Watch SE (2nd Gen)

Damn…just bought an SE 2 last week :(

I have an SE2. 100% wait for that 3.

Apple Watch with cellular. She won’t need to have her phone on her at all times and I personally love this for my workouts. If price isn’t an issue, get the Series 10, otherwise SE2 is perfectly serviceable. No point to look at other brands outside of Apple, unless she goes on multi day hikes, in which case a Garmin is a better choice, even if they got no cellular options.

If you expect any smartwatch capabilities you’ll be frustrated with the Garmin. I was wondering if I should go for Garmin last year and for my use case I am glad I didn’t. I need a smartwatch that gives me access to all my usual apps and payment methods and has LTE so I don’t need to carry my phone around. The Apple Watch was an amazing purchase for me. The Apple Watch also has more accurate tracking and an extra app brings the same gimmicks like “body battery” and “recovery” to it. Still Garmin is a no brainer if you need a sturdy watch for long outdoors sessions, like a multiday hike for example. So “was it a good choice?” depends on - what are you actually doing with your watch? If you aren’t spending your time in the wild outdoors, no, the Enduro is not a good choice.

**Introduction** Hi everyone! So I’m back again. This time with the new Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra. I’ve been using this watch and putting it through its paces against my Balance 2 and Forerunner 955 over the course of a few hundred miles along with some cross-trainingwith some hiking, cycling and a few swimming activities.  This new watch is their top end running watch, which launched with a newer version of Zepp OS 5, which takes a lot of the foundations of the prior watch OS, streamlines the user experience and modernizes the UI. The closest current competition to this watch is going to be the Garmin Forerunner 970, Suunto Race/Vertical 2 Titanium, Polar Vantage V3 or the Coros Apex 4.  A summary of my background: I’ve been running competitively for over 20 years ranging from track 1500m races back in college all the way to 100 mile (160km) trail races. I’ve been using GPS sports watches since the original Garmin Forerunner 201 back in the early 2000s and have had numerous GPS sport watches from Garmin, Coros, Polar, and now Amazfit, along with a few Garmin Edge bike computers. **Size and build quality** For the size of the device, It’s like if my Balance 2 and Forerunner 955 had a baby, but with a titanium build and a flashlight. The watch sits on your wrist more like my older Garmin, but with a higher build quality than the Balance 2, being titanium instead of aluminum and polycarbonate. Even though by my scale, the Cheetah is 10g heavier (case only) than the Balance, it isn’t really noticeable to me while running. [Size comparison - Forerunner 205, Cheetah 2 Ultra, Balance 2, Forerunner 955, Apple Watch SE2, Coros Pace 2, Active 2](https://preview.redd.it/1imlivqgwq5h1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2101a6009570d570666b5885ec57b98341705ee7) This does create a size/price gap in their lineup though. The Active 3 is 45mm and $170, but is missing some key features like Multi-band that the Balance 2, T-Rex, and Cheetah gain. But if you have a small wrist / want a small and light watch, your only option is the 44mm T-Rrex 3 Pro… which itself is heavier than the larger Balance 2 or Cheetah 2 Pro. I do think that’s a miss, especially with the Coros Pace Pro and Suunto Race S out there and the large number of female runners out there.  Next up is the screen. A bright, 1.5” 3000-nit AMOLED display with a sapphire lens. One HUGE upgrade is that they rotated the display 180 deg, which means that for us folks who wear the watch on our right wrist, polarized sunglasses no longer interfere with the readability. This is my first Amazfit watch that has done this correctly, so THANK YOU! A common question is about smudges. Personally, I don’t find them to be much of an issue. Maybe a little less than my Balance, but I guess my prior watches all got smudges from time to time, so it never really phased me and I shower with my watch after every run. Do note, while the screen is flat and more protected by the titanium on the edges,, there isn’t a lip on this watch, so any screen protector if you were to install one would sit above the bezel.  Let’s continue on the hardware side of things. We have the same BioTracker 6.0 sensor that Amazfit has had for almost 2 years and used in all of their current lineup of devices. From a sensor standpoint, I find it similar in performance to the Gen 4 sensor in my Garmin’s. It tracks most normal runs with mostly OK accuracy, and other sports like weight training, cycling, swimming etc all seem to track with my expected effort level. I will always say though that if you want the most accurate, you should consider wearing a bicep band HR monitor (like the Helio + band) or a chest strap. For me, that’s the only way to get accurate readings on speed intervals (like track workouts) where the only watch that has been even remotely close to tracking was actually my Apple Watch. Every other watch I’ve had has fallen off, especially on fast short intervals (like 400’s or 800’s). Everyone also has different experiences. Skin tone, outdoor temperature, your specific watch band and how tight you wear the watch, along with your wrist size can all impact readings, so what works for one person may not work as well for someone else. **Flashlight** I’ll be honest and say I’ve never had a watch with a flashlight before, outside of screen-based ones where the backlight is on full power. Personally, I sleep with my Helio strap as I don’t like wearing a watch to bed, except when camping, so if I were to get up in the middle of the night, I’d likely just grab my phone instead. That said, there’s certainly been a handful of runs, especially in late fall or early spring where I’m out running after work slightly longer than expected and hit darkness, where I can see it being handy. I used it a few times while camping this summer so far and it worked well to get to the bathroom without pulling out my headlamp. There’s 4 brightness levels, plus a red mode. At full brightness, I’d say it’s probably ⅔ as bright as the flashlight mode on my iPhone 16 Pro, with a bit narrower field of view. It’s not going to replace a headlamp for running or hiking, but it’s perfectly usable as a backup light. **Battery Life** This will always depend on your particular watch settings. With clock-mode AOD off, 5-minute HR measurements outside of activities, I get around 3-4% passive burn per day. During GPS activities with AOD on, no navigation and the “Automatic” GPS mode, burn was around 2%/hour (so 50 hours). On “Accurate” mode, it is around 2.5-3%/hr, so 33-40 hours What about real-world combined usage? I’m at 29% right now, having charged 10 days ago with about 13.5 hours of GPS activities with various runs, hikes etc, with a combined accurate/automatic mode, along with a few hours of playing with settings, mapping etc while doing this review. Expand that out and remove some of me playing with the watch, and I’d say 14 days for my use case is expected, possibly longer if you go all the way down to 0% In comparison, my Balance 2 and Forerunner 955 were more in the 7-9 day range for similar usage.  **Software** The real star of the show here is the redesigned Zepp OS. I’m not going to lie and say that it’s perfect, but the team has really been working on ironing out a lot of the quirks. Various settings menus have been consolidated for ease of use. New app designs modernize the user experience.  Data displayed on workout screens are in a bolder font, making it easier to read at a quick glance. In addition, there are more page layout options that include having certain fields at the center being in larger sizes than those at the top or bottom.  [Cheetah 2 has a bolder, easier to read font during workouts](https://preview.redd.it/1bowtuzxwq5h1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3e71b7c007833fc79ebfc078673668763271ef2) **Sport Usage** Overall, comparing GPX tracks to my Forerunner 955 (and Balance 2) distance seems to be pretty spot on during continuous runs. The big improvement here seems to be how the device is handling elevation gain - it’s finally hitting the expected numbers (in comparison to Strava and another device) whereas all my prior Amazfit devices were all over the place.  The firmware team also brought back the quicker transitions from dim to bright on a workout screen (woo!) **Navigation** Navigation is also a huge improvement over my Balance 2. The Cheetah gets the same map set as the T-Rex Ultra 2 that has separate trail colors (woohoo) and more importantly, has the trails by me that were missing on my Balance 2. English translations for directions have been continued to be worked on and the watch will finally create routes on the device for off-road trails. Prior on my Balance, it would never take a dirt hiking trail and would instead generate routes on roads that would be miles out of the way.  [Navigation](https://preview.redd.it/7tyi5jz3xq5h1.jpg?width=2306&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ac8b87c17033103a2bc4efb26b681d827aa9579) One missing feature I hope comes in a future firmware update is rerouting when following a pre-loaded GPX course.  For us US users, the contour maps also finally seem to be in feet instead of meters, which is probably easier to use for most users here.  One feature that has improved in recent updates is the Climb Pro like feature. Up until recently, the Zepp app would simply not recognize some climbs as climbs or worse, it would say I had a single really long climb without recognizing the flat areas or downhills. Having created a few courses in the Zepp app, along with importing a few GPX files from races I’ve done, I will say that the app does seem to be doing a significantly better job at recognizing the proper climbs and downhills.  [Climb-Pro like feature on a pre-loaded route](https://preview.redd.it/m87rp4j6xq5h1.jpg?width=2306&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=36a26424182ef51a5937a692772e1e337a1a58af) **Conclusion** I want to address something I’ve heard posted a few times: “Amazfit is great for beginners, but if you want a *real* sports watch, you’ll end up getting a Garmin (or another brand)”. I want to counter that it really depends on how you use your device.  I ran my marathon and half marathon PR’s back in 2013 with a Forerunner 110 that had basic Lap pace, distance and time. There were no recovery metrics, built in HR, barometer, maps or anything. Over the last year, Amazfit has really put in a lot of work on the running side of things to release a series of products (Active 3, Balance 2, Cheetah 2 Pro/Ultra) that I think really would meet the needs of the vast majority of runners out there. They’ve partnered with some world and national record holders who are using their devices on a daily basis helping to provide feedback. They’re also the only other manufacturer besides Garmin who has any kind of on-board device course creation and rerouting. And it works way faster than Garmin, due to them reusing an old CPU for a few generations now. That’s huge and the new software works better than when I started using Amazfit 15 months ago, though still has room for improvement. I won’t pretend it’s all sunshine and rainbows though. While the hardware is top-notch across the lineup, my long complaint for example about the lack of basic swimming rest and drill modes still hasn’t been addressed. That kind of takes it out of the running for anyone who’s even semi-considering about getting into any multi-sport (Triathlon/Duathlon etc) and have been features of competitive brands for years (or in the case of Garmin 12+ years). And then there’s some ease of use stuff. I’d love to be able to set up my data screens from my phone rather than messing with the small watch screen like most other manufacturers at this point. Same with the ability to manage maps by state/region and remove maps by region to free up space (although maybe this is coming based on the roadmap??). Finally, while some translations have been fixed to a way that makes sense to a native English speaker, others still remain which becomes an issue on such an expensive device. I think Amazfit has heard a lot of the feedback from the community about the software quirks and is trying to make their products better. The new Zepp OS design is a huge step forward and it is noticeable when using my devices side-by-side the future vision is there. I think continuing to clean up some of these quirks and bugs really will bring the brand forward.  Also, do keep in mind that every brand has its own set of issues. If you check r/suunto, you’ll see issues of things breaking in firmware updates. r/coros has complaints of AI support and they’ve had a history with some hardware issues. From personal experience, I’ve had 2 Garmins replaced via warranty for button issues and especially early on in a few device firmwares, I’ve had a few of my Forerunners hard crash and reset mid-workout (you know, the one thing that CANNOT break in a sports watch).  Anyways, cheers and let me know if you have any questions!

*topic on battery apple watch SE has it all except the battery life. got frustrated with it dahil ang dali ma drain kahit hindi ginagamit. makalimutan ko lang i-charge sa gabi after my workout, useless na siya the next day if I need to go, and it charges very slow. I switched to huawei fit (3) and no regrets. battery can go for more than a week without charging. it charges really fast din.