Amazfit Arc Review – Smart Affordable Stylish Fitness Tracker

If you have been tuning in to the world of fitness tracker, I’m pretty sure you are familiar with the Xiaomi Mi Band 2, a top selling smartband surpassing other high end wearable in the market like that of Fitbit fitness tracker, Gear Fit and even the smartwatch Apple Watch in terms of sale. The smartband Mi Band 2 was made possible in partnership with Huami, one of the largest developer of wearables in the world.

The Xiaomi Mi Band 2, in just several months after its market availability is already in the top 5 of bestselling fitness band, and with this Huami followed it up with a more classy version of the Mi Band 2, the Amazfit Arc.

Well, finally we got our hands on this new fitness tracker of Amazfit, let’s take a look on its specs and features.

Get the Latest Deal on this Amazfit Arc here

Design and Display 

The Amazfit Arc (A1630), repeats the same design philosophy with that of the Mi Band 2, a lightweight, minimalist design. The Arc measures 4.47 x 1.9 x 1.1 cm and just weighs 0.0200 kg with a simple sporty design.

It has a polycarbonate body with the combination of Aluminum making it lightweight but still has a durable body. It is comfortable to wear, you sometimes hardly notice that you wear it due to it lightweight material. In terms of design, it looks much better compared to the Mi Band 2 with its slight curved body with  a soft flexible TPU band. By the way the band material used on the Arc is known to be soft and flexible, but still has the durability with its abrasion resistant and UV light resistant feature.

The display is 0.42 inch OLED with UV coated and scratch resistant, it has a sharp display but suffers slightly outdoors. Contrary to the specs on different online sites, the smartband don’t have a touch screen operation but more of a touch key, swipe, touch to navigate to the series of menus.

Features and Specs

Amazfit Arc is powered by a low power chip Dialog DA14681 processor with an internal storage of 128 KB. Sensors include are optical heart rate monitor and accelerometer for pedometer. The pedometer data and heart rate monitor can be accessed on the band itself but other health feature can only be accessed on the support app. I wish Amazfit could have added more menu options or data such as calorie and distance on the band itself allowing users to check the results right away without having to take out your phone and view it on the support app.

Well, for accuracy the heart rate monitor works pretty well along with pedometer. Additional features is the sleep monitor that automatically track your sleep habit, details include average step, latest bed times as well as the time you wake-up.

Data for pedometer includes distance traveled and calories burned, everything works as expected including notifications whether its call or SMS , with social app you will be notified by a strong vibration along with icon animation. It doesn’t have a support for multi-port, but for those who are looking for running or walking feature, I guess the Arc is a just right.

Support App (Amazfit app)

The Amazfit app has full support for Android and iOS, so far syncing and using it is pretty strait forward, just sign-up and sync your device to the app.

You can add goal setting on the page, it shows the daily stats of your steps taken and calories burned accompanied with graphs throughout the week. There are also exercise tips to get more out of your work-out. The same works with sleep monitoring and heart rate monitoring.

Notification – this is where Amazfit Arc shines, there is a  lot of option for setting the notification, set call, message notification as well as social app notification, just by switching a toggle button. See screenshot below.

Battery

The A1630 just like the Mi Band 2 has an amazing battery life. It is twice the life of other popular smartband in the market, most only last a week. The Arc has an amazing 20 day of standby time, although it has a small battery about 70 mAh. The processor and the display is power efficient giving the smartband more juice to last for several weeks.

 

OverAll

Just any other smartband, the Amazfit Arc (A1630) has its own pros and cons. Overall, the smartband is an ideal fitness tracker for those who are looking for a simple band with good design, its affordable yet packed with the necessary features to get you started on your workout. It has pedometer, heart rate monitor that provide detailed stats. The app is ok but sometimes, it takes time to sync with the band. When it comes to battery life, still depends on the usage but on the average it last up to seeral weeks of continuous usage.

Jo Di Calivo -Blogger, Tech Guru, providing the current news on wearables particularly on smartwatches, smartbands. And loves to go fishing on spare time.