Review: Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra

Zepp Health, the company behind the Amazfit brand, has made some wise decisions with its push into smartwatches—like getting in early with the hybrid fitness crowd. It remains one of the few smartwatch brands to offer dedicated modes for Hyrox training and racing. Zepp Health's main draw, though, is offering desirable features for a lot less than the competition.

Even as the brand dips a toe into the premium end of the smartwatch market with the Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra, its most expensive model yet, it still manages to undercut Garmin, Suunto, and Apple.

The Cheetah 2 Ultra is a watch pitched at trail runners, with the capability to monitor much more than pace, time, and distance. It includes multi-band GPS (which the brand calls dual-band) to track movements with increased precision. You can glance down at detailed color maps and trail-running-centric data, and it offers 80 hours of battery life in ultra-trail-running mode, more than enough to cover the average finish time at Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc.

It does cost just shy of $600, and that’s not the pricing norm for Amazfit smartwatches. The next priciest model after the Cheetah 2 Ultra is the T-Rex 3, which is roughly $200 cheaper but has less battery life and storage space. The Amazfit range is already extensive, and the T-Rex meets similar needs for trail runners and outdoor lovers. So do we really need the Cheetah 2 Ultra?

Slim Profile

Photograph: Michael Sawh

While I don’t think you’d mistake the Cheetah 2 Ultra as a Garmin Fenix clone, it’s clearly playing from a similar design playbook.

There’s a grade-5 titanium case to give it a hardy metal body without the added heft you get from stainless steel. There are both silicone and nylon straps included, with sapphire glass laid on top of an AMOLED display for optimal scratch protection.

It’s a watch that doesn’t scream outdoors in the same way that a Fenix or Suunto Vertical 2 does. That seems to be a deliberate play to give the Cheetah 2 Ultra a profile much closer to a road running watch than a hiking or climbing behemoth. As a runner, I can say I appreciated the more streamlined look. That's not to say it can't handle tough, off-road conditions, though. The Cheetah 2 Ultra passed military grade durability testing for aspects such as vibration and impact, and it can be operated in high and low temperatures.

Talking about screen brightness is very on-trend, and Zepp Health delivers here too. The Cheetah 2 Ultra has a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, matching the Apple Watch Ultra 3 for luminosity. I did find the screens on Apple’s Watch Ultra and Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro’s punchier in comparison when used in much sunnier outdoor light, even with the Cheetah 2 Ultra's screen set to its maximum brightness.

Another trend on smartwatches is flashlights. This one sits at the top of the watch case and is nice and bright, with scope to adjust the brightness and switch to a red-light mode. That’s been ideal when I’ve wanted a less intrusive yet still penetrative source of light. I found it particularly useful on nighttime runs and while rummaging around my apartment looking for the charging cable without turning the main light on.

Fit for Trails

Photograph: Michael Sawh

While this is a smartwatch that can track activities like golf and open-water swims and also has profiles for other outdoor sports like mountain biking, Zepp Health wants this mainly to be on the wrists of trail runners. Specifically, trail runners who like to tackle big climbs and stay out for days in unpredictable weather conditions.

As well as using it on my local trails and regular running routes I also had the opportunity to test the Cheetah 2 Ultra out around Snowdon in North Wales. This is where you’ll find one of the highest mountains in the United Kingdom. I did a mixture of running and hiking up some steep climbs, taking in some of the course of the UTMB Snowdonia race. The elevation gain on the course ranges from 3,400 to 9,200 meters.

It was a prime opportunity to see if features like GPS, mapping, navigation, and battery life were up to the task. I wore Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro on my other wrist to compare data and see whether a $600 watch could match up to a $1,200 one. I’m happy to confirm the Cheetah 2 Ultra more than held its own.

The Cheetah 2 Ultra grabbed a GPS signal swiftly, and the two watches produced similar data for basic data such as total distance traveled. Zepp Health uses multi-band GPS technology like many other watches to provide reliable tracking in more challenging GPS signal environments. As I’ve discovered, not all multi-band GPS watches are equal in terms of performance. However, I’d certainly put the Cheetah 2 Ultra’s accuracy not far off the best I’ve tried.

Following maps and using the navigation features was a good experience too. Maps need to be downloaded first in the Zepp Health app before you can sync them over to the watch. There isn’t terrible lag when the map needs to refresh as you scroll to another location. This is something I have experienced on other watches from Garmin and Polar.

I also uploaded some routes to follow on the watch, which is done using the popular GPX file format. When I veered off course, the watch emitted a pretty hard-to-ignore beep with prompts on screen telling me how much I’d deviated from my route.

Photograph: Michael Sawh

I really liked the color-coded presentation of the elevation changes on the course. It meant I could mentally prepare myself for the big climbs and look forward to the sections that were going to be much kinder to my legs. It’s similar to Garmin’s great ClimbPro mode, but without the ability to configure the additional data you see on screen.

Then we get to battery life. Amazfit smartwatches in general post up some impressive battery numbers. The one Zepp Health wants to focus on here is when you’re using it in trail-running mode. That’s where it can last up to 33 hours. You do have more battery to play with if you’re willing to sacrifice GPS accuracy. By ditching multi-band GPS, switching from sampling GPS data every second to once per minute, reducing screen brightness, and disabling the always-on display mode, you can get a maximum of 228 hours of battery life.

I didn’t run anything close to the distance of a UTMB race. I did manage to spend over three hours with it where the battery dropped by 13 percent. That would actually equate to roughly 25 hours. So, short of the 33 hours stated. This is where screen brightness or keeping the screen on during tracking can hurt battery performance. A Garmin Fenix 8 Pro in the same mode dropped by 17 percent, pointing to a 16-hour battery life.

Photograph: Michael Sawh

Overall, I’ve been happy with how the Cheetah 2 Ultra has performed when worn for runs, swims, and even gym workouts. Where it’s lacking is the ecosystem that ties everything together. Zepp OS has come leaps and bounds over the years, but there’s still some elements that I don’t love.

If you’re hoping it’ll operate as slickly as an Apple Watch or Garmin when you’re not tracking exercise, that’s just not the reality of what it’s like to use an Amazfit watch. The music player isn’t compatible with streaming services such as Spotify, which you would get with Apple and Garmin, and the Zepp Health app storefront lacks major third-party apps. It also doesn't have LTE or the newest satellite connectivity found on rival watches.

What I have more of a problem with is that an Amazfit smartwatch already exists that can do a lot of what the Cheetah 2 Ultra can do for less money. The T-Rex is a more overtly rugged-looking watch but not one I think most trail runners would be opposed to. It delivers a strong GPS performance, offers similar mapping and navigation features, and has enough battery life to last for most ultra races. The Cheetah 2 Ultra has added confusion to the Amazfit lineup. This is not a bad smartwatch. I’m just not convinced it’s another Amazfit smartwatch that needs to exist.