Amazfit Bip Max Review: Budget Smartwatch, Premium Features and Outstanding Battery Life

Can a wallet-friendly smartwatch deliver everything most people actually need? Not everyone is training for a marathon or obsessing over VO₂ max, and I’m certainly not at that point in life. So I wanted to see whether the Amazfit Bip Max could keep me honest about my health without demanding that I become a fitness fanatic.

Coincidentally, the Bip Max landed just before a work trip to China. Rather than wearing it around Melbourne, it came with me to Shanghai, giving me the perfect opportunity to test it through long travel days, humid summer weather and plenty of walking.

Prior to testing the Bip Max, I reviewed the Xiaomi Watch 5. Throughout this review, I also wore my Oura Ring 5 alongside it for comparison.

 

Amazfit Bip Max First Impressions

The Amazfit Bip Max came packaged with the screen and straps separately – some assembly is required.

The black strap is made from liquid silicone and uses a traditional 22mm quick release design with a classic pin buckle. It is a step above the injection-moulded silicone bands commonly found on budget smartwatches.

That said, the strap still feels unmistakably budget in the hand. My first thought was that it might become sticky and uncomfortable in the oppressive heat and humidity of a Shanghai summer.

The watch itself pairs an aluminium alloy bezel with a polymer body, surrounding a large 2.07-inch AMOLED display.

Despite the plastic construction, it makes a more premium first impression than its asking price would suggest.

 

Setting Up the Amazfit Bip Max

The app for this is Zepp – the overarching brand of Amazfit.

Getting the watch up and running was an easy process, the wizard takes you through everything and you just have to go along for the ride.

As with most modern smartwatches, the Zepp app requests a fairly extensive list of permissions during setup. Access to location, Bluetooth, notifications and health sensors is all required if you want the watch to deliver its full range of features.

But one thing I always do, whenever I onboard a smartwatch, is to spend the effort to really include only the core apps that I need notifications for. I get a stupid amount of notifications and without this step, my smartwatch is constantly buzzing.

For those who enjoy making a device just so, the app provides plenty of free watch faces, both official and third party. There are also paid watch faces if none of the free ones take your fancy.

Personally, I went with “Code World”, an ASCII-style retro watch face that gives me the key information I want at a glance.

Living with the Amazfit Bip Max

First things first. When I landed in Shanghai at night, it was still about 28C. During the day temperatures regularly climbed to around 38°C, with humidity hovering between 78% and 85%. It’s the sort of weather where simply walking outside is enough to work up a sweat.

In the interest of transparency, I did not spend all my time outdoors. However, I did spend time in minimally environmentally controlled buildings, walked along the streets of Suzhou and Shanghai at different times, including during the peak of the heat and definitely sweated.

The Bip Max’s liquid silicone strap turned out to be one of the biggest surprises of the trip. Despite my initial concerns, it never became sticky or uncomfortable, even after extended periods of walking in the Shanghai heat. Occasionally I loosened it slightly to improve airflow, but I never reached the point where I wanted to take it off. That’s about as much praise as I can give a smartwatch band after several days in a Chinese summer.

 

Amazfit Bip Max vs Oura Ring 5: Real-World Tracking Comparison

One of the things I wanted to find out was how closely the Amazfit Bip Max’s readings aligned with those from the Oura Ring 5.

Because the Oura Ring has collected months of historical data on me, comparing readiness or long-term trends wouldn’t be particularly fair. Instead, I’ve limited the comparison to the raw measurements each device recorded during the trip.

During the trip, the Bip Max generally tracked the same broad trends as the Oura Ring 5. The absolute figures were not always identical, but both devices painted a reasonably similar picture of my activity and sleep across the three-day comparison period.

Step counting produced the greatest variation. On 28 July, the two devices were separated by only 286 steps, with Oura recording 11,029 and the Bip Max recording 10,743. That is an impressively close result given that one device was worn on my finger and the other on my wrist.

The largest discrepancy occurred on 29 July, when Oura recorded 13,044 steps compared with 9,136 on the Bip Max – a difference of 3,908 steps. The relationship then reversed on 30 July, with the Bip Max recording 1,220 more steps than Oura.

Although I’ve only shown the Shanghai data here, I continued wearing both devices for another four days after returning home. Over the full seven-day comparison, the Oura Ring averaged 7,620 steps per day, while the Bip Max averaged 6,699 – a difference of approximately 721 steps (9.5%). The additional data reinforced my impression from China: while the two devices didn’t always agree on the exact number of steps, they consistently reflected the same level of daily activity.

For two wearables measuring movement from completely different parts of the body and using different step-detection algorithms, I think that is a respectable result. Wearables don’t simply count every arm movement or footfall; they each apply their own filtering, thresholds and motion analysis to determine what qualifies as a step. Throw in busy travel days involving airports, trains, escalators, luggage and frequent stops, and it’s hardly a controlled laboratory environment.

Sleep tracking proved to be even more consistent. During the three days in China, the recorded sleep duration differed by only 10 to 13 minutes. Extending the comparison to a full week didn’t materially change the outcome. Most nights remained within around an hour of each other, with both devices consistently identifying my shortest and longest nights of sleep.

Stress is the one metric where direct comparisons simply aren’t possible. Oura reports cumulative physiological stress over time, along with periods of restoration, while Zepp generates a proprietary stress score. Those values represent different methodologies rather than different levels of accuracy. What I found more interesting was that both platforms broadly reflected the same story. During the demanding travel days in China, both indicated elevated stress and very little opportunity for recovery. Once I returned home and life became less hectic, both systems reflected that change, with Oura showing dramatically less accumulated stress and Zepp’s stress scores settling into a more consistent range.

For me, that’s ultimately the more meaningful measure. Most people aren’t looking for laboratory-grade precision from a smartwatch; they want an accurate picture of whether they’ve had an active day or a sedentary one, whether they’ve slept reasonably well, and whether they’re running themselves into the ground. Based on a week of side-by-side use, the Amazfit Bip Max consistently told the same overall story as the considerably more expensive Oura Ring 5, even if the raw numbers didn’t always match exactly.

Also it is broadly accurate that I generally average 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night.

 

HybridCharge: Amazfit’s Energy and Recovery Score Explained

HybridCharge is Amazfit’s energy management system. Rather than focusing on a single metric such as heart rate or sleep, it combines multiple health indicators: including sleep, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), stress and activity, to estimate your body’s available energy throughout the day.

Unlike a readiness score that’s calculated once each morning, HybridCharge updates continuously, reflecting how exercise, stress and rest affect your recovery.

I found myself checking it less for the number itself and more for the trend. During the China trip it steadily declined as the long days, short nights and humid weather accumulated. That broadly aligned with how I felt. I wasn’t suddenly exhausted because the score dropped, but it did provide a useful reminder that I probably wasn’t recovering as well as I thought. (Moutai may have some contribution to that, just saying.)

But did it align with how I actually felt? The answer to this is a little tricky because of my natural cadence. While I am realistically tired, the excitement of the trip, learning new things and engaging with my peers can mask a lot.

That said, I often took opportunities to rest whilst in transit.

Like any recovery metric, HybridCharge shouldn’t be treated as gospel, but it provides a useful snapshot of whether you’re pushing yourself too hard or recovering well.

 

Display, Notifications, Offline Maps and Everyday Use

Screen readability was excellent throughout the trip. Amazfit claims a peak brightness of 3,000 nits and, while I never deliberately stood in full midday sun staring at the display, I never struggled to read it outdoors.

Vibration strength seems to be more than adequate. I don’t recall missing any notifications that came through, although I will admit to ignoring more than a few.

Before leaving Australia I downloaded offline maps for Suzhou and Shanghai. They occupied surprisingly little storage once I limited the download area, and proved useful during an evening walk through Suzhou.

I’m blessed with the navigational nous of a homing pigeon, so being able to glance at my wrist to confirm where I was proved surprisingly reassuring.

The built-in speaker is predictably small and tinny, but that’s hardly a criticism. Nobody is buying a smartwatch expecting hi-fi audio. It’s perfectly adequate for taking a quick Bluetooth call or listening to a short podcast in a pinch.

 

Battery Life and Real-World Endurance

Amazfit claims up to 20 days battery life with the 550 mAh battery. With heavy use cutting that number by half, and down to 7 days with Always-On Display.

Continuous GPS tracking will slash that down to 40 hours.

I last charged the Bip Max the night before I headed off to Shanghai. I went all in by leaving the charging puck at home, that meant whatever battery life I got was all I had until I arrived back in Melbourne.

Throughout the trip I left continuous heart-rate monitoring enabled, tracked sleep each night, checked notifications constantly, used GPS navigation briefly and spent an unhealthy amount of time comparing readings against the Oura Ring. Even with that usage, the Bip Max still had 63% remaining after just under five days. It won’t hit 20 days, but eight days on from when I last charged it, it is sitting at 51% which isn’t shabby at all.

The Bip Max was worn continuously except for one night, when I was too tired to remember to put it back on after a shower.

 

Amazfit Bip Max Review Verdict

Can a budget smartwatch replace something far more expensive – such as an Oura Ring for the average person? I covered off earlier how they are different devices with different methods of measurement.

However, I think functionality wise, if you are not an athlete, the Amazfit Bip Max is not a bad option.

What does set the Bip Max apart though, is the inclusion of offline GPS – a feature rarely found at this price point.

On the whole, the Bip Max surprised me.

I expected a competent A$159 smartwatch that would occasionally remind me of its price.

Instead, I came away impressed by how complete the package feels. The display is solid, battery life outstanding, offline maps are genuinely useful and, perhaps most importantly, the health tracking consistently reflected what I was actually doing. A nice touch is the morning updates and evening wraps to bookend your day.

At A$159, the Amazfit Bip Max costs around a quarter of what many premium smartwatches do, yet I rarely found myself feeling short-changed during day-to-day use.

No, it doesn’t replace a dedicated sports watch or the deeper health insights you’ll get from something like the Oura Ring. But that’s not really what it’s trying to do. For everyday users who want a capable smartwatch with excellent battery life, solid health tracking and genuinely useful extras such as offline maps, the Amazfit Bip Max represents outstanding value for money.

DRN would like to thank Amazfit for providing the review unit. This one earned some frequent flyer points.