The Garmin Fenix 8 may have only just landed to take on the Apple Watch Ultra 2, but a new rival has already surfaced: the leaked Amazfit T-Rex 3 appears to feature an even larger AMOLED display.
As noted by Check notebookthe beautifully named T-Rex 3 appears to have been prematurely listed on the Singaporean online store ShoppingThe Amazfit T-Rex 2 was already a budget rival to the best running watches and Garmin watches, but its successor looks to feature a few useful upgrades.
One of those is a generous 1.5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 480 x 480 and a density of 326 PPI (pixels per inch). That’s slightly larger than the 1.3-inch display on the Fenix 8, though the Garmin watch packs those pixels slightly closer together for a sharper 453 PPI display.
Still, that new display is said to be twice as bright as previous T-Rex watches (at 2,000 nits of brightness), and the leak suggests there’s a larger 700mAh battery on board to keep it going for around 21 days between charges. That’s a bit short of the Fenix 8’s claimed 29 days of battery life in smartwatch mode, but still more than decent.
It looks like the T-Rex 3 will have even more sports modes than the 150 its predecessor offered, with 170 modes listed in the leaked specs. While it may lack the diving features of the Amazfit T-Rex Ultra, the new watch otherwise looks like a fully-featured Forerunner or Fenix rival thanks to heart rate monitoring, GPS, and SpO2 sensors (which measure your blood oxygen saturation)
Of course, there’s also likely to be some AI assistance on board, with listings suggesting the T-Rex 3 will feature the Zepp Flow AI voice assistant. And while we don’t yet know when the sports watch will launch, the leak suggests it’ll have a tempting price tag of S$359 (which converts to around $275 / £210 / AU$405).
A Garmin killer?
While the leaked specs of the Amazfit T-Rex 3 look promising on paper, we’re also hoping it fixes some other issues we encountered with its predecessor.
Our Amazfit T-Rex 2 review found that while this model is a “great outdoor watch,” a few “minor accuracy issues and some less intuitive controls keep it from being a budget Garmin killer.”
The accuracy issues were mainly related to the GPS, which seemed to record shorter distances than competing adventure watches when we were out in the wilderness.
We concluded that the watch was fine for “logging runs and bike rides,” but that more adventurous fitness fanatics might be better off with a Garmin Instinct 2 or Garmin Fenix 7.
While we’re pleased with what we’ve seen from the Garmin Fenix 8 so far, that watch also starts at $999 / £869 / AU$1,699. So if you’re after a more affordable adventure watch to track sports and you don’t mind a slightly less intuitive user interface, it might be worth keeping an eye on the T-Rex 3 for its official launch.
