Amazfit Cheetah Pro review: light on your wrist, heavy on features

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro is a brilliant, affordable multisport watch with a bright AMOLED screen, a more-or-less reliable heart rate sensor, and dual-band GPS positioning. All for a very budget-friendly price.

I’ve been testing the watch alongside the brand’s smart ring, and the two played together very nicely. As I mentioned in my Amazfit Helio Ring review, the company will forever be the first to roll out a smartwatch-smart ring combo that feeds data into the same system, which is pretty cool.

I’ve been using the Cheetah Pro on its own for a while for training, sleeping, and everything else, and it delivers the exact experience I expected from it in the nicest way possible. For the price, it’s one of the best triathlon watches around. Want to learn more? Read my full review below.

Amazfit Cheetah Pro review

Price and availability

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro was launched in 2023 (I couldn’t find the actual release date) and is available to buy now directly from Amazfit for the recommended price of £299/ $299/ AU$449. It’s also available via third-party retailers, such as Amazon. It’s currently only available in one colour: Run Track Black.

I tested the Kelvin Kiptum Commemorative Edition of the watch, which is technically the same as the standard variety but has a different strap. It also has a watch face dedicated to Kelvin and a little obituary in the settings. All proceeds from this edition are donated to the Kelvin Kiptum Foundation.

Specifications

• Weight: 34g (w/o strap), 44g (w/ strap)
• Battery life: up to 14 days (smartwatch mode), up to 44 hours (standard GPS mode)
• Water rating: 5ATM
• ​​Display size: 1.45”
• Display resolution: 480x480, 331 PPI
• Display brightness: 1,000 nits (maximum)
• Lens: Corning Gorilla Glass 3 (anti-fingerprint coating)
• Bezel: Titanium alloy
• Case: Fibre-reinforced polymer
• Case size: 47mm
• Strap: 22mm quick-release band
• GPS: dual-band

Design and build quality

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro is similar in size to the Garmin Forerunner 965 (47mm case) but much lighter and thinner. Weighing only 34 grams without the strap, it is more on par with traditionally ultralightweight smartwatches, such as Coros Pace 3.

Despite the lightness, the Amazfit has a large, 1.45” AMOLED screen with a 480x480-pixel resolution and a dual-band GPS antennae, plus a myriad of sensors, including a BioTracker PPG biometric sensor, movement sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor and more.

The round watch face is protected by a titanium alloy bezel and a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lens, the latter of which has an anti-fingerprint coating. This is important because the Cheetah Pro has touchscreen functionality, so it would get smudged pretty quickly without the special film layer on top.

The watch has what I must say is one of the most comfortable nylon straps. It’s a standard-width quick-release 22mm band with a deceivingly simple buckle that’s easy to put on with one hand.

There are two buttons: a digital watch crown and a push button, both located on the right of the case. The watch crown actually works both as a press button and a rotating crown (hurray!). The push button only has a single short-press function, so no long-press or double-press functionality.

The Cheetah Pro has a 5ATM water rating and can be used for both pool and open-water swimming. Better still, the watch can track heart rate underwater, although I haven’t tried this myself. Swimming sport modes include Pool swimming, Open water swimming, Fin swimming, and Artistic swimming.

Features

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro has a multitude of health and fitness features. It can track sleep and stress, blood oxygen levels, and heart rate variability. The watch can also track steps, heart rate, calories burned, and basically everything else a basic fitness tracker can do.

Sleep tracking is good, although it is a far cry from the gold-standard Oura Ring Gen 3. The Cheetah Pro gives you a sleep score (out of 100) and tracks all four sleep stages. The watch also monitors breathing quality and respiratory rate.

In the Zepp app, you can log your ‘pre-sleep state’ with different tags (e.g., music, reading, etc.) and wake-up mood (using emojis), which is a nice way to encourage mindfulness and better sleep habits. These two features aren’t exclusive to the Cheetah Pro, though.

Amazfit is keen on pushing the athletic nature of the Cheetah Pro, and as such, the wearable has a few training-specific features to help you get race-ready more easily. It estimates Vo2 max (seems to be on par with Garmin), readiness (based on HRV, stress and sleep), training load and recovery time.

The watch has a dual-band GPS, which means it can track your position outdoors more accurately when in challenging environments, such as urban streets with tall buildings. The default setting is Automatic, meaning single-band GPS; you can change this in the settings under ‘Workout’.

One thing to mention is that the GPS setting can only be changed in the main settings and not in workout mode, like on Garmin watches.

The Cheetah Pro also has offline mapping functionality; however, it's somewhat limited. It only works with 18 outdoor workout modes (which is understandable), and you have to download the OSM map files via the Zepp app and then transfer the files to the watch.

Speaking of sports modes, there are over 150 available on the watch straight out of the box, including 16 (!) different dance options, combat sports, board and card games, and more. There are also triathlon and multisport modes, allowing you to track all principles of these sports with just one button press.

Running is the most fleshed-out sport on the Cheetah Pro. The watch tracks a number of running metrics, including cadence, stride, vertical speed, aerobic training effect, etc. It can even estimate running power, but it can’t track advanced running metrics some heart rate monitors can.

The watch has a track running mode, though, which is nice.

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro can automatically detect 25 strength exercises, including sets, reps and rest time. It can also provide a muscle map post-workout, showing you which muscles you worked (see more on this in the Performance section).

Performance

I mainly used the Amazfit Cheetah Pro for running, cycling, and strength training. I wore the watch all day during the testing period so that it could provide me with better recovery and training load estimations.

I’ll start with the non-training features. Although the Cheetah Pro is slightly larger, thanks to nylon straps and the lightweight design, I didn’t mind wearing it continuously. The user interface is easy enough to navigate, and finding the right menu option isn’t complicated, either.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the feature similar to Garmin’s Morning Report. It pops up every morning, but it’s not quite as polished as Garmin’s. It only shows you some very basic stats, and when you reach the bottom of the page, there is no way to dismiss the message, so you have to press the push button, which takes you back to the top of the message, then press sit again to dismiss it.

Automatic sleep tracking works well, and the watch does a fine job of monitoring the different sleep stages. My only grief is the sleep schedule. I have no idea where to change it, so I always have to put the watch in Sleep Mode manually.

Vo2 max is on par with Garmin (although on the Cheetah Pro, 52 is nearly at the top of the gauge, whereas on Garmin, it’s only in the ‘Excellent’ zone). Training Load and Readiness are both impossible to double-check, but they both changed accordingly when I had a couple of drinks in the evening and was a bit run down due to a lot of physical activity.

As for training, automatic strength training isn’t quite there yet. In one session, it said I did 175 reps of shoulder presses (I wish!) and 115 bench presses in another one. On a more positive note, heart rate tracking during strength training looks alright, with plenty of leaks and throughs in the heart rate chart.

Running and cycling data looks spot on, which isn’t surprising in this day and age from a competent wearable such as the Amazfit Cheetah Pro. Indoor cycling data without a power meter looks sparse, but there is more than enough data to pore over after outdoor sports and, especially, running.

GPS looks okay, although I haven’t used the Cheetah Pro in an environment where it needed to try hard to keep track of me. As such, I did most of my runs and cycles in Automatic mode; it was perfectly fine.

Battery life

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro’s 440 mAh battery charges from zero to 100 per cent in around two hours using the magnetic charging base. The battery is brilliant: up to 14 days in smartwatch mode, which goes up to 24 days in battery-saver mode. If you don’t want any functions apart from the clock being displayed, you can squeeze 45 days out of one charge.

GPS battery life is equally as impressive. You get up to 44 hours in Automatic mode and up to 54 hours in Power Saving mode. If you want maximum precision, the Cheetah Pro will last up to 26 hours in Accuracy mode with dual-band GPS enabled.

In my experience, the watch hardly ever needs charging, and you can easily wear it for a week and a half with moderate exercise without having to charge it. Always makes me wonder why the Apple Watch can’t last longer than 18 hours, even in 2024.

Verdict

The Amazfit Cheetah Pro is one of the best affordable multisport watches right now. It does everything with high precision, from monitoring your sleep and stress to tracking your workouts and recovery.

It’s not perfect, of course, but considering it costs half as much as similar watches from Garmin, it’s hard to criticise the Cheetah Pro. It punches well above its price grade with the pretty AMOLED screen, long battery life and extended functionality.

The Zepp app could use some work to accommodate more serious athletes. In its current form, it’s better suited for general health tracking. A customisable dashboard would be excellent, although, in general, it's a pretty decent offering.

The Cheetah Pro is an excellent choice for the price-conscious athlete who needs reliable data for their training.

Also consider

If you prefer MIP screens, the Polar Pacer Pro is a reliable mid-range multisport watch with an old-school design and user interface. It offers a fast GPS, and multiple fitness tests to help you gauge your performance better. Best for budget-conscious athletes who value functionality over aesthetics. Read my full Polar Pacer Pro review.