- Amazfit Active 2 unveiled at CES 2025
- The smartwatch boasts an AI voice assistant and offline maps
- It’s super-cheap too, coming in at under $100 in the US
Amazfit has revealed the Amazfit Active 2, an AI-powered sports watch under $100 with a redesigned heart rate sensor and voice command functionality, and it looks like a serious contender for the best cheap smartwatch of 2025.
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Debuting at this year’s CES 2025 tech conference – ground zero for a load of cool fitness kit – the Amazfit Active 2 features a stainless steel body, 10 days of battery life, offline maps with turn-by-turn directions, 160 sports mode (including a new mode for the popular Hyrox competitive fitness events) and multiple strap and AMOLED display options.
The standard version, costing $99.99 in the US (around £80 / AU$160) features a red silicone strap, while the $129.99 (£105 / AU$208) premium version features both silicone and leather straps, an improved sapphire glass screen that’s tougher to fracture, and an NFC chip allowing for contactless payments (in Europe only).
However, the real excitement for most comes from the AI Zepp Flow voice command software. Using speech recognition and the watch’s built-in microphone and speaker, the Zepp Flow app can adjust your calendar, control your watch’s settings by asking it to adjust the brightness and so forth, and help you compose Whatsapp replies with suggestions.
There are more AI features under the hood – the Wild.AI “mini app” also uses AI to create “personalized wellness insights tied to [women’s] menstrual and hormonal cycles”.
The Amazfit Active 2 is available for pre-order in the US now and available globally in February.
Analysis: a sign of things to come
Zepp Flow has already been tested on watches such as the Amazfit Balance, but this is the first time we’re seeing AI-powered voice assistants on such a cheap watch. The fact that it’s available for under $100 is very impressive given the sort of functionality on offer. Such a price places it squarely in Fitbit rather than Apple Watch territory, and it’s sure to be popular with Android users who are already AI fans.
This is what the AI-powered smartwatch is likely to look like in the immediate future, including those from the big Android players such as Samsung: voice commands, functionality requests, Gemini-style suggestions used when replying to emails and messages, and personalized wellness information, including sensitive stuff like menstruation tracking in addition to training plans.
The use of AI in period tracking might raise eyebrows: given the nervousness some consumers have about handing their data over to chatbots, asking potential buyers to offer up such sensitive information (especially in countries with strict abortion laws) could put people off.
Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard cheap fitness watch, albeit a nice-looking one: designed for the “everyday athlete”, if current Amazfit trends are anything to go by, the activity and sleep tracking are probably very solid, although those 160 different sports mode are likely to be mostly different names with a smattering of GPS-enabled workouts with unique metrics, such as stride and cadence for running and power for cycling. We’ll know more for sure once we get our hands on the device.
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matt.evans@futurenet.com (Matt Evans)
