Amazfit - Bip S

I bought an original Amazfit bip 4-5 years ago and still use it for the gym to track time between sets. That's about all it's good for.  A few months ago I went deep down the rabbit hole of affordable smart watches and weighed cost, features, battery life, ecosystem, HR monitoring accuracy,  developer support, etc. and I think the winner at the time was the Amazfit Active/Edge (now supersedes by the Active 2 for $100).  For less than $40 new you're not getting anything that's much worth using. Slow, laggy screens, HR monitoring will be way off, likely to have QC issues, GPS will lose tracking and be inaccurate, no chance of standalone music or Bluetooth connection to other devices, battery may degrade quickly, and they'll probably have proprietary OS with poor app options and support. I'm a big Amazfit fan, so I'd say maybe the Bip 5 on sale right now for $50 is worth it. Has Zepp 3.5 which has some nice features.  I'd say you're either seeing bot reviews or people with very low expectations. If all you want is to read notifications, see the weather on your wrist, skip music tracks, and read the time then sure, but beyond that you can't expect much. 

Amazfit bip s, transflective. Also known as the right display technology for a wrist watch.

I use Amazfit Bip S. It has everything I need: - Has always-on screen, I don't have to press the button or raise my arm to see the time - It gives me the time - It vibrates on calls and certain notifications (configurable) - It has battery for 1 month - It's very cheap compared to high-end watches (about 50€ or so) It also measures your heart rate and has sports tracking with gps but I never use those things since they're quite useless anyway. Perfect watch for me. I've bought it 3 times already (not because it stops working but rather because I'm a clumsy idiot that can't stop scratching the screen with random stuff)

I had the T-Rex 1 and 2. Both died at close to the 2 year mark due to battery no longer holding a charge. I have the bip now and have no regrets. it even has more features than the T-Rex 1 and 2 (not sure about the 3).

Could be fake reviews. Amazfit (by Xiaomi) are legit and very cheap as well.