side, the watch has a speaker and microphone so we can receive and make calls from it. It shows notifications from the phone and can even control the camera shutter on an iPhone. There are also reminders for standing up, weather, and voice memos, an AI assistant called Zepp Flow, and more. App freaks will not get the kind of apps one gets for the Apple Watch and Android Wear devices, but there are plenty of apps relating to different sports and fitness, and even some basic games designed for the watch. The 4GB of storage means that there is plenty of space to download and store apps.

Amazfit Bip Max ease of use: Pretty simple, and that display helps

Using the Amazfit Bip Max is relatively simple. The button with the red accent gives you access to your workouts, while long pressing it launches Zepp Flow, the AI assistant that lets you carry out watch-related commands such as starting and ending workouts, playing music, and more. Pressing it also takes you back to the home screen. Pressing the other button shows one of the apps and functions available on the watch. Long-pressing this button switches the watch on or off.

Everything else on the watch is handled by taps and swipes on that large touchscreen. Swiping down shows notifications and the Control Panel. Swiping up, on the other hand, gave us a summary of information about fitness and from widgets on the device (which can be customized). Touch on the display works very smoothly – scrolling and selecting information is quite easy with hardly any mis-taps or swipes.

The Amazfit Bip Max connects to both Android phones and iPhones through the Zepp app. The app is not the most polished (one needs to dig around a little to find information), but it gives one access to most features free of cost, including the Zepp Coach. Those wanting analytical reports on sleep and fitness will, however, need to subscribe to Zepp Aura and Zepp Fitness. Amazfit has provided a lot of information on the watch itself, so we did not feel the need to pull out our phone too often.

Amazfit Bip Max health and fitness tracking: Largely accurate, but the app requires patience

We are not hardcore fitness freaks, but from what we could judge, the Amazfit Bip Max did a very decent job in tracking our workouts. Step counts, runs, and basic exercises were tracked quite accurately (we compared their numbers with our Fitbit Charge 6). Heart rate and blood oxygen readings were also accurate, and close to what we got on our Oximeter, although they sometimes tended to err on the lower side.

The BioCharge measures seemed inaccurate initially, as they showed us in a very fresh state even when we were feeling exhausted, but they got better after about five days, and at the time of writing, were giving us a pretty good indication of our energy levels. Stress measurements seem a little unduly optimistic – it never indicated we were under high stress, although we definitely were just that a few times. In fact, it recorded our stress levels as normal most of the time, which was reassuring but was not very convincing, given the fact that we had our share of crises and even a minor panic attack.

Automatic workout tracking works pretty well most of the time – if you start walking or running, it is a fair chance that the watch will detect it within about 30-45 seconds. And it does not get fooled when you are traveling in a vehicle. For some reason, though, the Bip Max started recording fitness workouts even when we were just sitting and writing (we would love to believe that writing was as good as working out, but it isn’t). Sleep detection is very good on the watch, but it stumbles when it comes to the detection of naps, where it often misses them altogether.

The Amazfit Bip covered most fitness and health bases pretty well and should meet the requirements of most mainstream gym goers. The Zepp Coach is a little basic, but it is handy enough for those starting out on their fitness journey. Do not expect Apple Health levels of coaching here. What one gets are more like broad guidelines rather than detailed handholding. The good thing is that there is a lot of data available, provided you are patient enough to scan the app. The Zepp app is not the easiest to navigate, and the absence of a search option is a shortcoming – we did not know where to find the Zepp Coach, for instance. Those who are patient, however, will be rewarded with lots of information.

Amazfit Bip Max general performance: Big display and big battery life are the stars

At the core of the Bip Max experience is that large display. While most smartwatches are capable of displaying a fair amount of data, reading it all on a tiny screen can be a little annoying – even with the Apple Watch, we found ourselves looking at the iPhone for detailed data. Reading on the Bip Max, on the other hand, is so easy that we were using it almost all the time for checking fitness and health data, and even the odd notification. For instance, we could actually clearly follow sleep graphics and read up data related to steps taken and fat burned on the watch itself.

The big display also makes the Bip Max easy to use for navigation (you will need to download maps on the watch using the companion app), although mainstream users who are not obsessed with routes might find this of limited use. Making and receiving calls is smooth, and we can also read messages and notifications, although we cannot respond to them from the watch. Zepp Flow as an assistant is great for fitness-related tasks – just don’t ask it how to make pizza, what to wear for your evening out, or about the news headlines, and you will be fine. We could also control the volume of music on our phones through the watch and use the watch as a remote camera shutter button for our phones.

There are a few interface issues. Exiting maps on the watch can be tricky, and sometimes we found calls still connected on the watch even though we had ended them on the phone. Although irritating, these are largely random occurrences, and hopefully will be ironed out by software updates – Amazfit has a very good record in that department.

The battery life of the Bip Max is very impressive, given the size of its display and the number of sensors it has on board. Amazfit claims 20 days on a single charge, and we comfortably got more than 10 days even when we kept the heart rate tracking in continuous mode. This is a watch you might need to recharge once or twice a month at the most. And we love the coin-like charger, which is compact enough to be slipped into a wallet and can be attached to any Type-C cable.

Amazfit Bip Max Review Verdict: Terrific value for money, and keeps your phone away

The Amazfit Bip Max is priced at Rs 10,999 in India. At that price, in terms of performance and hardware, it is pretty much in a zone of its own. The likes of the Titan Celestor 2.0 (Rs 10,499) and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (Rs 11,999) do come with some very decent fitness tracking, and the Watch 6 Classic has a much smoother app, but neither of them can match that huge display.

Its size makes the Amazfit Bip Max the perfect smartwatch not only for those who love large watches, but also like to obsessively check their health and fitness data, and hate pulling out their phones to do so. The default watch face on the Bip Max serves up no fewer than fourteen bits of information, ranging from the usual time, date, and day to steps taken, temperature, sleep, and Biocharge levels.

In many ways, this is the Anti-Whoop: instead of unobtrusively recording data and showing it on your phone, it sits loud and proud on your wrist, telling you what you wish to know. We think it is an awesome option for those who like to keep an eye on fitness and health data but do not want to splurge on high-end smartwatches yet. Or pull out their phones frequently.