Welcome to Day 6 of CNET’s 10 Days of Deals! As we count down to Black Friday, I’m bringing you some of my favorite products at some seriously discounted prices.
The Amazfit Bip is an Apple Watch lookalike that’s more like a Pebble under the hood — and overall a pretty nice blend of the two. It normally sells for $100, but I’ve shared it at $80, $75 and $70.
Because I’ve written about the Bip many times before, I won’t repeat myself at length here. I will refer you to Scott Stein’s in-depth Amazfit Bip review, then give you a few parting thoughts.
Amazfit touts 30-plus days of battery life, which puts most other watches to shame. However, if you use features like GPS and heart-rate monitoring, you’re more likely to get closer to 20 days (still great, no question). But I’ve also found that certain watch faces — specifically those with an active second-hand — can cause battery life to plummet to below 10 days.
And speaking of faces, Android users can choose from tons of third-party options, but iPhone users still don’t have a means to do likewise. Whatever platform you’re on, check out sites like Amazfit Central and Amazfit Watch Faces for faces, tips, forums and the like.
You should also hit up Amazon and eBay for a wide assortment of replacement bands, in all kinds of colors and styles. That’s great, because the Bip’s four color choices are kind of meh. You can really up the flair factor with some new bands.
For just $61, this is a pretty amazing product. Yes, the screen is pretty low-res, and I miss being able to respond to notifications. But, hey, at this price, some compromises are to be expected.