Amazfit Ares is Huami's new sub-$100 smartwatch to beat

Huami – the makers of Xiaomi’s ultra popular Mi Band – have launched a cheap smartwatch called the Amazfit Ares. The new wearable sticks to Amazfit’s familiar formula of bundling in a bunch of sports modes (70 in this case) and a long battery life.

The Amazfit Ares comes with a 1.28-inch square color display covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 3.  The screen adapts to outdoor light and adjusts the brightness of the display accordingly for better visibility.

It also features a very Apple-like neon-on-black UI that Huami has previously cloned on smartwatches like the Amazfit GTS. However, the company usually does a good job with display colors and the watch UI so we expect the same from the Ares.

Specs and features

In terms of activity tracking, you get numerous sports modes on the Amazfit Ares, including: running, cycling, swimming, mountaineering, high-intensity indoor workouts, and more.

Interestingly, the new smartwatch can also track dance workouts like belly dancing, Zumba, street dance, square dance, and more. We’re assuming the watch will just track them as time-based high-intensity workouts. In addition, there are also modes to track various types of martial arts such as boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, and others.

The Ares is designed for outdoor activities and Amazfit claims it’s made of strong and durable polycarbonate materials that can handle tough environments. The straps are made of silicone for softness and comfort.

The watch also comes with 5ATM water resistance, meaning that it can be submerged down to 50 meters for about 10 minutes. Given that it tracks swimming, this is an obvious feature. The 5ATM rating is also something we’ve seen on more expensive smartwatches like the Galaxy Watch Active 2, Garmin’s vivoactive 4, Apple Watch Series 5, and more.

The Amazfit Ares promises a 14-day run in daily use mode. That is, if you track heart rate, sleep, get 150 notifications in a day, lift the watch 30 times, and exercise three times a week while using GPS for 30 minutes each time. The battery life increases to 90 days in basic mode with Bluetooth, heart rate monitoring, and GPS all turned off.

We’ll obviously need to test these battery claims when and if we review the Ares, but so far, the Amazfit watches we’ve tried have done a good job of power management.

Amazfit Ares: Price and availability

The new Amazfit smartwatch is pretty cheap and comes in at only 499 Chinese yuan (~$70). That’s a pretty decent price tag in our opinion for all the aforementioned features you get.

You don’t get many smartwatches at that price point. However, there are a fair amount of slimmer activity trackers for that price, including the Fitbit Inspire HR.

The Ares is currently available only in China, but is expected to launch globally some time later this year. It will be compatible with both iOS and Android phones and will sell in army green and black colorways.