Huami Amazfit Bip U review: A bang for your buck

If you’re looking to purchase a fitness wearable in the $40-$50 range, your options might be limited depending on where you live. The Xiaomi Mi Band 5 has proven to be a worthy affordable fitness tracker, and it currently runs unopposed in its price segment. However, people often forget that Xiaomi does not make the fitness band. It outsources the job to Huami, a leading player in the basic fitness watch space that also has a successful fitness watch line under the Amazfit brand.

The Amazfit Bip U is Huami’s latest attempt to woo budget buyers. The device made its debut in India following Huami’s recent rebrand of its app platform. The Bip U stacks just below the Amazfit Bip S and Bip S Lite in terms of pricing, but where features are concerned, it packs in a lot more. In fact, if and when it steps out of the Indian market, it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Mi Band 5. But does it bring the goods in terms of performance? Read our full Amazfit Bip U review to find out.

What is the Amazfit Bip U and what’s new since the Bip S?

A fitness watch through and through, think of the Amazfit Bip U as the Mi Band 5 with a square display. Huami will do you one better with the addition of a SpO2 sensor (aka blood oxygen tracking) — a feature that the Mi Band 5 lacks outside of China.

You get a 1.43-inch TFT LCD screen on the Amazfit Bip U covered in 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3. You can set the display to remain on all day or just light up when you raise your wrist. It’s fitted inside a plastic chassis, while the straps of the watch are made of silicone. The Bip U is available in green, pink, and black color options.

Also read: The best smartwatches you can buy right now

I got the black model of the watch, and at first glance, it looks identical to the Amazfit Bip S. You will notice the subtle differences if you look closely. The display on the Amazfit Bip S looks larger, but the Bip U gives you more screen real estate in a similarly sized housing. However, design and make aside, the two Bip watches have quite a few differences.

I really like the colorful display of the Amazfit Bip S, but the Bip U makes it even more vibrant. The UI has also improved with newer elements such as the Apple Watch-like activity circles, faster navigation, improved notifications view, and increased responsiveness.

Just like most Amazfit watches, the Bip U is restricted to fitness features. It does not support third-party apps and is incapable of making or receiving phone calls. It also doesn’t have its own built-in GPS like the Bip S, so it uses your phone’s location services to track walks, runs, cycling routines, and such.

In the terms of activity tracking, the Amazfit Bip U features more than 60 sports modes. Those include running, cycling, yoga, dancing, kickboxing, and more. I didn’t have all of them to work with out-of-the-box, but Amazfit added the missing ones through an update that arrived within a few days of the device’s official launch.

The Bip U also adds an improved heart rate sensor, stress tracking, blood oxygen tracking, period tracking, and new watch faces, making it more appealing than its predecessors.

You can see a full list of Amazfit Bip U specs below.

Things I like about the Amazfit Bip U

The Amazfit Bip U does what it’s built to do and does it way better than the $200 Amazfit Stratos 3. Basics like step tracking, heart rate monitoring, and distance tracking worked flawlessly. I pitted the Amazfit Bip U against the Mi Band 5, and the tracking data generated by the two was mostly identical. You can see comparable readings from both wearables after a quick cycling routine in the images provided below.

You might have noticed that there’s not much difference between Amazfit’s Zepp app and the Mi Fit App. If you’ve used a Mi Band before, you should feel right at home with the Bip U’s app settings.

The Amazfit Bip U works seamlessly with the Zepp app.

That said, Amazfit has vastly improved its app experience. Bad app connectivity and poor sync have been long-standing problems with Amazfit wearables. It’s one of the main reasons why I refrained from recommending some of the older Amazfit watches. However, the Bip U works seamlessly with the Zepp app. The syncing of activity data with the app is almost instant. Notification alerts are also timely. I didn’t miss any during the time I reviewed the watch.

Another impressive feat Amazfit has accomplished is fairly accurate SpO2 or blood oxygen tracking. Its optical SpO2 sensors use red and infrared light to detect your blood oxygen levels, sensing changes in those levels by looking at the color of your blood. The Bip U also features a new OxygenBeats engine that works on Huami’s own biological data model to improve the accuracy of blood oxygen tracking.

The result is a percentage reading of your blood oxygen levels. The Zepp app will show you your maximum, minimum, and average SpO2 readings which you can track for the day, week, month, or year. A new sleep breathing quality feature is currently in the works for the watch. When it releases, it will score the quality of your breathing by tracking it while you’re asleep.

I compared the Bip U’s SpO2 readings to my fingertip pulse oximeter and got matching results nine out of ten times. The readings were also in line with those from my Apple Watch Series 6. The only caveat is that you need to strap on the watch really tight and not move at all to get a good reading.

Amazfit promises nine days of juice and the Bip U delivers.

When it comes to battery life, Amazfit promises nine days of juice and the Bip U delivers exactly that. I used the watch for 30 minutes of cycling every day, continuous heart-rate monitoring, and notification alerts with display brightness set at 50%. You won’t feel the need to increase the brightness more than that unless you’re under direct, bright sunlight.

You can charge the Bip U to 100% capacity in two hours. If you run out of battery at the last minute before you have to head out, you can just pop the watch on its charger for about 20 minutes to get a 15-20% charge. This should be enough to last you for a couple of workout sessions and then some.

What I don’t like about the Amazfit Bip U

To be honest, there’s not much I dislike about the Amazfit Bip U. It’s reliable, does activity tracking well, provides notifications on time, helps track sleep with pointers on how to improve it, and a lot more. I even like its Rs. 3,999 (~$54) price. But there is one problematic area that might not sit well with users.

At the end of the first week of using it, I was left with a pretty nasty rash on my wrist.

The plastic materials used on the watch are of extremely poor quality. It’s a problem that’s persisted on Amazfit wearables ranging from those that cost $200 to this low-cost device. I inevitably had to take off the watch a couple of times a day because my wrist would get extremely itchy. After a week of using it, I was left with a pretty nasty rash on the inner part of my wrist where the straps rest.

Your skin might not react to the cheap plastic as mine did, but I should tell you that I did not experience this while using the Mi Band 5 or the Apple Watch 6. A comparison of quality with the latter might not be fair because of the huge price difference, but if the Mi Band can do it right at that price, Amazfit needs to have a think about the materials it’s using.

Amazfit Bip U review: The verdict

The bottom line is that the Amazfit Bip U is a pretty impressive fitness watch at an equally attractive price. At this price point, its only drawback is poor build quality. If you’re okay with that, you won’t be disappointed by its performance.

Related: The best fitness trackers you can buy right now

That said, you can always consider other options. The Mi Band 5, for one, is a close competitor but misses out on SpO2 tracking. You could also get the Amazfit Band 5 that has most of the same features as the Bip U.  Then there’s also the Samsung Galaxy Fit 2 which comes in at the same price as the Bip U. It doesn’t have bloody oxygen tracking, but if the previous Galaxy Fit is anything to go by, the build quality should be much better than that of the Bip U.