Amazfit Stratos 3 is an outdoor watch set to take on Garmin and Suunto
Xiaomi Mi Band-makers Huami has unveiled its new Amazfit Stratos 3 sports watch, which will be launching outside of China.
The new Stratos is still all about outdoor adventurers offering a breathable silicon strap and a decent-sized 1.34-inch transflective display to aid visibility in direct sunlight. There’s also four physical buttons for when your hands get sweaty or you’ve thrown on a big pair of gloves.
Read this: Best outdoor GPS watchesIt’s been slapped with a 5ATM water resistant rating too, which means you can take it for a dip in the water up to 50 metres.
On the tracking front, it supports 19 sports modes including trail running and hiking with GPS on board to track those activities. There’s also a heart rate monitor on board and heart rate-based training analytics like VO2 Max, exercise load and recovery data powered by Firstbeat.
Huami will also offer smartwatch features like notification support, and it’s going big on battery life. The Stratos 3 should give you 14-day battery life thanks to a dual-core system, which swaps the watch between normal and endurance modes intelligently, without switching off your access to core features. It’s also offering what sounds very similar to Garmin’s UltraTrac mode where you’ll be able to track activities with GPS from 35 to 70 hours.
Pricing or a release date has been confirmed for the Stratos 3 just yet. But we imagine it’ll be around the same $200 mark that previous Stratos watches have come in. That should make it on paper, an affordable alternative to what the likes of Garmin and Suunto currently offer at this price point.We tested the original Stratos back in 2018, and were impressed by the sports tracking skills it offered at that price point. Our main gripes were with the slightly clunky UI and software, so we hope this is something Huami has addressed for its latest iteration. We’ll be getting some hands on time with the new Amazfit Stratos 3 soon to see what it’s made of.
