Amazfit GTS 2 Mini review: A budget fitness watch with a lot to offer

Huami has been consistently making affordable fitness trackers that are now counted in the same breath as the Fitbits and Garmins of the world. The Chinese firm updated its most popular GTS and GTR smartwatches late last year and added more models to the lineup, targeting buyers with different budgets.

At the top of the food chain, you get the Amazfit GTS 2 and GTR 2 at $150. These are followed by the slightly watered-down GTS 2e and GTR 2e at $140. Right at the bottom, you get the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini with an even lower price of $99.

How does it stack up in the world of budget fitness watches? Read our full Amazfit GTS 2 Mini review to see if the wearable deserves to be on your wrist.

Amazfit GTS 2 Mini vs Amazfit GTS 2: What’s different?

As its name suggests, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini is the smaller cousin of the Amazfit GTS 2. Size is the biggest difference between the two smartwatches.

Elsewhere, the specs and features of the GTS 2 Mini aren’t all that different from the GTS 2. In fact, it cuts down on some unnecessary feature bloat to achieve its desirable price and we’re not complaining. Here are all the differences between the two models:

• Display: The Amazfit GTS 2 Mini packs a 1.55-inch 354 x 306 AMOLED display, while GTS 2 gets a larger 1.65-inch 348 x 442 AMOLED screen. If you are someone with a slender wrist, you might want to go in for the Mini instead of the bigger GTS 2.
• Design: The GTS 2 Mini looks like a plainer version of the GTS 2. It has a similar square display curved on the edges, but its crown is not as flush with the body as that of the bigger GTS. It looks more or less the same as the first-gen Amazfit GTS and if you were to put the two watches side-by-side, you’d hardly notice the difference.
• Workout features: Both the Amazfit GTS 2 and GTS 2 Mini pack a whole bunch of activity tracking modes. The smaller watch packs 70, while the GTS 2 boasts 90 of them. That said, you might not even notice the missing modes on the Mini, as it features all the modes you’ll likely use the most.
• Voice assistant: The Amazfit GTS 2 Mini does not support offline voice controls. It also doesn’t come with built-in Amazon Alexa smarts like the GTS 2.
• Mic and speaker: Since there’s no voice assistant or ability to answer calls on the GTS 2 Mini, it does not have a microphone or a speaker. You get both of these on the pricier GTS 2.
• Music storage: The Amazfit GTS 2 comes with 3GB of internal storage which the Mini does not have. That means you can’t locally store music on it. However, you can control your phone’s music through the watch using Bluetooth connectivity.
• Battery: The GTS 2 Mini brings a slightly smaller 220mAh battery compared to the GTS 2’s 246mAh cell. However, it gives you almost doubles the battery life in typical usage (more on that later).

Specs and features

At almost half the price of the GTS 2, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini houses the same updated sensors onboard. The most important one in its arsenal is Huami’s self-developed BioTracker PPG 2 sensor. It’s responsible for the smartwatch’s continuous heart-rate monitoring as well as SpO2 or blood oxygen tracking features.

Moreover, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini also features a built-in GPS so you won’t have to carry your phone around on your runs.

We’ll discuss the performance of the smartwatch in the sections below. Until then, you can check out its full spec sheet below.

What I like about the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini

The display

There’s a lot to like about the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini apart from its affordability. The display of the smartwatch is crisp, bright, and responds well to touch. It won’t give you any trouble even in harsh sunlight. Huami usually does a pretty good job even with its TFT LCD screens on cheaper devices like the Bip U and Bip S, so having an AMOLED display makes the experience even more vibrant.

Battery life

Amazfit promises about seven days of battery life on the GTS 2 Mini with heavy usage. I was happy to get a little more than that. With heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, 100-150 raise-to-wakes, two-to-three SpO2 readings, and 30 minutes of workout every day, my GTS 2 Mini still had 33% battery to spare after a week.

Seeing that, you can expect the watch to easily last you about 10 days with medium to heavy usage. You could get a little less out of the device if you enable the always-on display, but I reckon you’ll still get a good seven days of on time with all the wheels turning.

Sleep tracking

Like the bigger GTS 2, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini also gives you a detailed sleep analysis. It can track light, deep, and REM sleep stages.

In my experience, the watch was accurate in its measurement of my sleep schedule. One night during the course of testing, I woke up feeling uneasy at about 2AM. When I checked my sleep analysis the next morning, the watch had not only registered my broken sleep but also showed me that my heart rate had shot up. My Apple Watch Series 6 confirmed the readings. My doctor said it was stress.

Related: The best sleep trackers you can buy

I like that the GTS 2 Mini assigns a sleep score based on breathing quality, the proportion of light and deep sleep, and other factors. I did notice a dip in my score the days I woke up in the middle or had disturbed sleep.

The sleep breathing quality feature looks a lot like what Withings offers. It’s scored out of 100 and is plotted on a bar that goes from red (bad) to green (good). I breathe pretty well while sleeping but I did notice some fluctuation during the week.

What I don’t like about the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini

Copycat design

There’s no denying that the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini looks like a cheap Apple Watch knockoff. I have a pink Apple Watch Series 6 and the GTS 2 Mini copies it to a T, complete with its metallic frame. There’s also a crown on the side that revolves, however unlike the Apple Watch, it doesn’t correspond to any actions. I quite like that the GTS 2 Mini is lightweight and compact, but I really wish Huami would stop blatantly copying Apple’s design.

Wonky heart rate readings

The Amazfit GTS 2 Mini is good at taking manual heart rate readings. I found almost all its heart rate measurements in line with those from my Apple Watch 6 and Beurer pulse oximeter. However, the smartwatch failed to register accurate readings during workouts.

The GTS 2 Mini shows you your heart rate in realtime when you start a workout. I took it for a spin alongside the Apple Watch 6 on my daily cycling run. Weirdly enough, the GTS 2 Mini displayed a resting heart rate between 70-73bpm while my heart was actually beating much faster and the Apple Watch was recording somewhere around 157-160bpm.

Related: The best heart rate monitors and watches you can buy

You can see in the graph above that as I gained speed (blue line), the recorded heart rate on the GTS 2 Mini fell. That shouldn’t have been the case and was the exact moment when my heart rate shot up on the Apple Watch.

I also noticed a big difference in the heart rate range recorded by the GTS 2 Mini and the Apple Watch 6. On one of my cycling workouts, the former registered a rage of 70-146bpm, while the latter recorded 97-168bpm.

GPS colors outside the lines

The GPS on the Amazfit GTS 2 locks in pretty fast and that’s great. However, it does tend to color outside the lines. The route map is buried deep within the Zepp app and is proof that the GTS 2 Mini cannot sometimes tell lanes apart.

As you can see in the map above, the smartwatch shows I was cycling somewhere inside the woods while I was actually in a bike lane right next to it. That said, if you’re not too finicky about route mapping, the watch should give you a decent idea of where you’ve been.

No third-party app support

Just like all basic Amazfit smartwatches, the GTS 2 Mini also doesn’t bring support for third-party apps or watch faces. You won’t be able to send your fitness stats to any other apps like Google Fit or access music services like Spotify.

What could be better

Now that we’ve discussed the good and bad of the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini, I would also like to point out one of its features that left me sitting on the fence — SpO2/blood oxygen monitoring.

I think it’s great that the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini packs an SpO2/blood oxygen sensor at an affordable price. Its standalone SpO2 readings were also a match with the Apple Watch 6 and my fingertip oximeter almost every time. However, there’s not much you can do with that data.

I would have liked the watch to display blood oxygen readings during or after workouts and give them some context. Right now, all you get is maximum, minimum, and average SpO2 measurements for the day, week, month, or year. That’s not bad if you’re someone who suffers from a breathing disorder like COPD and wants to keep tabs on your blood oxygen levels to share with your doctor, but it left me wanting more.

Also, there’s an issue with SpO2 data syncing with the app. The watch failed to port daily readings to the Zepp app for three out of seven days when I clearly remember manually taking several measurements during that time. It’s possible this is a bug that Huami may iron out at a later date. The saving grace is that you can see your SpO2 reading on the watch screen when you take one.

Price and competition

At $99, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini mostly competes with cheaper options within its own ranks. There are the Amazfit Bip U and Bip U Pro which cost $49 and $59, respectively. Both fitness watches deliver great performance but you will have to compromise a bit on the display and build quality.

If you don’t mind raising your budget by around $50, you can also consider getting the HUAWEI Watch GT 2e. It also promises great battery life, SpO2 measurement, and plenty of fitness tracking features.

The Fitbit Versa 2 is also a good option with its reduced price of $148 and support for third-party apps, but it lacks an SpO2 sensor and is two years older now. The Versa 3 is double the price to be recommended against the GTS 2 Mini. Fitbit’s Charge 4 is also a good option if you don’t mind the fitness band form factor.

Also read: The best smartwatch deals you can get right now

Amazfit GTS 2 Mini review: The verdict

You’d think Huami must have made big compromises to bring down the price of the GTS 2 Mini, but that’s not necessarily the case. It is a capable little fitness watch that onboards almost all the trendy features you’d expect to find on a 2021 wearable.

That said, it does need a bit of work when it comes to things like heart-rate monitoring during workouts or support for third-party apps. But if you go looking for alternatives at this price point, you’d be hard-pressed to find ones that are as good.

Overall, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini is a great starter fitness watch that could become even better with future software updates. If your budget is strict and cannot exceed $100, by all means, go for it.

For more reviews from Android Authority, sign up below to receive all of the latest device testing and analysis straight into your inbox.