Amazfit T-Rex 3 review: An affordable outdoor smartwatch done right

Price When Reviewed

$279.99

Best Prices Today: Amazfit T-Rex 3

$279.99

The Amazfit T-Rex 3 is a smartwatch built for outdoor lovers who can’t stomach paying big for something like the Apple Watch Ultra 2, Garmin Fenix 8 or the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra to get that rugged wrist-based companion.

With every iteration, the T-Rex has got a little big closer to being a true outdoor watch. The first offered good core tracking and long battery but lacked key features like mapping. The T-Rex 2 addressed some of those issues and with the T-Rex 3, it’s ramped things up.

You’re now getting a bigger display to view your real-time stats and free offline maps, adding new workout modes including one for ultramarathons. It also bolsters its abilities as a smartwatch, with improved contactless payment and app support.

So does that all equal a great outdoor smartwatch? I’ve put the Amazfit T-Rex 3 through its paces to find out.

Design & Build

• Larger case size
• Designed to work in extreme heat and cold
• Two strap colours 

With previous generations of the T-Rex, Amazfit has sought to slightly tweak things in terms of the overall look.

The first was a bit of a chunky beast while the T-Rex 2 had a more likeable bulky build. For the T-Rex 3, we now get a hexagonal case that helps it stand out from rival outdoor smartwatches in the right way.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

That case still comes in just the single size option and is now larger 48.5mm (up from 47.1mm), so it’s larger than a Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra and a 47mm AMOLED Fenix 8 for comparison.

You’ve got your pick of onyx (pictured) or lava liquid silicone straps and while not immediately clear, these straps are removable. A strap removal kit is included in the box, so it’s not a simple case of clicking a button or lug to take them off like most other watches.

The bezel is made from stainless steel to add most of the general heft, but it’s not so much that it makes the T-Rex 3 feel cumbersome on your wrist. That’s matched up with a pretty standard polymer core.

As a package, it’s waterproof up to 100 metres and joins the trend of watches that are also suitable for recreational diving up to 40 metres depth. I haven’t gone diving with it, but have taken it swimming and it’s passed that test just fine.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Like previous T-Rex watches, it’s also built to operate and endure extreme heat (70 degrees centigrade) and cold (minus 30 degrees centigrade), so you know you’ve got something suitable to handle the elements. The Galaxy Watch Ultra goes up to 55c for comparison.

I’ve found the T-Rex 3 nice to wear. I like that it offers something different in terms of the overall design.

It’s big but doesn’t feel too bulky and while the weight has slightly jumped up (66.6- to 68.3g), the difference in weight compared to an Apple Watch Ultra 2 or Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra really wasn’t an issue.

Screen & Audio 

• Larger, brighter AMOLED screen
• Supports always-on mode
• Microphone but no speaker included

One of the big design changes for the T-Rex 3 is a bigger and brighter screen. There’s now a 1.5-inch, 480 x 480 resolution AMOLED as opposed to a 1.39-inch, 454 x 454 resolution one.

So that’s both a bigger and higher resolution screen, though with those pixels spread across a larger screen. Colours for me felt a touch saturated and while it’s been nice and bright to use outdoors, I wouldn’t say it’s the best smartwatch display I’ve glanced down at.

For visibility, responsiveness to touch and offering support for an always-on mode, it certainly does the job though.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

It’s protected with Gorilla Glass as opposed to Sapphire glass, which is the more desirable and stronger defence against scratches and is present on Apple, Samsung and Garmin’s outdoor watches. There had to be some compromises somewhere given the price, and screen protection is one of them. It remained in good shape during testing, but if you want the best screen protection available, you’re going to have to opt for a pricier smartwatch.

The T-Rex 3 also gets a built-in microphone to speak to its offline voice assistant, but does still lacks a built-in speaker to enable features like calls or playing music out loud. I

If you want to make use of the onboard music storage, you’ll need to pair up some headphones to do that. It’s a shame but not a dealbreaker, especially with improvements elsewhere.

Software & Features 

• Runs on Zepp 4.0
• Works with iOS and Android
• Access to app store

The T-Rex 3 is an Android and iOS-friendly smartwatch with some limitations on what you can access regardless depending on if you’ve got a Google-powered phone or an iPhone in your pocket.

You’ll get the ability to control your smartphone camera if you’ve got an iPhone or the ability to quickly reply to calls with an Android phone.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Either way, you can view notifications and there’s roughly 26GB to store MP3 audio files, your fitness data and apps.

You do have access to the Zepp app store, which might not be the fully-fledged store you get from Apple or Google, but things are improving. There are some native and third-party apps here with a mix of free and paid-for options.

I tried out a bunch including a pretty easy to set up Sonos controller, a to-do list and even one of the games. They were all installed and were ready to use swiftly. It’s definitely becoming a better storefront as time goes on.

While you don’t get a speaker, you do get a microphone to use Zepp’s own offline voice assistant to let you adjust watch settings or check in on your fitness stats. This has been knocking around on Amazfit’s watches for a while now and the microphone voice recognition on the whole is very good.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

There’s also Zepp Pay giving you support for contactless payments, which again, has been present on previous watches, but I’ve had problems getting it set up. It’s not available in all countries and requires a Curve card, which I don’t have, so that feature was sadly out of bounds and likely will be for many others too.

As a smartwatch, I’d describe the Amazfit T-Rex 3 like a lot of other Amazfit smartwatches. It’s pretty feature-packed, and the watch user interface is pretty easy to get to grips with, giving you what you need.

The companion app isn’t super slick and it’s not as mature as other operating systems but is adding the right things. It just feels like it’s always playing catch up with the competition in certain areas.

Fitness & Tracking 

• Dual-frequency GPS
• Multisport tracking mode
• Route and navigation features

My experience of the core sports tracking experience across Amazfit’s watches has been very good. It just doesn’t always offer parity with similar watches in terms of the execution of features and overall performance.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

The T-Rex 2 was a really solid performer when I tested it back in 2022, but there were some big things it needed to address. The most notable one was mapping, with better support for using it to help you find your way or explore new surroundings.

For the T-Rex 3, you have access to free offline maps, which need to be downloaded in the app and then synced to the watch and can be done in a relatively stress-free manner. This also extends to support to download maps for ski resorts. You also have the option to import routes and it also supports turn-by-turn navigation as well.

The mapping support worked well for me. You can pick from dark and light map views and can show contours to give you a better sense of elevation and the terrain. I’d say mapping available on pricier outdoor watches feels a little more detailed in general in terms of what you’ll be able to view on screen, but if you compare what Samsung served up on the Galaxy Watch Ultra, then the T-Rex 3 puts in a much better showing.

From a tracking point of view, there’s a lot going on, which can sometimes be to the detriment of the experience you get on Amazfit’s smartwatches depending on what you’re after. There’s plenty of outdoor-centric data to glance at including altitude, storm alerts, tide information and the watch will even offer advice on your hydration needs.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

It’s good to see it’s packing dual-band GPS to offer the latest in positioning technology and deliver improved accuracy for outdoor tracking. It was pretty solid on the T-Rex 2 and it’s more of the same on the T-Rex 3.

I used it against a Garmin Fenix 8 and an Apple Watch Ultra 2 and found data like distance tracking, pace and calorie burn, the data was very similar. However, on some routes, particularly under tree cover, the pacing of workouts seemed to fluctuate a bit more on the Amazfit, but GPS performance in general worked well.

Heart rate data however wasn’t so good and falls into the category of optical sensors where maximum heart rate readings against a chest strap monitor can be wildly high. Thankfully, you now have the ability to pair external sensors to it, which includes heart rate monitors as well as running and cycling power metres to help address those accuracy issues.

Within the 177 sports modes supported, there’s now a free diving mode and a strength training mode that supports automatic rep counting with muscle maps to show which areas you’ve been focusing on the most. There’s support to share data to big fitness apps like Strava and Apple Health and it did that pretty seamlessly as well. 

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

If you want to delve deeper into your training data, you can do that as well, but I’m not sure how reliable all of those insights necessarily are. There’s some familiar sports watch ones like showing you your training load, recommended recovery time and there’s a Readiness metric, which sounds and works similar to similar metrics offered by Garmin and Oura.

I found the recovery advice and training scores didn’t always match up and would tell different stories about whether I should be training or easing off. It had a tendency to say I was in good shape to train on days I felt exhausted and where working out was the furthest thing from my mind.

Ultimately, the T-Rex 3 throws a lot at you and the crucial things typically land well. It wants to cater for everyone and getting to know everything it can do is slightly overwhelming. It’s addressed some criticisms you could level at the last T-Rex and it’s certainly made it a better performer and from and outdoor point of view, the good certainly outweighs the not so good.

Battery Life & Charging

• Bigger battery than T-Rex 2
• Up to 27 days battery in typical use scenario
• Up to 180 hours GPS battery life

What we always like to see with a smartwatch that’s designed to be one you might decide to go trekking with is one with the kind of promised battery life that you won’t have to think about carrying around a charger and that’s absolutely the case with the T-Rex 3.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

It’s now moved from a 500- to a 700mAh capacity battery, which in most usage scenarios and modes shows an improvement in staying power over the T-Rex 2. The battery life with typical usage is now 27 days instead of 24 days.

Using the most accurate GPS mode sees the battery jump from 26 to 42 hours. Heavy usage battery life is up to 13 days from 10 days. Depending on how restrictive you want that smartwatch life to be, this is a watch that could feasibly last for 80 days.

My time veered more on the heavy usage side. I used the most accurate GPS mode, kept the screen on at all times and used the watch for features like notifications, continuously monitoring heart rate and tracking sleep too. I’d say that 13 days for me was accurate of my time with the T-Rex 3.

On one day when I used the GPS, the overall battery drop was 7%. For over an hour workout using the best GPS mode, the battery dropped by 3%.

The numbers seem to add up and you can see that if you opt not to keep the screen on at all times or don’t need to use the most accurate GPS mode, then it will push further. I was very happy with the kind of performance it put in overall.

In terms of charging, it sticks to a proprietary charger setup that unfortunately isn’t the snappiest of chargers when you do get down to 0%. It takes roughly 3 hours to power back up, though given you’ll probably just need to give it the odd top up here and there, that’s something I’m sure most will be able to live with.

Price & Availability

The Amazfit T-Rex 3 is on sale via the Amazfit website as well as retailers like Amazon. Price is a big factor here because the T-Rex 3 aims to give you a fully-featured outdoor smartwatch for much less than the competition.

To that end, the T-Rex 3 is priced at £279/$279, which is considerably cheaper than other AMOLED-packing outdoor smartwatches.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 costs £799/$799, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra sits at £599/$649 and the Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED pricing starts at £949/$999.

That price does make it more expensive than the T-Rex 2 though, which cost £219/$229 at launch. Given the upgrades you’re getting over it, while still sitting at a pretty reasonable price, it’s likely a price hike that most stomach.

Check out our chart of the best smartwatches for more options.

Should you buy the Amazfit T-Rex 3?

If you’re looking for a more affordable outdoor smartwatch that gives you heaps of smartwatch, outdoor and sports features and crucially, delivers a good performance and long battery life, this is absolutely worth your consideration.

My experience has been really strong with the T-Rex 3, much like it was with the T-Rex 2, and the notable additions of the type of mapping support you’d usually pay more for, along with added support for external sensors while still offering battery life that wipes the floor with Apple and Samsung’s outdoor watches are all ingredients that help to make the T-Rex 3 stand out for the right reasons.

It has jumped up a little in price on the T-Rex 2 and it’s still not quite as mature as other more established smartwatch, this is a T-Rex that now truly feels like it’s built for outdoor adventures.

Specs

• 48.5mm case
• 10 ATM water resistance rating
• Suitable for freediving up to 45 metres 
• 1.58-inch, 480 x 480 AMOLED touchscreen display
• Up to 27 days battery life
• Up to 180 hours GPS battery life
• Dual-band GPS
• 177 sports modes
• Offline maps and turn-by-turn directions