Technologies
I Tested the Amazfit Bip 6. It’s Proof Good Smartwatches Don’t Need to Cost a Fortune
After wearing it for a month, I’d say the $80 Amazfit Bip 6 checks (almost) every box — as long as you can live with a few rough edges.
Our Experts
I’ll admit I judged the Amazfit Bip 6 by its low price tag. At $80, I didn’t expect it to hold its own, let alone compete with higher-end smartwatch rivals. But after a week of testing, I can say it’s more than just a good deal.
At a time when most smartwatches cost hundreds of dollars, the Bip 6 stands out because it goes beyond the basics. In my time testing the Bip 6, I found the fitness tracking to be solid, the advanced health metrics to be accurate and the battery life to last more than a week on a charge. Add in the fact that it works on Android and iPhone, and you have one of the few sub-$100 smartwatches that’s actually worth your time.
Pros
- $80 price is much less than most watches
- Works with Android and iOS
- Great battery life (lasts a week with heavy use)
- Tracks a wide variety of fitness activities accurately
- Temperature tracking and advanced sleep monitoring
Cons
- Single sizing option (44mm)
- UI and app are unintuitive
- Some health metrics are hard to interpret
- Voice assistant is unreliable
- Bluetooth range is short (especially on iPhone)
It’s not the most refined watch out there. Design and navigation feel clunky compared to pricier models, but this feels like a small price to pay (pun intended) for everything else the Amazfit Bip 6 delivers on.
If you’re after function over polish, the Amazfit Bip 6 makes for an easy, affordable entry point into the smartwatch world. It’s ideal for first-time smartwatch buyers who want to explore health and fitness tracking without spending big, and particularly appealing to iPhone users curious about smartwatches but hesitant to commit to an Apple Watch.
Amazfit Bip 6 design
The Amazfit Bip 6’s design is simple and functional. It has the boxy, flat look of an old Pebble Watch, with a slight curve to the screen and a metal trim that gives it a bit of polish. The 1.97-inch AMOLED display (390 x 450 pixels) looks bright and crisp indoors but I struggle seeing what’s on screen in direct sunlight. While it feels light, the 44mm watch looks bulky on my medium-sized wrist (6.5 inches), and it doesn’t come in any other size.
My review unit came with the black sport band but it’s also available in charcoal, stone and red (which I might’ve preferred). All the bands lean to the sporty side of the design spectrum and there’s no real way to dress it up unless you go with an alternative band from Amazon.
Amazfit Bip 6 setup and software
Right out of the box, the Bip 6 doesn’t offer the smoothest onboarding experience and it took me a bit of fine-tuning to get the watch set up the way I like. I swapped out the default watch face, adjusted battery settings to keep the screen on during workouts (there’s no true always-on display) and customized which fitness metrics I wanted to appear during my runs. It also took a little trial and error to figure out what the physical button and various swipe gestures actually do. It’s not as intuitive as other smartwatches like the Galaxy or Apple Watch, but if you dig deep enough in settings, you should find a way to make it work.
Even with those tweaks, I still ran into some UI quirks. The font, for example, is too large and uses a billboard-style animation to reveal text that doesn’t fit on the screen — making it hard to read at a glance. The screen feels sluggish, with noticeable lag after selecting an option.
The Bip 6’s voice assistant, Flow, is perhaps its most obvious weakness. Flow somehow makes Siri seem like a damn mind reader. I usually rely on voice commands for quick tasks like setting a timer or replying to messages and while Flow claims to handle these, it rarely gets things right on the first try. I found myself screaming at my wrist, which I’m not proud to admit. Even when it did understand the assignment, the lag between recognizing my request and responding was so long that I was better off just tapping through the menus and doing things on my own.
Fortunately Android phone users can reply to texts with a keyboard or dictation but iPhone owners are out of luck unless they go through a third-party app workaround. It doesn’t help that Flow functionality relies on the phone and the Bluetooth range (at least with an iPhone) is frustratingly short. I often lost connection when my phone was just one room away. This makes the Find My Phone feature pretty useless if you depend on it as a lifeline to locate your phone.
Once I got past those early growing pains, though, the rest of the experience was much smoother sailing.
Amazfit Bip 6 battery life
Battery life is easily one of the Bip 6’s strongest features. I put it through the paces, including multiple GPS workouts, heart rate tracking and using the always-on display during runs and it still managed to get more than a week on a single charge — 8 days to be exact. Had I been more conservative with the settings, I likely would’ve come close to the two-week promise the company boasts. Higher end rivals like the Apple Watch, Galaxy Watch and Pixel Watches need charging after a day and a half. Even the more expensive Apple Watch Ultras with larger batteries don’t last longer than three days on a charge.
When you finally do have to go back for a charge, however, it’ll take about two hours to go from zero to full and there’s no fast-charging option that I know of. Although I’ll take longer lasting battery life over faster charging any day, I’d rather leave it charging overnight once a week rather than having to figure out a time during the day to charge it back up. You’ll also have to supply your own USB-C charging cable (and brick), as the box only includes a magnetic charging puck that needs to be plugged in. Most new watches like the Pixel Watch and the Apple Watch have stopped including the charging brick but do provide the charging cable.
Amazfit Bip 6 fitness features
To say the watch covers fitness tracking basics would be underselling it. It has all the workouts you’d ever need plus nuanced metrics for runners and other popular sports. I mainly tested the running workouts as that’s my primary form of exercise.
Tracking a run on the Bip 6 feels shaky at first — it takes about 10 seconds to lock onto a GPS signal, which can be a momentum killer when you’re ready to hit the pavement. But once it locks in, it’s off to the races. In multiple runs, the GPS worked reliably even without my phone. Heart rate tracking, including zone breakdowns, held up surprisingly well. The data was on par with the Polar chest strap HR monitor (the gold standard for consumer heart rate tracking) which I use to test smartwatches. The Bip 6 was slower at detecting spikes as I approached my peak but that’s a common shortcoming of wrist-based monitors — not something unique to this device. If you’re willing to dig into the Zepp app (more on this later) you’ll also find nuanced metrics like cadence and stride to help you analyze your run.
It did hit a bump in bright sunlight, though, as the screen doesn’t get bright enough to read outdoors.
For indoor workouts, it tracks strength training and even attempts to identify which muscle groups you’re using. I didn’t do a traditional strength workout so accuracy is still TBD but it did correctly flag arm muscles during a Pilates session I had labeled as strength training for testing purposes.
Amazfit Bip 6 health and wellness
The Bip 6 had a hard time telling the difference between when I was sleeping and when I was watching White Lotus and gave me about an hour’s worth of sleep «extra credit» on weekend nights when I was very much awake. It’s worth noting that the Apple Watch has made the same mistake in the past, which makes me question how lucid I actually am when I’m lying comatose on the couch at the end of the day.
The actual measurements, however, are very helpful, as it measures heart rate and temperature variations, sleep stages and breathing quality. This could potentially help signal the onset of diseases similar to the vitals check on other wearables like the Oura ring and Apple Watch.
The Bip 6 also offers a vitals check outside of sleep mode called One Tap Measuring, which collects your heart rate, SpO₂, stress and breathing rate in a single read. You can even track your menstrual cycle on the watch but it doesn’t factor skin temperature into the ovulation predictions like other health wearables.
And if you really want to dig into your sleep and health data, you can subscribe to the Zepp Aura add-on, which offers advanced sleep analysis, AI-powered coaching and tools that can help flag conditions like sleep apnea and insomnia. It’s currently on sale for $60 a year (normally $150).
I also had a bit of trouble blocking notifications during sleep and I had to set up the «do not disturb» mode manually because it didn’t mirror what I had set up on my phone.
Amazfit Bip 6’s Zepp App
The problem with all this health data is that it comes with little to no context. Whether you’re looking at the immediate results on the watch or reviewing long-term health trends in the Zepp app, there’s no guidance on what the numbers mean, what’s considered normal or how to take action based on them. Maybe the Aura premium option helps make sense of it all, but I didn’t test it for this review.
The watch runs on Amazfit’s proprietary Zepp OS, with all your data and settings managed through the Zepp app on your phone. It handles everything from system settings and health metrics to the app and watch face stores. But good luck finding what you need because the Zepp app’s interface is not intuitive and layers tabs upon tabs.
Even when you do find the tab you need, the data itself is often hard to understand. As someone who’s reviewed smartwatches and fitness wearables for more than a decade, I consider myself well-versed in fitness lingo but even I found myself questioning what some of these scores meant.
Take the Readiness Score, which sits right at the top of the dashboard claiming its importance without telling you why. I had to dig deep to figure out it’s calculated using a mix of sleep, exertion, skin temperature and heart rate. But even then, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be ready for. To function? To work out? To parent? I assume it’s similar to Garmin’s Body Battery, which I usually ignore anyway. As a working mom of three, I don’t have the luxury of waiting around for a good score to give me permission to exercise. If I don’t squeeze in a workout during the one 30-minute window I get to myself, it’s just not happening. Ready or not.
Then there’s the PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) score, which, according to the app, reflects your physical condition. More digging revealed you’re supposed to keep it above 100 to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease and boost life expectancy. All good in theory but by the time I finished decoding what the PAI and Readiness scores were, I was too far down the rabbit hole and more ready to lie down than to take action on my metrics.
Another bonus feature is an AI-powered food journal that automatically populates calorie and nutritional information from a photo or barcode. I tested it with a home made cheese sandwich, and it was surprisingly accurate in calculating calorie count, which I later cross referenced with the actual nutrition information of each ingredient. I can see this being a practical tool for people who like to keep track of intake for weight management but didn’t log long term for a comprehensive analysis of this feature.
Amazfit Bip 6 final verdict
The Amazfit Bip 6 is a functional, subdued powerhouse that won’t dazzle you at first glance but will consistently overdeliver where it counts. It’s the kind of rare find that you don’t expect to come across in the sub-$100 smartwatch world and easily the best option we’ve tested in its price range.
Technologies
Investors Favor Alphabet’s AI Spending Over Meta’s Despite Both Beating Earnings Expectations
Despite both Meta and Alphabet surpassing earnings expectations and raising AI spending forecasts, investors reacted differently, with Alphabet’s stock rising 7% while Meta’s fell 7%, highlighting the market’s preference for companies with cloud infrastructure that can monetize AI investments.
On Wednesday, both Meta and Alphabet surpassed analyst expectations in their quarterly earnings, marking their most robust growth in several years. The companies also raised their annual capital expenditure projections, signaling a continued commitment to investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
However, Wall Street responded differently to the two tech giants. Alphabet’s stock surged 7% in after-hours trading, whereas Meta’s shares dropped by 7%.
This divergence continues a pattern that has weighed on Meta during much of the generative AI expansion. Unlike Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, which operate vast cloud infrastructure businesses that convert AI investments into revenue, Meta lacks such a division.
Consequently, convincing investors of the return on AI spending is more challenging for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as the benefits must primarily manifest through higher ad revenue and improved profitability.
All four major tech firms released their quarterly results on Wednesday. While Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon reported cloud divisions that outperformed expectations, Meta was the only one among them to see its stock decline.
Leading up to the earnings releases, Alphabet’s stock had climbed 118% over the past year, significantly outpacing Meta’s 21% gain. Amazon rose 40%, and Microsoft increased by approximately 8%.
«Google is outperforming its peers which is well reflected in the current valuation,» analysts at D.A. Davidson wrote in a report after the results, maintaining their neutral rating.
The capital expenditure figures across the board are staggering and continue to grow, partly because companies are spending more on memory due to a global shortage driven by surging AI demand.
Alphabet updated its 2026 capex guidance range to $180 billion to $190 billion, up from its previous estimate of $175 billion to $185 billion. CFO Anat Ashkenazi said the company’s 2027 capex is expected to «significantly increase» from this year’s figure.
The spending forecast was coupled with revenue growth of 20%, the fastest for any quarter since 2022. Cloud revenue soared 63%, and Alphabet said it has a backlog of $460 billion, nearly double where it was last quarter, because of demand for AI infrastructure.
Defending the Spending
Meta upped its capex guidance for the year to between $125 billion and $145 billion, from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion, a move the company said, «reflects our expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity.»
Similar to when Meta raised its capex forecast in October, Zuckerberg spent time on the earnings call defending the company’s hefty AI spending, pitching it as necessary for future growth while bolstering the core online ad business.
«The trend over the last few years seems clear, that we are seeing an increasing return on the amount that we can improve engagement for people and value for advertisers,» Zuckerberg said. «This encourages us to continue investing heavily in what we expect will provide increasing value over the coming years as well.»
On the revenue side, growth is more impressive than at Google. Sales jumped 33% from a year earlier, marking the strongest period for expansion since 2021.
Zuckerberg said the company is «very focused on increasing the efficiency of our investments,» and is developing custom silicon with Broadcom while investing in a «significant amount of AMD chips to complement the new Nvidia systems that we’re rolling out as well.»
Meta CFO Susan Li told analysts that the company needs to spend big on AI in order to «meet our infrastructure needs and ensure we maximize our strategic flexibility over the coming years.» The company also has to ensure it has enough computing resources to train more AI models, build more products and help its AI agent push for consumers and businesses worldwide, Li said.
She added that Meta’s recent «multi-year cloud deals and our infrastructure purchase agreements» contributed to a $107 billion jump in contractual commitments during the quarter.
Still, investors are waiting to see new revenue streams come to fruition after Zuckerberg spent the past 10 months overhauling his company’s AI strategy and bringing in high-priced talent. Earlier this month, Meta debuted Muse Spark as its first proprietary foundation model.
Alphabet, meanwhile, has been cashing in on its bets, including on homegrown chips called tensor processing units (TPUs), which are increasingly competing with Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs).
CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the momentum in the chip side of the business several times on Wednesday’s call.
«There’s tremendous demand for both AI solutions as well as AI infrastructure, including massive interest in our GPU offerings, as well as TPUs,» he said.
WATCH: Meta shares sliding
Technologies
Alphabet’s Q1 Earnings Expected to Reflect Sustained Expansion, Driven by Cloud Division
Alphabet’s Q1 earnings are expected to show strong growth driven by cloud and AI advancements, with revenue projected to rise 18.7% year-over-year. The company’s stock has surged 118% over the past year, supported by Gemini AI integration and expanding cloud infrastructure investments.
Alphabet is scheduled to release its first-quarter financial results after market close on Wednesday. Below are the key metrics Wall Street anticipates, based on analyst estimates from LSEG: — Earnings per share: $2.63 — Revenue: $107.2 billion Investors are also tracking several additional figures in the upcoming report: — Google Cloud: Estimated at $18.05 billion, per StreetAccount — YouTube advertising: Estimated at $9.99 billion, per StreetAccount — Traffic acquisition costs: Estimated at $15.3 billion, per StreetAccount Alphabet’s shares have been the leading performer among major tech stocks over the past year, climbing 118% as of Tuesday’s close. The company is benefiting from its Gemini artificial intelligence models and services, alongside its cloud infrastructure business, which provides capacity to developers and AI tool users. Analysts forecast an 18.7% increase in revenue from $90.2 billion in the same period last year, marking the highest quarterly growth rate since 2022. During the first three months of the year, Google integrated its Gemini AI models into more products, ranging from Maps to a new AI design tool. Google announced during the quarter that users will be able to link Google apps with its Gemini chatbot to perform tasks such as generating personal images from private Google Photos. Google is experiencing significant growth from its cloud division, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Revenue is projected to surge 47% from $12.26 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Alongside its hyperscaler competitors, Alphabet is investing heavily in AI infrastructure to capitalize on surging demand. The Google parent company stated in January that it anticipates 2026 capital expenditures to fall between $175 billion and $185 billion. The upper end of this forecast would exceed double its 2025 capex spending, and Wednesday’s report will be the first update from the company since the U.S.-Iran conflict began in February, causing oil prices to spike. Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are also set to release quarterly results after the bell on Wednesday. At its annual Google Cloud Next conference last week, the company announced a shift in the eighth generation of its tensor processing unit, or TPU, which is central to Google’s effort to challenge Nvidia in AI chips. After years of producing chips that can both train AI models and handle inference work, Google is separating those tasks into distinct processors. Alphabet’s investments may also be a focus for investors. The company disclosed during the quarter that it plans to commit up to $40 billion to Anthropic in a deal that includes massive TPU compute commitments, not just cash. Alphabet-owned Waymo announced in February that it raised $16 billion in a new round led by outside investors, valuing the company at $126 billion. Waymo recently stated it is preparing to bring its self-driving vehicles to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. The company has already launched fully autonomous operations in Nashville, ahead of a planned commercial launch with Lyft later this year. The company also reduced some equity stakes. Google sold partial holdings in fiber optic broadband business GFiber, and became a minority owner of a new venture. Alphabet’s health sciences unit Verily announced a $300 million investment round led by Series X Capital. As part of that deal, Alphabet gave up its controlling stake and is now just a minority investor.
Technologies
Amazon to Release First-Quarter Financials Following Market Close
Amazon is set to release its first-quarter financial results after the market closes on Wednesday, with Wall Street anticipating a 14% revenue increase to $177.3 billion.
Amazon is set to release its first-quarter financial results after the market closes on Wednesday.
Here’s what Wall Street is anticipating, based on estimates compiled by LSEG:
— Earnings per share: $1.64
— Revenue: $177.3 billion
Wall Street is also tracking other key revenue figures:
— Amazon Web Services: $36.92 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
— Advertising: $16.87 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
Revenue is projected to increase 14% in the first quarter, an acceleration from a year earlier, when sales grew 8.6% to $155.7 billion, and roughly in line with last quarter’s 13.6% growth.
Investors will be closely watching Amazon’s cloud business, where revenue is expected to jump roughly 26% from a year ago. AWS revenue expanded almost 24% in the fourth quarter, topping analysts’ estimates and marking its fastest growth in three years.
Amazon and other big tech companies have been trying to justify their hefty artificial intelligence spending, which could approach $700 billion in 2026. Fellow hyperscalers Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are also scheduled to report results after the bell on Wednesday, the first time the group will be updating Wall Street on capex since the start of the U.S.-Iran war in February.
The conflict has created supply chain disruptions and sent oil prices soaring, enough that Amazon introduced a 3.5% fuel surcharge for some of its third-party sellers.
Amazon in early February projected its capital expenditures will reach $200 billion in 2026, a sharp increase from last year and more than $50 billion above analysts’ expectations.
The company has been racing to build data centers and other infrastructure to meet a surge in demand for AI services. Last quarter Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AWS could be growing even faster if it had more capacity, noting there’s “very high demand” from customers for both core and AI workloads.
Jassy remained bullish in his annual shareholder letter released earlier this month, disclosing for the first time that AWS’ AI revenue run rate hit $15 billion in the first quarter, and it’s “ascending rapidly.”
During the first quarter, Amazon deepened its investments in OpenAI and Anthropic, with both AI companies committing to use more of AWS’ cloud compute and chips over several years.
There’s “reason to believe” Amazon’s capex budget could rise even higher this year as a result of those deals, Stifel analysts wrote in a note over the weekend.
“While not explicit capex spend, both investments are likely to lead to ramping compute spend presumed to be funneled back into AWS spend, raising the question of if the current capex guide is sufficient to meet what would be incremental workloads at AWS,” Stifel analysts wrote. The firm has a buy rating on Amazon’s shares.
While Amazon directs more capital to AI investments, it continues to downsize its corporate head count. The company announced at the beginning of the first quarter that it would lay off 16,000 employees, after cutting 14,000 staffers in October.
Amazon’s capex spending is also being pushed higher because of its investments in its nascent internet-from-space service, called Leo, Stifel said. The company is aiming to begin commercial service in mid-2026.
Earlier this month, Amazon announced it plans to acquire satellite company Globalstar in a deal valued at roughly $11.57 billion, the second-largest acquisition, behind its 2017 purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.
The company has been working to produce enough satellites and launch more of them into space as it gets closer to a Federal Communications Commission deadline in July requiring it to have about half of its 3,236-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit.
Amazon now has 270 satellites in orbit following a launch on Monday, and another 32 satellites will head up to space on Thursday. The company has asked the FCC for an extension, but has yet to receive approval, while its primary satellite internet rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, urged the agency to reject Amazon’s request.
WATCH: Amazon needs to spend more to keep AWS as premier AI play
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