After extensively testing the Amazfit Active 2, I’m happy to report that it’s a five-star pick at just $99, and easily the best cheap smartwatch on the market right now.
One of its features deserves special attention, though, as it’s something I’ve not really come across on even the best Apple Watches.
The Active 2 comes with an onboard Strength Training mode that, in theory, gives you everything you need to conquer a strength workout in your gym.
Not only can it auto-detect some 25 different exercises, but you can also use the Zepp app to generate plans before you head down to the gym, following them on your wrist.
So I ditched the best fitness app I know, Push, for the Amazfit Active 2. Here’s what happened.
Early impressions
I first used the Active 2 simply for recording a strength workout, and came across the Strength Training feature naturally as I started lifting.
As soon as you turn on the workout, you’re greeted with a screen that registers your calories burned, set duration, heart rate, and reps. The reps are counted intelligently using the Active 2’s internal sensors, which in theory gives you an accurate run down each time.
One you’ve completed a set, you click the side button to log the set, confirming the number of reps and the weight. If you’ve not set up a workout in advance, it’s a handy way of logging your activity in the gym without a notebook or smartphone.
Generally, the rep counting works, but it’s not perfect. It also naturally struggles with some workouts more than others. For example, arm-based workouts like shoulder presses were counted flawlessly, while something like a single-leg lunge presented a lot more logistical challenges for the smartwatch to accurately map the movement.
At the very least then, the Amazfit Active 2 is a nifty way to keep on top of your workouts on the fly, but as we’ll see, there’s a lot more to it than that.
Generating my first workout
Next, I took to the Zepp app to generate my own workout plan, which is where things got trickier. In principle, you use the app to create your workout plan in advance and then sync it to your smartwatch. There’s a ton of strength exercises to choose from, with no obvious omissions. Great start.
However, the app is a bit quirky. Where you’d expect to find strength training terminology like sets and reps, the blocks that make up the workouts are dubbed ‘intervals’, which is confusing. Each interval requires a ‘training type’ (warm up, training, rest, recover, or cool down), and an ‘action’ name. This is where you pick your exercise, for example, ‘bench press’.
Then you pick the ‘duration’ of the workout, which is what any strength trainer would call a rep. I immediately assumed this meant sets, rather than reps, so was choosing three or four as standard. Then I went back and realized I was wrong, so redid it. Once you’ve set the activity and number of reps (duration), you have to ‘loop’ the blocks in order to repeat the set. If you wanted to bench press for three sets of 15, in the app you’d have to create an interval with a duration of 15 times, and then loop the block three times.
If you’re following along so far, well done, but as you can imagine that gets confusing pretty fast. You also have to manually add the rest in between the “intervals”. The whole thing took several goes before I’d managed to create a plan I could follow and made sense; after that, it was cool to get specific alerts to tell me what my next set was, the exercise I’d be doing, and how many reps I’d be doing.
It’s a good way to keep your workout moving, and not looking at my phone meant I was much less likely to get distracted by X or Instagram, too.
If you don’t currently follow a plan when you workout, a feature like this could be the perfect way to lend some structure and progress to your workouts. The automatic rep counter continues to work here too, and at the end of each set you can manually adjust the reading in case it’s off.
My thoughts
While it’s possible that this feature will get more useful as I get the hang of it, the entry barrier feels quite high given how complex it is to get going. Zepp has an onboard AI coach that can generate running plans and workouts, so I’d love to see it do strength too. Sadly, this isn’t available right now.
In the meantime, the Active 2’s strength training features are a cool idea. I’d also be keen to see how they stack up to the strength training programs on the best Garmins.
I’ve loved having the onboard gym companion for counting reps and keeping an eye on my progress, and it’s certainly more engaging for strength than the generic exercise screen on my Apple Watch Ultra 2.
It can be quite distracting, but I think with some refinement, the Amazfit Active 2 could definitely be a candidate as my primary strength training smartwatch going forward.
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stephen.warwick@futurenet.com (Stephen Warwick)
