Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro Review: Big Watch, Mixed GPS

Simply adding a 2 to the name of the original Cheetah was not enough for Amazfit. The Cheetah 2 Pro carries a more emphatic label that signals the ambition behind it: a reinforced case, sapphire glass, dual-band GNSS, an OLED screen, a quoted battery life of ten days and even a torch. The software side has been worked on as well, with deeper analysis of running performance. The aim is to move onto the territory of the established long-distance running watches and to earn a place on marathon runners' wrists.

This is not a watch that will suit every wrist, and that is apparent from the first contact. The Cheetah 2 Pro is an imposing device: its round case is not only wide but also very thick, at 48 x 48 x 15.6 mm, and it weighs 45.6 g. Trying it on before buying is sound advice.

It is a good-looking watch all the same. The case and bezel are mainly titanium, with a few plastic elements here and there, while the four buttons are aluminium. On the upper edge there is a reasonably powerful LED torch, a fashionable feature aimed at anyone who runs once darkness has fallen. The silicone strap remained comfortable against the skin, including when wet. At the front, the OLED screen is protected by sapphire glass.

That OLED panel measures 1.32 inches and displays 466 x 466 pixels, a density of 353 ppi. With maximum brightness climbing to 3000 cd/m2, it stays perfectly legible in bright sunshine while also dimming down discreetly in the dark. There is nothing to criticise on that front.

The Cheetah 2 Pro carries a 5 ATM water-resistance rating.

The watch runs ZeppOS, the company's own operating system. It syncs with both iOS and Android phones and carries 32 GB of storage for music and offline maps.

There are two ways of navigating the interface, the touchscreen and the physical buttons, and the two methods do broadly the same things. The buttons on the right-hand edge open the sport activity menu and the main menu, and horizontal swipes do the same job. A vertical swipe or a button press brings up notifications in one direction and, in the other, the data collected by the watch along with the weather and whatever music is playing on the phone.

Once inside a menu the buttons are reassigned. The upper-left button confirms, the one below it returns to the home screen, and the buttons on the other edge handle navigation. All of these actions can equally be carried out on the touchscreen, and the freedom that four buttons allow is particularly welcome.

The difficulty begins with what there actually is to do on the watch. ZeppOS has no third-party apps, so owners have to make do with what is preinstalled. Notifications are at least received and displayed pleasantly, complete with the logo of the app concerned.

The watch carries a microphone and a speaker, which allow calls to be taken from the wrist and conversations with Amazfit's assistant, Zepp Flow. Its capabilities are limited, not least because it is not connected to the internet and works from information dating from 2024 at best. It can, though, be used to find a settings menu.

The Cheetah 2 Pro syncs with the Zepp app on iOS and Android. The app is visually appealing but suffers here and there from awkward translations and is rather confusing to navigate. It is divided into five sections: the first collects all the data gathered by the watch, the second starts a physical activity, the third shows the medals earned, the fourth is given over to Zepp Aura, and the last holds the settings.

The Cheetah 2 Pro carries an optical heart-rate sensor, multi-band GNSS, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, a temperature sensor and a barometric altimeter.

Starting with the dual-band satellite positioning: in town and in open country alike it produces a track of average quality. It is more precise than a phone's, but less rigorous than that of a dedicated high-end running watch recorded alongside it.

On heart rate, the Cheetah 2 Pro covers the essentials. It has no difficulty following a steady, easy run and produces a curve close to that of the chest strap used as the reference. Faced with intense changes of pace, however, in this case 15-second accelerations followed by 45 seconds of recovery, the watch struggles to keep up. It settles back down by the end of the exercise, but the trace is a long way from perfectly faithful.

The watch also displays blood-oxygen, sleep and stress readings. Those figures could not be checked against laboratory equipment; the values shown were consistent with the wearer's impressions, and nothing further should be read into them. This review describes what the watch measures and displays on screen, and makes no claim about health, fitness or medical outcomes.

Battery life is a strong showing. With heart-rate tracking, notifications, sleep tracking and a daily physical activity all running, the watch lasted a little under eight days before running completely flat, with the always-on display switched off. A full recharge takes around an hour and a half, which is average for the category.

The Cheetah 2 Pro performs well across the board, but it is not the only route to a capable running watch. The Garmin Forerunner 570 provides a useful high-end running reference, while the Huawei Watch GT Runner 2 offers a similarly effective package in a smaller format. The central trade-off remains the Amazfit's week-long endurance and strong steady-state heart-rate tracking against its inconsistent interval tracking, average satellite traces and minimal app ecosystem.