Amazfit T-Rex Pro review – Reliable watch at a respectable price

As an adventurer, you live for the experience of pushing your physical limits. Whether that involves mountain biking, surfing or going for a Saturday morning run, having a companion on your wrist tracking your progress adds to that experience. When it comes to Amazfit’s military-grade T-Rex Pro, it’s tough enough to take on all those adventures and more and isn’t subtle about it. 

As chunky as it might seem, it’s made mostly of plastic so it’s much lighter than you’d expect at a first glance. For some that may be a turn-off, but rugged watches aren’t cheap, so one that makes high-end tracking accessible is always welcome. As great as accessible adventuring sounds, never forget the golden rule about stuff, where there is savings, there is compromise.

Chunky but not clunky

As chunky as the Amazfit T-Rex Pro may seem at first glance, it’s actually a remarkably comfortable watch to wear even with small wrists. Coming in at only 60g, only a gram more than Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Watch 6 classic. There was a time we genuinely looked around the entire Stuff office in search of the thing. Obviously, that means it was hiding on our wrist the entire time. In our defence, we were wearing a long-sleeve.

Closer inspection reveals the reason for the lightweight frame (for a rugged watch) is the materials used for the device. It’s entirely made of plastic, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was made of metal due to the metal-spraying process it underwent during manufacture. Throw in the 15 military-grade tests that Amazift claims can resist heat, cold, humidity, salt spray and water submersion up to 100 metres. We had no plans to go to the Kalahari desert or Antarctica but we did play an entire national ultimate frisbee tournament and swam at the beach with no issues. 

The silicon “skin-friendly” strap is also worth mentioning. The holes that go all the way across the strap mean that any size wrist should be able to don the Amazfit T-Rex Pro without any hassles. When we say all the way across the strap, that includes the point where the strap meets the watch face. Unfortunately, this does present the possibility of it breaking if it hooks into something while going at high speeds. If you’re able to recover the watch after a breakage, don’t worry. There’s a wide range of strap options available at GeeWiz.

Inside the metal-spayed bezel is a 1.3in AMOLED touch screen. It’s surrounded by 4 textured buttons that offer an alternative to swiping on the screen. The clickiness of those buttons has a satisfying balance of soft and sharp. On the back, you’ll find the sensors surrounded by a light plastic with a matte texture that left our wrists a little drier than usual. If it wasn’t obvious, that’s a plus. The slight protrusion does have a proclivity to collect dirt in the crevice. It’s not a major issue, but if you like keeping a watch on 24/7, you’ll want to wipe it down regularly. 

Occam’s smartwatch

When it comes to internals, the T-Rex Pro’s operating system is relatively simple. Swiping up, down, left or right on the screen opens different menus and pressing and holding lets you swap watch faces. You can also navigate with the buttons. ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ do your scrolling with a button to ‘select’ and another to go ‘back’. When it comes to water sports, the screen automatically locks and the buttons become how you navigate through the watch.

The RTOS (Real-Time Operating System) is the same one used in medical pacemakers and air traffic systems. As mentioned in our BIP 3 Pro review, the simple operating system is one of the areas that makes AMazfit’s watches come in at such an attractive price tag. 

As simple as the operating system may be, that’s not how one would describe the Amazfit T-Rex Pro’s list of features. The first app you’ll see on the app tray is your PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) score which measures one’s heart rate in response to physical activity. The higher your heart rate and the longer you maintain it, the more PAI points you get for the day. The goal is to accumulate 100 PAI points in 7 days as that is “associated with a 25% risk reduction in cardiovascular disease mortality and 50 PAI/week provides 60% of the benefits.” This helps make the fitness experience feel more holistic because it’s measured over a week instead of event by event. 

While we’re on fitness, the Amazfit T-Rex Pro also offers 100 workout options with each of the workouts tracking relevant metrics. Climbing, for example, tracks your altitude. Skipping has a skip counter and football pauses the tracking at half-time. You can also add alerts to the workout to remind you to drink water, notify you at each kilometre on a run and more.

Unfortunately, a surplus of workouts and sports options doesn’t always mean they’ll be perfect. In some cases, we felt the workouts left a lot to be desired. The “Frisbee” workout function only measures calories burned and your heart rate when things like distance ran and halves would have been nice to have while in play. 

Adventures also have a handy companion in the Amazfit T-Rex Pro. Its positioning service combines GPS with your choice of BDS, GLONASS or Galileo positioning services which gives you more accurate location tracking. The barometer means you can track air pressure when on high-altitude hikes. Add a compass and the aforementioned 10 ATM grade and you have a companion at any altitude or depth.

All of the data tracked on the Amazfit T-Rex Pro is logged on the Zepp app, which you have to download before activating the watch. That dependency can be frustrating, with another instance being that the watch’s ‘Find my phone’ feature requires the app to be running to work. Otherwise, the app is pretty comprehensive and intuitive. It’ll log everything from the watch and log stuff like your height and weight. You know, regular fitness app stuff.

Run fat watch, run

Being a great companion is one thing, but being a present one is another story. That’s where the Amazfit T-Rex Pro shines. Because RTOS isn’t trying to be a smartphone on your wrist it won’t absolutely decimate your battery life. Under normal use conditions, which include utilising the always-on display, periodic workouts, and having power-saving mode turned off, the Amazfit T-rex Pro managed to last us five days at a time. In power-saving mode along with sporadic workouts, it went from 100% to 89% over a span of just over six days. 

A powerful battery isn’t only useful when going to remote locations, it’s also helpful if you’re the type to forget chargers when travelling around the place. When it comes time to use the charger, it won’t be for long. An hour takes you from 0 to 100%. The charger is magnetic with a very thin cable with a shape that the watch’s back bezel into quite snug with a standard USB-A end.  It won’t be a major issue if the cable doesn’t move around too much but does feel fragile.

Amazfit T-Rex Pro verdict

All in all, the chunky but lightweight Amazfit T-Rex Pro is a solid pick if you’re looking for a strong reliable smartwatch to track you and your workouts. While its body is mostly plastic, the 15 passed military-grade tests and 10 ATM-grade ratings do give us the impression that it could take most of what you throw at it.

The RTOS in the watch isn’t state of the art but that can be seen as a positive since it doesn’t put strain on the battery. There are some gaps to be found with some of the 100+ workouts, not tracking the stuff we’d have liked it to. But that’s just personal preference. Despite the Amazfit T-Rex Pro’s shortcomings no matter where your adventure takes you you’ll still feel like you got value for your R3300 spent.