There’s no shortage of smartwatches to choose from these days, however, most tend to focus on classic or sporty designs. Fortunately, there are still a few outdoor rugged models on the market, such as the Amazfit T-Rex Pro that we were recently sent for review.
Design
The Amazfit T-Rex Pro features an oversized design with a look reminiscent of the rugged Casio watches loved by outdoor enthusiasts. The display is a 1.3-inch AMOLED with an always-on option allowing you to get a quick glimpse at the time, date, battery life, steps, and more. It also includes an ambient light sensor to ensure it can be seen clearly in any lighting condition.
The durable body of the Amazfit T-Rex Pro is military standard certified, passing 15 military-grade tests, including being able to withstand temps of up to 150F and down to -40F below. On top of being built durable, the T-Rex Pro also features 10 ATM water-resistance, meaning it can survive in depths of 100 meters.
User experience
Now that you know how tough the T-Rex Pro is, how well does it function? First off, you must have noticed the up, down, select, and back buttons on the watch. These do exactly what you’d think they’d do, control those functions on the watch. This makes it possible to use the T-Rex Pro regardless of how dirty, wet, or slimy your fingers are. It also makes it perfect in the cold when you’re wearing gloves.
No matter what the situation, you’ll be able to use your watch without having to touch the screen, and that really comes in handy when you’re trekking around outdoors and your hands are constantly covered in something. Using the touchscreen also works flawlessly, so when you’re back home you can still interact with it that way as well.
Besides offering a user-friendly way to use the watch during all your outdoor activities, the T-Rex Pro also comes with a ton of features. It has a built-in compass and barometer for when you’re out in the wild, plus it’s a full-blown fitness watch.
It tracks your steps, has over 100 sports modes, and can check your blood oxygen levels. Additionally, it has 24-hour monitoring of your heart rate and stress, while also tracking your sleep. While I found it could sometimes detect I was sleeping when I was awake, the step tracker was very accurate. Plus, you can manually adjust the sleeping time in the app if you find it made a mistake.
Even though the T-Rex Pro is a fantastic fitness watch, one area I found it came up short is with notifications. It will show notifications from your phone, if you set it up through the app, but you cannot dismiss notifications from your phone or interact with them.
That means no replying to messages, deleting emails, and sometimes you can’t even view the full message. So while you can view notifications, the experience is far from ideal. There’s also a limited number of watch faces to choose from, so you won’t have as many options as you do on some other wearables. I was able to find a couple that I like, but it’s just something to be aware of.
App
The Zepp app is used to change your watchface, view all of the stats the watch collects, and is used for the initial setup of the T-Rex Pro. I’m a big fan of how the Zepp app displays the information it collects and it works well.
However, the initial setup can be tedious having to dig through menus to enable everything. It all seems a little unorganized and there are a few grammar errors, but overall, I appreciate the insights it provides. Plus, once you get it set up you’ll mostly stay on the homepage where it provides all the accumulated data, and that’s where it excels.
Battery life
Amazfit rates the T-Rex Pro for up to 18 days of battery life. I’m sure this is technically possible, but if you want to turn on all the different health monitoring functions and use the always-on display, then you’re looking at something closer to five days. Regardless, that’s impressive for a smartwatch that does so much.
Final thoughts
The Amazfit T-Rex Pro is a durable smartwatch for the outdoorsman that helps fill a gap in the wearables market. It features a wealth of health tracking features, fantastic battery life, and convenient buttons to control the watch.
My biggest criticisms are that the app could use a little polish and I wish notification support was better. Although I suspect that last one is due to a limitation that Google has placed on third-party wearables. You can pick it up now from Amazon for $180.
