Review : Amazfit Pace GPS Running Smartwatch Very Expensive Paper Weight

Update 21/09/2017

So after 4 months of waiting from the seller, and Aliexpress. I’m very disappointed to say that their customer service is useless.  After I confirmed receiving the this watch, there is pretty much nothing I can do about it already.  Despite contacting Aliexpress customer service, and they promised me to get a partial refund for this watch was all in vain.  So if you intend to get this watch, I suggest you head over to Gearbest instead.  At least they have a 45 days return policy as well as 360 Days Free Repair Warranty. So I won’t recommend anyone to shop at Aliexpress, as I found out from another buyer who was also in the same predicament as myself couldn’t get the refund or repair as they did not provide any warranty for it.

Anyway, just a quick update on the status of this watch is that it is I was able to get pass the update state no thanks to Huami or Aliexpress.  Fortunately for the guys in XDA I was able to unlock the bootloader and managed to get the watch to work again.  But unfortunately, the few things that works currently are Notifications, Time, Weather forecast, Music player, Alarm, Stopwatch and Training Center.  What DOESN”T work are GPS Tracking, Step counter, Heart Rate Monitor, Sleep Tracker and Compass.

My conclusion initially I thought it was due to the bad firmware update that caused it to defect like that.  But after flashing it back to the original rom and custom rom, turns out it’s the hardware that cause it to fail in the first place.  There was one time I got lucky and kept flashing the Chinese Rom and English Rom back and forth that got it up and running. But alas it was only a day before it went back to square one again where nothing works.  Battery life on this  thing now only last for 1-1.5 day (despite turning off Bluetooth), instead of 5 days as promised.

I couldn’t do a full review for this watch due to the failure it gave me. Plus I realized that it was running on Android 5.1 instead of Android Wear.  So the GPS was pretty much like the GPS you would get on your phone.  Never the less, it was great while it “worked”.  Would I recommend this over a real sports watch?  Not really, I would suggest you go and get the those 3G smart watches instead for cheaper or half the price.

So that’s all for my final review, and I’ll probably do a video on what doesn’t work. Thanks for taking the time to read up on this and you all have a great day.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was about to write a nice review about this watch.  Unfortunately I don’t think I will have the chance to do so now as the watch is pretty much an expensive paper weight.  Here’s a video on the sad state my watch is at.

When I got the watch about 2 months ago, I loved it to bits while it was still working. Loved how the notifications works right out of the box and the GPS was a bit off.  Reason because was probably due to the buildings I was running around, could be the cause of it be off.  But while I was running in the open the watch worked flawlessly.

So how did I got into that predicament in the first place? On the 16th of June, Huami release the latest patch version 1.3.3.  So as usual, it gave me a notification that there’s a new update and I should update it.  So I went and pressed the update button, and basically left it overnight.  The next day when I woke up I realized that it was still stuck in that updating screen.  So I had it on for another 2 more days before the battery died out on me.  After fully charging it, I tried to switch it back on again.  To my dismay, again it pretty much ended up how the video I uploaded on Youtube.

So the first thing I did was trying to see if anyone had the same problem like me, and unfortunately no one did.  So I first went and contact the Aliexpress seller, and they were very unresponsive and got me to do all sorts of things. So I went and did the next available option was contacting the customer support of their Amazefit Pace.  Again, it was a sad case of getting me to do a few things and eventually washed their hands as the seller I got it from was an unauthorized seller and can’t be of any assistance.

Looks like I just have to wait till the guys at XDA to figure out how to unlock the bootloader which seems to be very bleak at the moment.  So at the moment it’s just a very expensive paper weight.  So would I recommend this watch to others?  Unless you get it from an authorize seller, you can consider. Else don’t even waste your hard earn money on it.  Plus, if you intend to get your things from Aliexpress avoid this seller “Everyday Likes Store” at all cost.  As they have not been very helpful or responsive for the past 3 weeks.