But, Amazfit? I’d never even heard of the brand. Was it Amazon’s entry into the market? How would it stack up with Garmin, COROS, Suunto, and Apple? The Cheetah Pro certainly doesn’t have the name recognition of those fitness watch brands, but it talked the big talk on paper — and the name sounded fast.
As it turns out, even if Amazfit doesn’t ring a bell, the brand does know how to make a good fitness watch and offer an impressive line of fitness trackers and gadgets. Over the spring, I tested the Cheetah Pro in various environments across the West, namely the winding Cedar Mesa sandstone canyons of Southeast Utah and the sloping Flatirons of Boulder, Colo. My charge was simple: Can the Cheetah hang while I trained for a hundred-miler?
The Cheetah Pro sits on the high end of the spectrum of Amazfit’s offerings but manages to retain a budget price. The feature set and quality materials rival options from other brands at twice the cost, showing that a premium offering doesn’t need to be financially burdensome, something I think we can all appreciate — there is nothing that drives prices down and quality up like some good market competition.
In short: The Amazfit Cheetah Pro is a high-end fitness tracker that looks and acts like a GPS sports watch — a great option to consider for fitness enthusiasts. Offering excellent durability and a wide array of features, you won’t find yourself wanting for any sort of analysis or statistic. But, if you’re an elite runner looking to choose a new watch, you might find yourself considering other options.
To learn more about the Cheetah Pro and how it fits into the larger fitness watch world, check out GearJunkie’s full guide to the Best Fitness Watches.
- Size: 47 x 47 x 11.8 mm
- Weight: 43 g with band
- Battery: 440mAh capacity
- Single-band GPS battery life: 26 hours in accuracy mode
- Global Satellite Networks: 6 satellite positioning systems with L1 & L5 reception
- Screen/Bezel: 1.45” AMOLED Corning glass touchscreen with titanium alloy bezel
- Navigation Capable: Yes
- Barometric Altimeter and Compass: Yes
- Water Resistance: 5 ATM (50m)
Pros
- Fully featured
- Excellent battery life
- Durable
- Responsive touchscreen
Cons
- Bulky fit for smaller wrists
- GPS tracking trouble in canyons
- The Zepp app feels overbuilt with many ‘premium’ features requiring payment
Amazfit Cheetah Pro: Review
You might feel overwhelmed when looking at the Amazfit website and its variety of offerings. Whether you’re looking for an entry-level fitness tracker like the $49 Band 7 or a premium multisport smartwatch like the $499 Falcon, the brand has pretty much covered the spread.
The Cheetah Pro sits comfortably at $300 on the higher end of the spectrum and, at face value, offers everything you’d want from a quality fitness-tracking smartwatch at a budget price.
To start, you have everything you need as an endurance athlete: a biometric sensor that measures heart rate and blood oxygen levels, a barometric altimeter, dual-band GPS positioning, offline navigation via pre-uploaded routes, step tracker, heart rate zone readings, and numerous quick-start sport modes.
In fact, the Cheetah Pro boasts 156 individual sport modes, from skiing, dodgeball, frisbee, and 16 different types of dance(!). If you’re the type that enjoys tracking and cataloging every single activity you do, like me, this is a big win.
When it comes to training, the Cheetah Pro integrates with the Zepp App, which offers an AI-powered coach to help you program workouts and training schedules. Associated apps like these are commonplace these days; however, they have often needed refinement to get perfect in the real world.
As someone training for the Leadville 100 this August, I was unable to generate a plan for anything more than a full marathon in length, but the plan that was generated for me was fairly spot on in terms of training volume, pace, weekly progression, and heart rate zone targets. This is exceptionally useful for a beginning runner looking to generate a custom training plan for their 10K, half marathon, or full marathon.
Additionally, the Cheetah Pro has some of the more standard smartwatch features nowadays, including sleep tracking, music storage, Bluetooth phone call integration, and health monitoring. These features include alerts when your heart rate/stress level is abnormally high, or your blood oxygen is too low. I always appreciate a quick alert in this regard, just in case I’m unconsciously stressed out.
Durability and Battery Life
“Oh wow, I hope I didn’t break something,” I thought after smacking the Cheetah Pro on a rock. I was climbing the Freeway, one of the premier rock scrambles in the Flatirons of Boulder, Colo., and I thought for sure that I had just scratched my watch face to bits, having been a little errant with my hand placement.
But to my surprise, I couldn’t find a single scratch on the Cheetah Pro’s Corning Gorilla Glass display or its titanium alloy bezel. If you’re looking for a watch where you don’t need to think about the fact that you’re wearing a few hundred dollars on your wrist, the Cheetah Pro is a top-notch option.
As for battery life, the Cheetah Pro does a great job with its 440mAh battery. The accurate GPS mode offers 26 hours of tracking battery life, and, without needing to GPS track workouts, the battery can theoretically last up to 14 days — something I didn’t get to test myself, as I was using the GPS tracking often.
In essence, when you consider the weight of the Cheetah Pro at 43 g and its lower cost, this GPS battery life is exceptional, beat out only by the COROS Pace 3, which I directly compare with the Cheetah Pro below.
Head-to-Head Comparison and GPS Tracking
When it comes to competition in the budget fitness watch arena, there are several like watches, namely the COROS Pace 3 at $229, which I put head to head with the Cheetah Pro.
The first big comparison test was how the dual-band GPS of each watch would perform in a winding canyon on a 24-mile outing to Angel Arch in the Canyonlands Needles District. Unfortunately, the Cheetah Pro fell short here, dropping nearly 4 miles off the predicted mileage, with frequent error messages saying the satellite connection was lost.
The canyons of Utah are notorious for causing GPS and satellite communication problems, so it’s hard to put full blame on the Cheetah Pro, but it was tough to see that the COROS Pace 3 was exceptionally accurate in this arena in comparison.
The second big test was how the Cheetah Pro would perform on the 50-plus-degree slopes of the Flatirons in Boulder, another big GPS tracking challenge for any watch. I was pleased to find that the watch did just as well as the Pace 3 in terms of accuracy. The only issue I had was that the larger watch face occasionally caused me to bump the pause button when bending my wrist, causing a bit of frustration.
When it came to flatter runs, both watches performed admirably. I actually grew to appreciate the bigger watch display of the Cheetah Pro when it came to navigating options, but I felt rushed when my end-of-run stat display would disappear on the watch after only a couple of minutes instead of allowing me to exit at my leisure.
The real win of the Cheetah Pro in this comparison is its durability, with the Pace 3 feeling a bit cheaper and more fragile than the Amazfit offering. The Cheetah Pro also offers a larger array of sport modes along with the AI coach, giving the fitness enthusiast a bit more adaptability and guidance.
Shortcomings
For a fitness watch that is supposedly engineered by runners for elite runners, I’m simply just not buying it. The AI coach wouldn’t be helpful at this level, the watch feels too overbuilt to be specialized for running, and the dual-band GPS didn’t perform well in the canyons of Utah.
I also didn’t like the monotonous automated tone the watch used to read off mileage and pace for every mile, as I’d prefer lacing at my watch for that information. If I’m in the flow of running, I like to stay in the flow and not know all of my statistics unless I’d like to. I found myself needing to mute the watch to ignore this.
I’m also a bit peeved at the Zepp phone app for offering a number of “premium” features that require payment or a subscription, including many of the alternate watch faces and full access to the AI coach system, which is one of its foremost marketed features.
Amazfit Cheetah Pro: Conclusion
When it comes down to the question of “can this budget fitness watch hack it for tough endurance use?” I would say yes. I was not gentle in my testing, and the Cheetah Pro withstood both ample amounts of sand and gritty rock. It just depends on what your standards are for a fitness watch.
For the fitness enthusiast looking for a wide array of features coupled with a durable package at a budget price of $300, the Cheetah Pro more than meets those needs — and it’s a worthwhile option to consider for someone who wants a top-notch fitness tracker that looks and acts like a full-tilt GPS sports watch. The AI-powered training plan generator was also intuitive and scientifically sound, providing an excellent guide for the beginning runner.
On the flip side, I wouldn’t recommend the Cheetah Pro to the more advanced endurance athlete. I would stick with the tried-and-tested brands of COROS, Suunto, or Garmin, which have spent years compiling feedback and streamlining their watch and app experiences for the endurance athlete market. Amazfit has a solid base here, but more refining is needed to make this a true competitor.
For the price, however, it’s tough to argue with all that the Cheetah Pro brings to the table. For casual athletes to even Strava KOM hunters, many will find the feature set ample and the reception good enough to track their weekly run, climb, swim, or yes, even dance party.
