Amazfit Band 7 Review: A Capable Fitness Band

Amazfit is one of those companies that has paved the way for budget wearables in the Indian market. While the Mi Smart Band series remains on top of the throne — Amazfit seems to be heading into the fitness band segment with the Amazfit Band 7 after focusing on budget smartwatches. It has a bunch of things to offer, such as long battery life, a wider display than its predecessor, Alexa built-in, and more. Xiaomi’s Mi Smart Band 7 hasn’t seen the light yet, so this looks like a good time for Amazfit to swoop in and capture the Indian market — but can it beat down the supremacy built by the Chinese tech giants? Let’s find out in our review.

Amazfit Band 7 Review: Design and display

The Amazfit Band 7 is available at Rs 3,499, which puts it right up against the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6. It is available in black, white, and pink colour variants. We have a black colourway with us. It looks quite simple and classic. If you want to flaunt the band, you should try out the other two colours. We found a bunch of third-party straps on Amazon and other online stores — if you are not content with the available colours.

The Amazfit Band 7 follows the same design approach as any fitness band, it comes with a TPU strap, but this time, with a rather unorthodox buckle along with a slightly rounded but prominently rectangular-shaped capsule. The polycarbonate capsule is built well, and even after a few minor drops, it didn’t cause any cracks or scratches. The strap quality is good, and wearing it for longer hours didn’t cause any rashes or irritations on our wrists. The mould for the capsule makes sure it sits flush and does not just fly off when flailing your arms. The capsule can be detached from the strap whenever needed to swap straps or simply clean it.

The buckle fits well, though it takes a couple of tries to find your fit. It’s a bit unwieldy and requires more work than needed. At times, we ended up pulling some of our arm hair while trying to push the buckle into the desired adjustment hole. We have average-sized wrists, and to fit the strap properly, we had to make sure the last few adjustment holes were used.

The band does not have any physical buttons, and every function has to be done on display. While we are at it, the band comes with a 1.47-inch AMOLED display up front with thick bezels all around, especially on the bottom. The form factor of the band is rectangular as opposed to the design approach of the Mi Smart Band 6, which goes for a more rounded build. The Amazfit Band 7 has a slightly smaller display than the Mi Smart Band 6. The AMOLED display has a resolution of 198×368 and a pixel density of 282ppi.

It produces vibrant colours, and the content displayed on it pops well. Using the band outside is not an issue at all as the display gets bright enough, and the text is also legible on the screen. It has an oleophobic coating which helps prevent fingerprint smudges on display. During our usage, it did not collect much dust or even register scratches despite multiple drops. The Amazfit Band 7 also has an always-on mode, which is a great and a must-have feature for every smartwatch — though enabling it eats up the battery, and we’ll get into more detail on that soon.

The rear of the watch houses sensors for tracking Heart rate, SpO2 and stress. There are also a couple of magnetic charging pins here. The Amazfit Band 7 is 5 ATM water resistant, so taking it out for a dive should not be an issue. We’ve often forgotten that there’s a band on our hands because of how light it is — it tips the scales at just 28 grams with the strap.

Amazfit Band 7 Review: Software and performance

Amazfit smartwatches and fitness bands are feature-rich, and that’s consistent on the Amazfit Band 7 too. We recently reviewed the Amazfit GTS 4 smartwatch and were impressed with the things it had to offer at such a price tag. The Amazfit Band 7 runs on Zepp OS, which is very similar to the software used on the Mi Smart Band 6. There are over 50 watch faces available, and the band can store up to 5 of them. The rest can be found on the Zepp Health app. While the UI is quite practical for a small display, it’s not the prettiest out there. It’s a known fact that multiple fitting elements into such a small screen estate are tough. The band can only display so much at a single time, and the content on it can look congested, especially activity data. Additionally, we didn’t find the font used throughout the UI to be all that appealing.

Swiping down on the home screen reveals the notification bar, which is quite detailed, somewhat similar to the one on the GTS 4. Swiping right shows you the notifications tab, with another swipe revealing the Amazon Alexa voice assistant. Swiping right from the home screen shows you the activity tab. Swiping up gives you access to all the functions of the band, such as PAI, heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen, workout, sleep tracking, and more. The Amazfit Band 7 can receive and showcase notifications on display, but sadly, there’s no option to reply. It can also show you alerts for incoming calls, but you cannot answer them.

While the call notification feature is still useful, we found a lot of inconsistencies in it. Besides that, the band does not reveal the number or even the name on its display, which pretty much beats the purpose. WhatsApp calls are not entertained, which is a huge bummer. As for messages, we also found some instability here as the band tends to miss notifications at times, especially from messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Sometimes, scrolling through the UI does not feel fluid as the software fails to register touches. If you ask us, we would’ve liked to see a physical button on it with some compromises to the form factor.

The Zepp Health companion app is required to pair the band with your smartphone. It offers a very detailed interface at the expense of having a learning curve. We’ve covered the app part in our Amazfit GTS 4 review in detail, you can read that here to find out what all it has to offer. As mentioned earlier, the Amazfit Band 7 has support for Amazon Alexa. It’s a hit or miss most of the time. The band has a microphone to listen to your requests, but a missing speaker means you have to read the answers off the screen.

The primary purpose of a fitness band is to track workouts and provide accurate data. The Amazfit Band 7 has over 120 sports modes ranging from your usual — walking, running, and cycling to ball sports, winter sports, water sports, and a bunch more activities. We took it out for a bunch of walks, and it does its job well. We manually counted the steps, and the Amazfit Band 7 was only off by 9 steps, which is acceptable. It shows you a bunch of things on display itself, such as heart rate, workout duration, distance, calories burnt, and more. The band records your path with the help of the paired smartphone, as it does not have GPS built-in.

Besides that, the Amazfit Band 7 also has sleep monitoring, and it’s accurate and comprehensive. We tested the sleep tracking by sleeping at different times — once at 10 PM and once at 4 AM. It tracked our sleeping time and waking up time well. The band is also capable of recording afternoon naps if you’ve been sleeping for 20 minutes or more. However, we found the heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring to be inconsistent at times. We tested it beside the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 (Review), and the disparity in the data was central. At times, the Amazfit Band 7 showed us a reading of 89 per cent blood oxygen while the Galaxy Watch 5 was consistently tagging at 96 per cent.

Amazfit Band 7 Review: Battery life and charging

Amazfit has an excellent track record of smartwatches with fantastic battery life. The fitness band department just builds upon its legacy with the Amazfit Band 7. The band packs in a 232mAh battery inside, which is quite impressive for a wearable of its size. For context, the Mi Smart Band 6 has a 125mAh battery inside, while Amazfit’s smartwatch, the GTS 4, has a 300mAh battery.

The company claims a battery life of 18 days on typical usage and 12 days on heavy usage. We’ve used the Amazfit Band 7 for more than a week with always-on display enabled at all times and monitoring activities disabled.

During this time, the band was always connected to the smartphone for notifications and call alerts. If you plan on disabling the always-on function, the band can easily go on for a couple more days. Overall, the battery life of the Amazfit Band 7 is good, and you need not worry about rushing it to charge at the end of the day.

The bundled proprietary two-pin charger can be connected to any adapter with a USB-A port and can charge the band up entirely in a little over an hour and 30 minutes. The magnetic charger fits well, and there’s no need to remove the capsule for charging purposes.

Amazfit Band 7 Review: Verdict

The fitness band market is growing, with the likes of Xiaomi leading the bandwagon while brands like Noise, Fastrack, and Boat offer capable alternatives at a lower prices. Amazfit looks like it wants a slice of that cake with the Amazfit Band 7 before Xiaomi swoops in with its next upgrade.

The Amazfit Band 7 has a vibrant and crisp display but a slightly bigger screen. Maybe something similar to the Mi Smart Band 6 would’ve been better. Nevertheless, at Rs 3,499, the Amazfit Band 7 offers an always-on display and a slew of sports modes which every fitness enthusiast is bound to appreciate. The software feels quite sluggish at times, and the inconsistencies with the notifications and health monitoring can be annoying. The battery life on the Amazfit Band 7 is commendable, especially when you compare it with the competition.

Amazfit’s Band 7 finds itself in contention with a slightly old but capable Mi Smart Band 6. Both the bands are very capable and relevant with different use cases. If you prefer seeing your data and time on a bigger screen with a slightly more fluid software experience, the Mi Smart Band 6 can be your pick. But, if you want a very good battery life, a built-in voice assistant, and a bunch of new sports modes, the Amazfit Band 7 should end up in your cart. If you have a couple of more bucks to burn (along with your calories), you can also consider going for a smartwatch experience with the Realme Watch 3 Pro — read our review to find out more about that.