Amazfit has spent years carving out a niche in the trend watch market by offering solid hardware at a significantly lower price than Garmin. With the Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra, the company is taking its clearest step yet towards the premium end of that market.
Watch launched yesterday At $599.99, it’s aimed squarely at trail runners and ultra-distance athletes. It comes with a Grade 5 titanium frame, bezel, and back cover, as well as scratch-resistant sapphire glass on a 1.5-inch AMOLED display that hits a peak brightness of 3,000 nits.
Battery life lasts up to 33 hours in trail running mode with dual-frequency GPS, heart rate monitoring, always-on display, and map navigation. In smartwatch mode, Amazfit says you can expect up to 30 days on a charge. It also has a built-in flashlight with white, red, SOS and boost modes up to 300 lux, and 64GB of onboard storage for maps and audio.
Built around navigation and trail-specific data
Navigation is a big part of what differentiates the Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra from other street-focused watches. According to Amazfit, full-color topographic and contour maps render 2.5 times faster and refresh 12 times faster than the previous generation. A new elevation overview tool color-codes slope difficulty along a route, and the watch handles offline rerouting and point-to-point route creation without the need for a phone or data connection.
On the metrics side, the watch tracks lactate threshold, running power, pacing analysis, gait, ground contact time and posture. Trail running mode also calculates load based on gradient and elevation gain instead of just distance. It also syncs with TrainingPeaks, Runna and Intervals.icu and pushes activities to Strava.
The Cheetah 2 Ultra follows the Cheetah 2 Pro, which launched last month for marathon runners at $449.99. The Ultra is heavier at 52 grams without a strap, compared to the Pro’s 45.6 grams, but it has a larger 780mAh battery and double the storage.
At $599.99, it’s well below what you’d pay for something like the Garmin Fenix ​​8, which tops our list of premium outdoor fitness options and starts closer to $900.
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