Design and Build: Where Classic Meets Contemporary
The Amazfit GTR 4 immediately strikes a chord with its refined aesthetic, successfully bridging the gap between a traditional timepiece and a modern smartwatch. It forsakes the rugged, sporty look of many competitors for a more elegant, versatile profile. The centerpiece is a gorgeous 1.43-inch AMOLED display, protected by a sleek, curved glass that seamlessly blends into the aluminum alloy frame. This design choice eliminates harsh edges, making the watch comfortable for all-day wear and sleep tracking.
At 45mm, the case is substantial but not overwhelming, sitting comfortably on a wide range of wrist sizes. The build quality is exceptional for its price point, feeling robust and premium. The watch is lightweight at 34 grams (without the strap), ensuring you often forget it’s there. It’s also 5 ATM water-resistant, meaning it can handle rain, showers, and swimming sessions without concern.
The new One-Touch Quick Release strap mechanism is a small but significant upgrade, allowing for effortless strap changes to match your style or activity. The two physical buttons on the right side are well-defined and provide satisfying tactile feedback. The top button doubles as a rotating crown, a feature often reserved for more expensive watches. This crown provides an intuitive method for scrolling through notifications, menus, and adjusting settings, significantly enhancing the user interface navigation.
Display: A Vibrant Window to Your Data
The 466 x 466 pixel resolution AMOLED screen is simply stunning. With a pixel density of 326 PPI, it is sharp, vibrant, and incredibly readable even under direct sunlight. Colors pop, blacks are truly deep, and the touch responsiveness is flawless. The Always-On Display (AOD) functionality is highly customizable and practical, though it does have a measurable impact on battery life.
With a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, you will never struggle to see your stats during a bright outdoor run. The bezels surrounding the screen are minimal, maximizing the screen real estate for a truly immersive view of your watch faces and data. Amazfit provides a vast library of over 200 watch faces in its Zepp app, ranging from informative data-dense layouts to minimalist analog designs, ensuring there’s something for every taste.
Health and Wellness Tracking: A Proactive Health Companion
Amazfit has equipped the GTR 4 with its latest BioTracker 4.0 PPG sensor, which powers a comprehensive suite of health monitoring features. The 24/7 heart rate monitoring is accurate and provides detailed insights into your resting heart rate and fluctuations throughout the day and night. The blood-oxygen saturation (SpO2) monitoring can be measured on demand or automatically during sleep, providing a crucial data point for understanding overall wellness and recovery.
Sleep tracking is a particular strength. The watch provides a detailed Sleep Score and breaks down your night into Light, Deep, REM sleep stages, and even tracks daytime naps. It offers actionable feedback to help improve sleep quality. A new feature, called Nap Mode, automatically detects naps over 20 minutes and logs them without needing to be manually activated.
Stress monitoring is also present, using heart rate variability data to calculate a stress level, and it can guide you through breathing exercises to help you relax. For women, there is a menstrual cycle tracking feature that offers predictions and logs symptoms. A standout health feature is the continuous, automatic abnormal heart rhythm detection (via the PAI health assessment system), which can provide an early warning for potential signs of atrial fibrillation.
Sports and Fitness Performance: Your All-Terrain Coach
With over 150 built-in sports modes, the Amazfit GTR 4 is a fitness powerhouse. It covers everything from running and cycling to more niche activities like padel, frisbee, and even ballet. The real magic, however, lies in its upgraded dual-band GPS. Utilizing both L1 and L5 satellite signals, the watch achieves a remarkable lock-on speed and maintains exceptional tracking accuracy, even in challenging environments like dense cities with tall buildings or forested trails.
During a run, the watch provides real-time data on pace, distance, heart rate, and more directly on the easy-to-read screen. The post-workout analysis in the Zepp app is incredibly detailed, breaking down your performance with maps, pace zones, heart rate zones, and elevation. The new Real-Time Workout Status feature uses voice prompts to inform you when you hit a new lap or zone, allowing you to focus on your form rather than constantly glancing at your wrist.
For gym enthusiasts, the GTR 4 can automatically recognize and record strength training exercises, tracking reps, sets, and estimating calories burned. The built-in running coach can create personalized workouts based on your current fitness level and goals. The PeakBeats workout algorithm provides advanced metrics like VO2 Max, Training Load, and Recovery Time, data points typically found on dedicated sports watches costing significantly more.
Battery Life: The Undisputed Champion
Battery performance is where the Amazfit GTR 4 truly dominates the competition. Under typical usage with AOD off, heart rate monitoring set to 1-minute intervals, and receiving regular notifications, the watch comfortably lasts 7 to 8 days. With heavier use, including daily GPS workouts, you can still expect a solid 4 to 5 days of life.
If you prioritize longevity above all, the battery saver mode can stretch this to an astonishing 20+ days. Even with extensive use of the power-hungry dual-band GPS, you get up to 26 hours of continuous tracking, making it a reliable companion for marathon training or long hiking trips. The magnetic charging puck snaps on securely and can fully recharge the battery in just under two hours.
Smart Features and Zepp OS: Functional and Streamlined
The GTR 4 runs on Zepp OS 2.0, which is smooth, responsive, and focused on core functionality. You won’t find a vast app store like on Wear OS or watchOS, but it covers all the essentials beautifully. Notifications from your paired smartphone are delivered reliably, and you can read full messages, see who is calling, and even dismiss calls directly from the watch. Quick replies are available for Android users.
Other useful smart features include weather forecasts, alarm clocks, a stopwatch, timer, and a find-my-phone function. You can also control the music playing on your phone directly from the watch, and it has 3GB of built-in storage for transferring your own music to play via Bluetooth headphones. The Alexa integration is a welcome addition, allowing you to set reminders, check the weather, or control smart home devices using your voice, all without touching your phone.
Performance Analysis and Verdict
The performance of the Amazfit GTR 4 is characterized by its consistency and reliability. The combination of a responsive processor and the optimized Zepp OS ensures that navigating through menus and launching apps is snappy and largely free of lag. The GPS performance is arguably best-in-class for its category, providing runners and cyclists with confidence in their tracked routes.
While it excels in nearly every area, it’s not without minor compromises. The lack of a third-party app ecosystem might deter those who want a watch that can do everything a smartphone can. The speaker, while present for Alexa, does not allow for taking calls directly on the watch, a feature found on some rivals. The Zepp app, while data-rich and constantly improving, can feel slightly cluttered compared to more streamlined alternatives like Garmin Connect or Fitbit.
However, when evaluated as a complete package—its elegant design, brilliant display, top-tier GPS, comprehensive health suite, and class-leading battery life—the Amazfit GTR 4 presents an overwhelmingly compelling argument. It delivers a premium experience and a feature set that punches far above its weight, challenging established players in the smartwatch market and setting a new benchmark for what a mid-range smartwatch can achieve.