I spent two weeks testing the brand-new Amazfit Active 3 Premium — and I don’t know why anyone would spend $400 on an Apple Watch again

The Amazfit Active 3 Premium is unbelievably good value. This fitness tracker is just $169/£169, which is a whopping $230 cheaper than the Apple Watch 11. Is this ridiculous(ly good) price enough to make the Active 3 Premium one of the best fitness trackers around?

Totally. I was a little apprehensive when I first started testing Amazfit gear — budget wearables get a bad rap in the fitness world — but the Active 3 Premium holds up just as well as the other Amazfit gear: the Whoop-dupe Helio Strap, Fitbit disruptor Band 7, and Apple Watch SE competitor Bip 6.

With a plethora of premium fitness features, including blood oxygen readouts, skin temperature monitoring, a lactate threshold test, vertical oscillation, and so, so many more, the Active 3 Premium is in a league of its own. This price is crazy. Want to find out more? (Why wouldn’t you?) Keep reading this Amazfit Active 3 Premium review.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A budget fitness tracker with premium functionality
• What does it cost? $169 / £169
• Who is it for? Amazfit told me mostly women due to the small size, but I think it’s for everyone — beginners and intermediates alike
• What do we like? Everything: sleep tracking, fitness functions, and in-app analysis
• What are its weaknesses? I’d like a few more (or cuter) strap or color options

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Specs

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Price & availability

The Amazfit Active 3 Premium is $169 from Amazon U.S. and £169 from Amazon U.K, or £169 from Amazfit direct. This is an incredibly reasonable price for a fitness tracker of this caliber — the Apple Watch Series 11 is a mind-boggling $399, the almost four-year-old Garmin Forerunner 55 is $199, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 starts from $349, and even the Apple Watch SE 3 is $249.

As with every other Amazfit watch I’ve tested — this is number four now — the Active 3 Premium is almost unbelievably good value. For well under $200, you get a bright touchscreen that looks way more pricey than it is, offline maps, in-depth fitness tracking including 200+ activity types, adept sleep tracking, and a huge variety of features in the companion app.

I’m really not sure why you’d spend $350-$400 on an Apple or Samsung watch when the Active 3 Premium is right there. I know I wouldn’t.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Design

The Amazfit Active 3 Premium is the first fitness tracker Amazfit has designed specifically with women in mind (yay!). As a result, it’s considerably smaller than other models — a 1.3-inch screen as opposed to the 1.5-inch display on the Amazfit Active Max.

Weirdly, though, the colorways don’t really reflect the target demographic. The watch is available in black, navy, and white. As a woman who also likes to keep active, I want a fitness tracker that can be worn for work or play. Unfortunately, I don’t think the Active 3 Premium — in its current state — necessarily has the aesthetic oomph you might expect from Apple Watches or Garmins.

Amazfit could easily rectify this by launching new colorways — think rose pink, champagne, lilac, pistachio, baby blue, yellow — so I hope this comes in the future. I received a navy model to test (as you can see from the photos), so when I found out that the Active 3 Premium is actually aimed at women, I was surprised. This definitely looks like a “manly” watch. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t inherently a bad thing: women can wear masculine clothes and vice versa, but if this watch is intended to separate itself from the rest of the fitness tracker landscape, it needs a few more colors.

Garmin’s Lily 2 has mastered this combination of functionality and style, so I’d like to see more Lily 2-adjacent styles in the Active 3 Premium’s future.

Style — or lack thereof — aside, the Active 3 Premium certainly looks premium. The scratch-resistant glass screen is bright and visible even in sunny weather. The buttons on either side of the face are tactile and responsive.

Although the women-focused style needs a little finesse, Amazfit has still mastered the premium-appearance-but-no-premium-price-tag vibe.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Fitness features

As the Active 3 Premium is aimed at beginners, I was happy to find that the fitness tracker is incredibly user-friendly and jargon-free. Every feature is explained thoroughly in the Zepp companion app.

On the watch itself, you can: start a workout, see workout history, BioCharge, stress level, blood oxygen, activity, Zepp coach, and heart rate.

Non-fitness-but-still-useful features built into the watch are: maps (you can download offline maps, too), sleep, PAI, HRV, and meditation.

If you’re into orienteering, you can access features like a barometer, sunrise/sunset times, and a compass. There are literally a hundred workout types — including chess and driving.

Hey, my heart rate gets pumping when whoever’s driving the car in front of mine does something stupid. Why not let that count for something? Yes, increase my PAI because someone just cut me off. Sign me up!

There are even more features in the Zepp app, which is Amazfit’s mobile app, like Fatigue, thorough BioCharge data, and Exertion. I’ll go through those in detail in the ‘BioCharge’ section below.

The most detailed activity type present on the Active 3 Premium is running. There are so many running features that I’m not sure where to start. You can track heart rate zones, cadence, stride length, and average contact time. Here’s a screenshot from Zepp so you can see this level of detail for yourself.

As you can see from the screenshot, Zepp offers a massive amount of tracking information. You can even do a Lactate Threshold test now, so you can learn your max effort level. If you’re not too sure what this means, it’s basically how long you can run at full pelt for without hurting or fatiguing yourself. I tested this, and here are my results.

As I’m a beginner runner, I’m sure my results aren’t as impressive as an intermediate runner’s. Even so, it’s interesting to see the pace at which the lactate in my blood exceeds my clearance level.

You can also look into features like vertical oscillation and ground contact time, which can help you understand your running form on a deeper level. For example, if your vertical oscillation is over 13, you’re moving forward and back too much. Take a look at my data.

If you’re not sure what any of this means, don’t worry — Zepp has you covered. Each metric tells you what you should be aiming for and how to improve in the app itself. I’ve learned that my ground contact time is too high, but my vertical oscillation is optimal, so I know where I need to improve and where I can give myself a pat on the back. Thanks, Zepp!

Unlike the Helio Strap, the Active 3 Premium doesn’t have an automatic workout detection function. I didn’t miss this feature at all — I actually find myself getting quite frustrated with the Amazfit Helio Strap’s wonky auto detection, so I’m glad to start workouts manually myself now.

If you’re familiar with Amazfit gear, you might already know about PAI. This is basically a rating, between 0 and 100, that tells you how fit you are. This is calculated using your heart rate zones — if you spend a lot of time in Anaerobic/Vo2 max, your PAI will go up, indicating better long-term health, but if you are very sedentary, your number will go down.

As with the Amazfit Helio Strap, Band 7, Bip 5, and Bip 6, the Active 3 Premium works out your PAI without you needing to do anything. I found myself getting quite mesmerized by this. I managed to get it up to 142, which is much higher than on previous Amazfit watches. I hope this means Zepp has tuned the PAI, as previously, it was nearly impossible to get high scores. Or I’m just more fit. Who knows!

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Extra features

Despite primarily being a fitness tracker, the Active 3 Premium has a plethora of non-activity-related features, which I’ll get into now.

Sleep

I found the Amazfit Active 3 Premium excellent for sleep tracking. I’ve used three other Amazfit fitness trackers — Bip 5, Band 7, Helio Strap — and I find the Active 3 Premium just as good as the Helio Strap.

The Active 3 Premium remembers all my little wakeups, even the ones I forget, and has great sleep zone tracking. It even tracks hypoapnea and sleeping respiratory rate. Here are some screenshots from the Zepp app so you can see for yourself — make sure you scroll through them all!

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If you have a bad night’s sleep, the Zepp app tells you how to rectify this with pre-bedtime relaxation and stress-reducing music. I tend to get more stressed when I have a bad night’s sleep, or when I sense I’m going to have a bad night’s sleep, so this little reassurance is a sweet touch.

The Active 3 Premium is just as accurate as the Helio Strap, so it's a joint-winner of the “Most Accurate Sleep Tracker I’ve Used” title.

BioCharge/Fatigue/Exertion

Amazfit/Zepp has this funky proprietary metric called “BioCharge”. This is basically like a readiness score you’d get on a Fitbit, Oura Ring, Whoop, and everything else on the market.

BioCharge combines your previous exertion, overall fatigue, HRV, sleep, and workout trends to give you a score out of 100. If you’re at 100, well done, you’re ready to hike Mount Everest, run an Ultra Marathon, or compete in an Iron Man!

I jest, but I find BioCharge a really digestible way to understand my readiness at a glance. Obviously, if my watch tells me “50” but I feel good, I’m not going to listen to it — but it can be nice when the watch backs me up after I’ve spent the last week feeling like microwaved cat vomit.

Here are some examples of my BioCharge. If you look at the second screenshot, you’ll see my average BioCharge for the past five months — how cool is this!

Also in the Zepp app are the kind-of-similar Fatigue and Exertion metrics. I won’t go into too much detail about these as they’re self-explanatory, really.

You can see my Fatigue increase as my Exertion increases. It doesn’t take a genius here: if you exert yourself, your tiredness level will go up. If you’re relaxing, your fatigue will go down.

If you have a uterus, you can also use the skin temperature function to track cycles naturally, and also input your cycle data into the watch manually.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: App

I really like the Zepp app. The Active 3 Premium is my fourth Amazfit product, and I can’t really see myself using any other brand now. The app is super easy to set up, very self-explanatory, and perfect for beginners or self-professed technophobes. You can see this evidenced in my many, many screenshots above.

I genuinely have nothing bad to say about the app, other than one tiny thing: I’m not sure if the watch faces are AI-generated images or not. I wish the app would clarify either way because I wouldn’t pick an AI-generated one ever and would be super embarrassed if I were caught out by it. Some of the watch faces look a little… AI-possible, so I’d appreciate a little flag saying “AI-generated” or “human-created”.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Battery life

Amazfit says the Active 3 Premium lasts for 12 days on a single charge, but I’m not convinced. I wore mine for 8 days, and it went down to 6%. This was with excessive use, though: activity every day, testing all the features, downloading maps, etc etc. I then recharged, and 48 hours later, it had gone down to 80% again.

Even so, this is much, much better than the Apple Watch 11’s pathetic 18-hour battery life, so a charge that lasts over less than one day is a winner in my eyes.

Should you buy the Amazfit Active 3 Premium?

Yes, yes you should buy the Amazfit Active 3 Premium. This fitness tracker is ridiculously underpriced. I feel like everyone should buy it before Amazfit realises its typo and hikes the price back up to something like $299. I would happily pay $300 for a watch of this caliber.

If you want your first fitness tracker, or you want to upgrade from the Amazfit Band 7 or Bip 6, then you should definitely check out the Active 3 Premium. It does everything you’d want it to and more: sleep tracking, activity tracking, and health insights with the depth of the Apple Watch ecosystem.

Although I wish it came in a few more colors, this is something I can overlook in favor of saving me money and performance. And, heck, does the Active 3 Premium do both of those things. I love this fitness tracker with all my heart.