This Amazfit Cor Review highlights the main features, advantages, and drawbacks of Xiaomi’s wearable.
Introduction
After the success of Amazfit Bip, an extremely affordable smartwatch with 45 days of battery life, Amazfit is trying to break into the world of fitness trackers with all the Amazfit Cor.
The Cor is a budget physical fitness tracker that comes at $55, only approximately $10 under its brighter cousin, the Bip. The Cor surfaced in January in China, and now it’s becoming an international release as Huami looks to strengthen Xiaomi’s dominance in the affordable exercise tracker marketplace.
And on paper, it creates a fantastic case. This item is packed to the gills with features, but do those attributes and its nondescript looks add up to something worth its low price? Or are you better off turning to the priciest Bip or a much more expensive Fitbit? Keep reading to find out.
Amazfit Cor: Design
The Cor looks familiar to the various wearables like the Charge, Vivofit, Gear Fit2 Guru, or Huawei Band 2 Pro.
However, it’s exceptionally generic, a little each of the above. It looks both comfortable and forgettable at the exact moment. There is little visually attractive here, except perhaps the marine-grade stainless steel, which gives it a tiny touch of sophistication.
The built material feels much better than its price suggests when you are tackling it, which is striking. Unfortunately, it’s another story when you put it on since the quality of the materials doesn’t carry over to just how bulky the Cor feels about the wrist. It is a nuisance under sleeves and in bed. The Cor feels milder despite being 4 g lighter than the 36-gram Fitbit Charge two.
To begin with, the buckle on the band is a bit frustrating. A straightforward loop and clasp mechanism determine the band: loop the underside band through the top bar and then grip.
It sounds straightforward. However, this ends up with you trying to determine that you did not get it as tight onto your wrist as you believed you had. So then you’ve got to keep adjusting and pulling until you get it as tight as you want. It’ll rattle around on your wrist like an oversized watch if you don’t do this.
Main Features
The Cor has a 1.23-inch IPS LCD screen and can track your steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, and sleep quality. It also has a built-in heart rate monitor and activity-tracking features such as running, cycling, and swimming modes.
It is equipped with IP68 water resistance rating; 5ATM waterproofing (up to 50 meters)
You can connect with your smartphone via Bluetooth 4.0 to sync data from the device to the Amazfit app on your phone so that you can keep track of your progress over time. The app will show you how many steps you’ve walked each day, how many calories you’ve burned off during workouts or while sleeping, etc…… And if you’re really into stats like we are here at Techaeris, this is definitely for you!
Display
The 1.23-inch IPS LCD screen is too tall. On an exercise tracker, you have the fundamental unit that is hard and solid, usually made out of some metal. That challenging section of the fitness tracker is about as tall as my wrist, which is a bit bulky. This makes it harder to have a solid fit because there’s more space for the strap to not adapt to your wrist.
The screen is mostly fine. It does a decent job when exposed to the sun. However, it is not as premium as other screens like the Apple Watch. It performs far better indoors, naturally. It would have been fine if the screen was more straightforward to look at, though, because turning it can be a chore. You are supposed to tap the tiny home area below the display, but hitting it in an ideal way is hard, which may be highly annoying while you’re on a jog. The swipe interface functions mostly well, while there are a few tiny niggles that will take you by surprise – such as the exercise program automatically launching into a workout once you click on it.
Elsewhere, you’ve got a comfortable heart rate sensor on the bottom, 5 ATM waterproofing so you can take it swimming, an accelerometer, and detachable straps, should you want to replace the layout.
Thanks to that stainless steel, the Cor may look nice with a sprinkle of sophistication. However, it also can be a bit frustrating actually to utilize.
Activity Application
As it seems to be the theme using this tracker, the Cor is a combination of impressive and unsatisfactory elements. The exercise app is straightforward to operate. You press a button to start, and there you go. All you have to do is start the exercise app, and that’s it.
Tracks most activities
There are no modes to pick from. There are no exercises to choose from. It simply tracks whatever activity you are doing. On the companion program, these workouts – no matter what they are – are merely listed as”exercise.” So while it’s waterproof and can come with you where you exercise, it will mainly only track your calories and heart rate.
If you’re looking for more advanced solutions with more metrics, your best bet is to turn elsewhere. The Amazfit Cor would like to keep things as simple as possible. Once it lacks in categorizing workouts, it performs excellently when monitoring.
When monitoring heart rate, it did a good job when placed up from the Wahoo Tickr X, exactly enjoy the Amazfit Bip did. My maximum heart rate was the same on the two devices, but my average heart rate on the Cor was reduced by roughly 10 BPM.
Then there is sleep monitoring, which essentially did an excellent job of keeping up with all the Fitbit Charge 2. It had been about in line with my bedtime and gave me a bit more sleep time compared to the Fitbit, but two or three times, it went completely off the rails and obtained my wake-up time was wrong.
The Charge 2 correctly knew when I woke up daily without fail. However, the Cor would seemingly take turns. One day it would understand when I was getting up, then another day, it could only feel that I awakened hours after I did. CorCor likely struggled with my groggy movements as I got up from the bed.
Activity Features
The Cor isn’t for you if you want detailed exercise metrics. It’s probably going to fail you. However, if you’re looking for a simple physical fitness tracker that can monitor your heart rate, the Cor at least ticks those boxes.
The Cor offers a variety of intelligent features. Swiping down from the main face, you’ll find a menu of various choices. These include a summary of your day with your step count, distance covered, and current heart rate. Also, calories burned and how static you’ve been.
You are also able to get a running record of your notifications. Having a location where you can look back at your alerts is always handy, but it’s also hidden from a menu. It would have been more suitable if it was one of the main swipe gestures from the main face.
The alarms on the Cor mirror those popping up on your mobile phone. App support is pretty good, so you will probably see everything going on, from the phone calls and text messages for your Facebook alarms, WhatsApp messages, and much more. However, these can be filtered through to prevent your wrist from going every couple of seconds.
Notifications feedback
That is just as well since the notifications feedback is deafening. Don’t forget to turn it on. Don’t Disturb option in case you’re sleeping.
In addition, you’ve got Huami’s standard set of attributes. Weather will tell you the weather (obviously), and you can set that up in the companion program. There is also a timer and alert if you want to receive your clock. In the settings app, you’ll find a few choices for alternative watch faces. The watch face can be different enough from the default to be intriguing, although not interesting enough to switch to.
You’ll also receive a few more advanced watch faces you can change, but you will have to download them, and Huami warns they’ll affect your battery life. All in all, the Cor has a robust set of features for a fitness tracker.
Battery Life
Huami claims about 12 days of battery life from the Cor. I’ve had the device for approximately a week. I did four runs and received lots of notifications.
After all this, I’m down to 48%. It’s safe to say the 12-day guarantee from Huami is likely an underpromise-overdeliver situation, and I have seen nothing to make me believe otherwise. It was a bit weird that a GPS-less fitness tracker could have about one-third the battery life of this Bip, a smartwatch using GPS, but here we are.
Conclusion
The Cor will undoubtedly fit the bill if you search for a gym tracker with excellent battery life.
Where to buy: Gearbest, Aliexpress
Alex is a passionate fitness enthusiast dedicated to helping people lead healthier, more active lifestyles. He encourages small – sustainable changes over drastic transformations and works with people to create customized wellness plans. His mission is to help others benefit from the most effective methods available, sharing tips, strategies, and health & fitness tools on Gearuptofit.com to inspire people to live their best lives.
