Apple's popular Apple Watch continues to dominate the wrist, commanding an estimated 40 percent market share in the fourth quarter of 2022. The company not only helped to push fitness wearables into the mainstream, but it also cemented a devoted 115 million-strong following. The Apple Watch has attracted plenty of imitators trying to ape the wearable's design and features.
The most notable knockoff is the Amazfit, which has gotten a bit of praise from wearables reviewers for its value since the company's launch. With the latest Amazfit GTS 4 Mini, the company doesn't deviate from its strategy. The watch’s very close resemblance to the iconic Apple Watch makes it instantly familiar in a way that competing devices from Garmin and Fitbit aren't.
Amazfit's watch has received surprisingly positive reviews, so we decided to compare it directly with the cheapest Apple Watch to find out if you actually need to pay that Apple tax to have some smartwatch or fitness tracker basics. As expected, it turns out that it depends on exactly what you're looking for.
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Pricing and size
Amazfit and Apple both offer smartwatches in different sizes to target different wrists.
Amazfit's lineup comes in different shapes and sizes, and similar to the sports-centric Apple Watch Ultra, the company also offers wearables that more specifically target fitness-oriented audiences. The basic smartwatch lineups from Amazfit come in two series, with the GTR models sporting a round screen and a GTS model that competes more directly against the Apple Watch with its square display.
The Amazfit GTS 4 Mini comes in at just $120 (you can often find it on sale for under $100), which is less than half of Apple’s entry-level $250 Watch SE. Given the starting price of the Amazfit GTS 4 Mini, it would be most appropriate to compare that watch against Apple's budget-oriented Apple Watch SE out of all of Apple's current lineup.
The Amazfit GTS 4 also comes in two sizes, like the Apple Watch SE. The standard GTS 4 measures just over 44 mm, while the GTS 4 Mini comes in at just under 42 mm. Apple's Watch SE is available at 40 mm and 44 mm. The GTS 4 Mini is about 2 mm larger diagonally than Apple's smaller Watch SE.
Specifications
| Apple Watch SE (40 mm) | Garmin Epix Pro 2nd Gen Sapphire (42 mm) | Amazfit GTS 4 Mini | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display | 324×394 pixels; 1,000 nits | 390×390; 1,000 nits | 336×384 pixels; ~500 nits |
| Storage | 32GB | 32GB | |
| CPU | S8 SiP; Apple W3 | Unspecified | Unspecified |
| AOD | No | Yes | Yes |
| Battery | Up to 18 hours | Up to 10 days | Up to 15 days |
| Sensors | Optical heart rate sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, altimeter | Blood oxygen, heart rate sensor, altimeter, temperature sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope | Blood oxygen, heart rate sensor, accelerometer |
| NFC | Yes, Apple Pay | Yes, Garmin Pay | No |
| Water resistance | 50 m | 100 m | 5 ATM |
| GPS | L1 GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS | GPS, GLONASS, Galileo with SATIQ tech | 5-satellite positioning system |
Endurance
Battery life is obviously one of the most important things about a smartwatch.
Believe it or not, the GTS 4 Mini promises up to 15 days of continuous usage on a single charge compared to the Apple Watch SE's claim of 18 hours. Obviously, this is with a lot fewer features.
Regardless of the model you choose, if you're actively using your watch with lots of exercise and pushing the limits of real-time heart rate monitoring, nightly sleep tracking, and constant oxygen saturation measurements, battery life will drop faster, and the reality is that you'll get close to five days with the Amazfit.
With my second-generation Apple Watch SE, nightly recharges are necessary—the watch wasn’t dead by the end of the day, but I always felt more secure refreshing the battery overnight so I can wake up ready to take on the next day. If you're just looking at battery life in isolation, this Amazfit device clearly wins this round. Of course, there are reasons for this gap that we'll get into.
Display
Both the GTS 4 Mini and Apple Watch SE come with OLED screens, and both have displays that are bright enough for use both indoors and outdoors.
Apple markets the SE's screen as a Retina LTPO OLED display. The 1.78-inch screen of the smaller 40 mm Apple Watch SE has a 326 ppi resolution, making it slightly crisper than the 309 ppi on the 1.65-inch Amazfit GTS 4 Mini. In use, my eyes couldn't perceive any differences in display sharpness. The larger screen of the Apple Watch is helpful for tapping things on the screen and navigating the watch's UI.
Aside from the screen technology, the biggest differences between these two watches include screen brightness and always-on display capabilities. Though both watch models are legible under bright sunlight, the Apple Watch SE's display is nearly twice as bright as the Amazfit, clocking in at 1,000 nits compared to the GTS 4 Mini's 500-600 nits of brightness. This makes the Watch SE bright enough to use even on the sunniest days.
This is useful for those who prefer to workout outdoors, but if you're spending most of your time in a gym, then screen brightness shouldn't be a deciding factor.
For most users, the Apple Watch lacks one key feature that the $100 Amazfit offers: an always-on display, or AOD. While the AOD is standard on the Apple Watch Series 9, which starts at $399 or close to four times the cost of the Amazfit GTS 4 Mini, it's not available on the SE models. Though the lack of an AOD doesn't detract from the SE's functionality, it makes Apple's entry-level smartwatch look less like a watch when it's idle, and you won't have access to glanceable information, like the time, unless you tap the screen or the watch recognizes that you've raised your wrist.
Like the Apple Watch, the Amazfit also has a curved screen, though the curvature is less pronounced.
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