Review on 🌙 Huami Amazfit Verge Lite Smartwatch - 20-Day Battery Life, 24/7 Heart Rate Monitoring, 1.3 Inch AMOLED Touchscreen IP68, Moonlight White Color by Valerie Alicea

Summary: If you're from the Pebble smartwatch line and only care about the basic functions, this is the watch you need. My first smartwatch was Pebble, then Pebble Time. After the support (and eventually the battery) failed, I switched to Wear OS watches, the Asus Zenwatch 3. They looked good, but the battery life was terrible, the performance was spot on (typically lackluster), and Asus stopped supporting the the hardware 3 months after I received it. After doing my best to keep the watch up to date, after two years I decided to buy another brand. The research led me to Amazfit Verge Lite. I've had a ton of gift cards and my Zenwatch pissed me off recently so why not. Two days later they fell into my hands. To be clear, I'm syncing this watch with a 1st gen Pixel XL running Android 10. Setup was easy and straightforward. The user manual contains a QR code to download the Mi Fit app directly from the Play Store. You have to create a Mi Fit account, which can be annoying but also allows you to log in through many social networks. Pairing was easy and after a few minutes of updating, the watch was ready to go. The Mi Fit app is pretty basic, but that's all there is to it. It allows you to make changes to your watch settings, allows you to start exercising from the watch, and provides graphs and summary data for all previous workouts. You can also let the watch sync your workout results to your phone, which only takes about 15-20 seconds. There's not much to customize the clock, it's basically just a matter of rearranging menu items and choosing one of 10 watch faces. You can customize your watch notifications like app notifications, incoming phone calls, inactivity notifications that let you know when you start moving after a set time, event reminders, basic alarms and smart unlock (used to keep your phone unlocked, so long as possible) the watch is paired). The weather settings and heart rate settings are also made here. The watch itself looks great. It uses a silicone strap, but you can replace it with quick-release pins. The OLED screen is clean, bright and easy to read both indoors and outdoors. Navigation is touch-based, with one button for basic tasks like turning on the screen and stopping a workout. You can also set the button to activate a specific workout when you long-press it. I've never owned a smartwatch that was a workout tracker, so I was curious how well the Verge Lite would work with my workout habits. The pedometer isn't anything special, but that goes for any watch. Heart rate monitoring uses green light detection, which has its own accuracy issues, but I've found it's been fairly reliable so far. It made me painfully aware that I wasn't pushing as hard as I should have when commuting my bike (70-110 bpm for 4 miles). The most impressive feature for training is the GPS. Blocking takes about 30-45 seconds and you're done. They are incredibly accurate with no drips. Other smartwatch features are music control (Google Play Music), weather forecasts, stopwatch/timer and some other little things. There is a delay when adjusting the volume in the Music app. So if you change them too quickly, there may be a delay. You also can't use more than one app at a time, which is a shame but not a big deal. It doesn't have a speaker or microphone, so you can't take calls or play music. The performance of the watch is top notch. The touchscreen is responsive, there is no lag in apps or navigation, and notifications/calls appear as soon as they arrive on my Pixel XL. You really can't ask for more. It has a strict set of functions that it can perform, and it does it quickly and reliably. The most impressive feature is definitely the battery life. If you are a Pebble user you will like this. I went from a Zenwatch 3 that needed to be charged every night (15%-50% battery after a 16 hour day depending on what Wear OS was doing in the background) to a watch that was barely using 10% a day two days. For the record, it doesn't detect my heart rate when it's not a workout, I get 20-50 notifications a day, screen gestures are disabled, and my workout intervals are 25-30 minutes. The first day it was 97% charged and after two days it was 87%. This is absolutely insane. Using a heart-rate monitor obviously uses more juice, and anything with a GPS will tell you how long you can use it (a full charge lasts 40 hours before the battery dies). But even frequent users can easily count on at least 10 days from the watch. 20+ days of battery life is no joke. If there's one feature I'd like to see in Verge Lite at some point, it would be app notification replies. Who knows, maybe they will be installed at some point. Overall, the Verge Lite is what everyone should expect from a basic smartwatch. This is for those who don't care what the smartwatch can do, but whether the smartwatch can do what it's good at. This watch does absolutely everything well and at this price point ($100 at the time of purchase) you really can't go wrong.