Amazfit Bip Max Review – A Big Screen for A$159

The Amazfit Bip Max is a big watch, and the 2.07-inch AMOLED display makes good use of the space. There’s room for a large clock alongside steps and battery level. The case is nearly 50mm tall, so fit is worth checking if you normally wear a smaller watch.

At A$159 from Amazfit Australia, the Bip Max covers more than basic activity tracking. You can record a run with your phone at home, send a strength session from Zepp and pair a compatible heart-rate strap. It also handles offline maps, provided you load the route before heading out.

Design and fit · A big screen needs a big case

The Silver watch has a brushed-looking frame, a black silicone strap and one red-accented button. The red is a small touch, but it gives the case an orientation even with the screen off. Look at the underside and you can see the distinction between the aluminium-alloy frame and the plastic case, as well as the raised sensor and two charging contacts. The plastic is mostly on the side of the watch that faces your skin.

The watch measures 49.58 × 42.76mm and is 13.24mm thick including the sensor. The 10.93mm figure you might see in the spec sheet excludes that bump. It weighs 52.6g with the strap, so the thing to pay attention to is how the width sits across your wrist. On the photographed wrist, the straight sides and wide face occupy a fair share of the available space. A watch can be reasonably light and still catch a cuff or feel large when you tuck your wrist under a pillow.

The stock strap is 22mm silicone with a familiar pin buckle and plenty of closely spaced holes. It’s a better starting point for a fitness watch than a dressier band, especially if you like a snugger fit for a workout and a little more room for the rest of the day. Amazfit also sells the Bip Max in Dark Blue and Carbon Gray. The case is rated 5 ATM and Amazfit lists pool and open-water swimming modes. Hot showers and saunas are a separate matter because of the steam, so take the watch off for those.

The 2.07-inch AMOLED is the reason to buy it

A big watch face is useful when you want time, date and a couple of stats together. The photographed face puts the time in large outline digits with several smaller fields alongside it. There’s enough room for that hierarchy to work, although the face is still busy. Picking a simpler face gives you a clearer clock at a glance. Keeping the complications makes more sense if you check battery, steps or weather frequently.

The panel is 432 × 514 pixels, or 324ppi. The more important number on the product page needs some context. Amazfit quotes a 3,000-nit peak, says that peak is unavailable below 30% battery and separately lists up to 2,000 nits with automatic brightness, depending on conditions. Treat the peak as a ceiling under specific conditions. The window-light photos show both the extra room for information and the fact that the glass can still catch a reflection.

The touchscreen is tempered glass with an anti-fingerprint coating. If your current watch already feels cramped, the difference here is less about cramming in another number and more about letting the important ones breathe. The quick settings grid makes the same point. A row of small symbols has more room around each touch target, while the two side buttons provide a physical route into the menus you use most often.

Battery life and charging · Which number matters?

The headline is up to 20 days, but Amazfit actually publishes four useful figures. The typical-use figure is up to 20 days, heavy use is up to 10, the always-on display scenario is up to seven, and continuous GPS recording is rated for up to 40 hours. Those are different test profiles. Forty hours of GPS describes one sustained activity profile, while the multi-day ratings describe mixtures of screen time, sensors, notifications, calls and workouts.

The distinction between typical and heavy use is particularly instructive. Amazfit’s typical profile has the watch checking heart rate every five minutes, avoids waking the screen for phone notifications and budgets for three half-hour GPS workouts a week. Its heavy profile samples heart rate every minute, adds more health monitoring and gives the screen considerably more work. An hour of GPS most mornings, a steady stream of notifications and an always-on face put you closer to the demanding end of that range. It’s worth deciding which of those features you’d actually miss before you start changing settings to chase the headline number.

Charging is via a magnetic head that lines up with the contacts on the back of the watch. The puck takes USB-C, so you can use a cable you already carry, but you do need to bring the puck itself. A USB-C cable plugs into the puck, never directly into the watch. If you’re buying it as a gift, that’s the one omission in the box worth knowing about ahead of time.

Training · The useful bits are in the everyday modes

Amazfit lists more than 150 sport modes. The count will get it onto a comparison chart, but the day-to-day value comes from what you can do within the activities you repeat. Outdoor running has a virtual pacer and a dedicated track mode. Intervals can be created on the watch, which is handy if you decide on the session after you’ve left home. Zepp Coach can put a plan together if you’d rather have a schedule to follow than build each workout yourself.

Strength training gets more attention than a generic gym timer. Amazfit lists automatic recognition for 25 movements and lets you build training templates in the Zepp app. That makes the most sense for a repeatable session where the exercises and rest intervals are already decided. If you improvise around whatever equipment is free, a simpler workout record may be easier to keep moving through. There are separate HYROX Race, PFT and Training modes for people who want that format reflected in their activity log.

There’s also support for compatible external sensors, including a heart-rate belt and several running and cycling sensors. That gives the watch room to grow with you. If you already record rides with a cadence sensor or prefer a chest strap for intervals, check compatibility with your specific accessory before buying. For runners who like to track trends after the session, Zepp includes training load and training effect. The watch’s VO₂ max estimate is tied to supported outdoor, trail and track running modes, so you won’t get it from every activity in the menu.

GPS and offline maps · Prepare the route before you go

The Bip Max can record an outdoor workout using its own satellite positioning. You can leave the phone behind for a local run and still bring home a track. The watch supports five satellite systems. That spec describes the networks it can use and tells you little about how closely it follows a footpath between tall buildings or under trees. For anyone buying chiefly for race pacing or difficult terrain, those are the conditions where an actual GPS comparison would matter.

The 4GB of onboard storage is useful for something beyond watch faces. Load an offline map for the area and transfer a route through Zepp in advance. In a supported outdoor mode, you can follow that route on the watch and turn on turn alerts. The distinction is that the map provides context and the imported route provides guidance. The on-watch map is for browsing, so any new route needs to be prepared in advance. For a familiar weekend loop or a course someone has sent you, that workflow makes sense. It asks more of you if you like to pick a destination on the fly.

The same storage also takes local MP3s. Amazfit’s support guide documents podcast downloads through Zepp, while its Australian store still flags podcast support as software-dependent. Check the watch’s firmware and app availability if podcasts are the reason you want to go phone-free. The useful way to think about the storage is as room for the route and audio you’ve prepared before leaving. Downloads are what make it useful away from the phone.

Health and sleep · A few trends are worth more than a dashboard

The circular module on the back is Amazfit’s BioTracker 6.0 optical sensor. With the appropriate settings enabled, the Bip Max logs heart rate, blood oxygen and stress. Overnight, Zepp can show sleep stages, naps, sleep heart-rate variability and a sleep score. Some measurements, including sleep breathing quality and automatic blood oxygen, need to be enabled before the watch collects them. It pays to look through the health settings during setup, especially if a particular metric is the reason you bought the watch.

BioCharge is Amazfit’s way of turning several signals into an energy score that changes through the day. There’s a sensible use for that sort of number. If it regularly dips after late nights or a hard block of training, you have something to compare with how you felt at the time. A single low score has much less context. The same goes for sleep stages. Bedtime consistency is easy to act on, while arguing with the exact amount of REM sleep an optical wrist sensor estimated is a quick way to spend breakfast staring at your phone.

The breadth of the health tools makes sense for someone who wants a picture of ordinary activity as well as dedicated workouts. Consider the readings as estimates for general wellness and look for patterns across several days. If interval heart rate is important to how you train, the external strap option is a more meaningful feature to check than the number of health tiles on the dashboard.

Zepp OS 6 and the phone app

The photographed Android setup shows the Bip Max in Zepp’s Device tab. From there, you can change the watch face, manage the apps and decide which phone notifications deserve your wrist. The device page, watch-face gallery and workout tab are separate views. If you’re setting up a first smartwatch, start with the Device tab and choose a couple of shortcuts before worrying about the full collection of apps and scores.

Amazfit’s Zepp OS 6 layout gives workouts and the app list their own directions from the watch face, with shortcut cards on an upward swipe. By default, the upper button opens the workout list and the lower one opens the app list. Both can be reassigned. The control centre is a separate downward gesture from the notification entry. That split is worth learning early. Once you know which of those screens you want, there’s little reason to dig through a long menu for a timer or a brightness setting.

The companion app supports Android 7 or later and iOS 15 or later. Notifications, phone music controls and Bluetooth calls cover much of what you’d want while your handset is nearby. Calls use the connected phone. Platform differences matter if you intend to reply from your wrist. Amazfit lists call quick replies and WhatsApp speech-to-text replies as Android features, and its remote phone camera control as iOS-only. Zepp Flow voice assistance is available in supported regions and languages. The basics are there on both platforms, but check the individual feature if there’s one phone interaction you rely on.

Bip Max vs Bip 6 and Active Max

The closest comparison is the Bip 6. It already has a 1.97-inch AMOLED display, offline maps and 5 ATM water resistance. At Amazfit Australia’s listed prices, the Bip Max costs A$27 more. The extra spend buys a slightly larger, higher-resolution panel, a 550mAh battery instead of 340mAh and a jump from 14 to 20 days in rated typical use. If you own a Bip 6 and it still fits well and lasts through your routine, those are incremental upgrades. If you’re starting fresh, the price gap is small enough that the fit may be the bigger decision.

The Active Max is an A$80 step up from the Bip Max and takes a different approach. It has a round 1.5-inch display, an altimeter and a larger 658mAh battery. Amazfit rates it for up to 64 hours of continuous GPS, compared with 40 for the Bip Max. If you routinely record long days outside, that extra headroom and the barometric altimeter are more tangible reasons to spend the extra money than the raw number of sport modes. If most of your sessions finish within an hour and you like a rectangular display, the Bip Max keeps the difference in your pocket.

Price is one part of the value equation. The other is how much setup you’re willing to do for the features you want. The Bip Max asks for a few minutes in Zepp to make the notifications and shortcuts work for you, and more planning if you want maps and audio away from your phone. For people who use those features occasionally, that’s a fair exchange for a watch at this price.

Verdict · Is the Amazfit Bip Max worth A$159?

The Bip Max makes most sense as a first smartwatch for someone who does a bit of everything. A local run, a session at the gym and a glance at the next notification all suit it. The two buttons are a good choice for a watch with this many menus, and the roomy display is the upgrade you’ll see each time you use it. The offline map and external sensor support are the features that give it room to grow with you.

The biggest buying decision is physical. If a case nearly 50mm tall already sounds like something you’d take off before bed, the screen and sleep features pull in opposite directions. If that case fits and you’re comfortable setting up routes through Zepp, A$159 buys a well-judged mix of everyday smartwatch functions and tools for more structured training.

Amazfit Bip Max FAQ

Can the Amazfit Bip Max track a run without a phone?

Yes. Built-in GPS records outdoor workouts independently. For route guidance, transfer the route through Zepp before leaving and load the relevant offline map if you want map context on the watch.

What comes in the Amazfit Bip Max box?

The watch, 22mm silicone strap, documentation and a magnetic charging puck. The puck accepts a USB-C cable, which you supply separately.

Is the Amazfit Bip Max worth upgrading to from the Bip 6?

The case for upgrading is strongest if your Bip 6 screen feels crowded or you charge it more often than you’d like. Both offer offline maps and a rectangular AMOLED display, so a well-fitting Bip 6 still covers much of the same ground.

See the Amazfit Bip Max at Amazfit Australia · Read the Amazfit Bip Max user guide