Your first 30 days with the Amazfit Cheetah Pro

Twenty minutes on the first evening. Everything the Cheetah Pro will tell you for the next month is built on a heart-rate trace, a satellite mode and a screen setting, and all three are decided here.

1. 1

   Put it where the sensor works

   A finger’s width above the wrist bone, one notch tighter than feels natural for the first week, sensor window clean. The Cheetah Pro has a 47 mm case and wants a wrist of about 160 mm or more to sit flat; on a smaller wrist it rocks, and a rocking sensor is the source of half the strange numbers in month one. See wrist and case size .

2. 2

   Set your maximum heart rate, or clear it

   Every zone, every training-effect score and most of the load figures hang off this one number. If you know it from a recent hard effort, enter it. If you do not, delete the age-based default rather than leaving it: a wrong maximum quietly miscounts every run.

3. 3

   Decide about multiband now

   The Cheetah Pro has multiband GPS. Under trees, between buildings and in steep valleys it is the accuracy that matters; on an open road it changes nothing and costs battery — 26 h of GPS becomes 26 h with it on. Pick one mode and leave it: switching between runs makes the pace history uncomparable. See multiband GPS: when it matters .

4. 4

   Choose gesture or always-on, and mean it

   The Cheetah Pro has an AMOLED screen. Always-on is the single biggest drain after the GPS chip — the site’s battery guide takes a fifth off for it — and gesture mode is what the quoted 26 h assumes. Try gesture for a week before deciding it annoys you.

5. 5

   Build one data screen you will actually read

   Pace, heart rate, distance, time. Four fields, one screen, big digits. Everything else can be a second screen you swipe to when you want it. The stock screens show too much and you will read none of it at speed.

6. 6

   Download maps before you need them

   The Cheetah Pro shows full topographic maps, and the tiles for your region are a download over Wi-Fi or the app, not something in the box. Do it on the first evening; it is slow, and the first time you want a map is not the time to discover it is missing.

7. 7

   Load music now, decide about it later

   Music from the watch to earphones is convenient and expensive: on the one maker that publishes a figure, GPS with music is about a third of GPS alone. Load a playlist while the watch is on the charger, then treat it as a short-run feature until you have checked the battery planner for anything long.

8. 8

   Calibrate the altimeter once

   The barometric altimeter is what makes the elevation on a hilly run honest. Calibrate it once from a known height or from GPS on a clear day, and let it auto-calibrate after that.

Zepp’s training tools on the Cheetah Pro starts producing figures after the first run and the first night. These are the ones that arrive first, with what each one needs before it means anything.

• PAI — from the first day, a rolling seven-day score built from heart-rate response to everything you do, with 100 as the target. It is a health-habit figure rather than a training one.
• Training Effect and Training Load — after each session, an aerobic and anaerobic effect and a load figure, plus a recovery time. Generic until the watch has your fitness level.
• A VO2max estimate — after the first outdoor run with heart rate.
• Readiness — after a few nights, a score from overnight HRV, resting heart rate, skin temperature and sleep. Like every readiness score, it needs its ranges first.

The second layer of figures is where the Cheetah Pro earns its price, and where a new owner is most often misled — because each of them shows a value before it has the data to justify one. What follows is what each needs, on this maker’s system: the baseline takes about a week for Readiness, a few weeks for load.

• Readiness as a trend — about a week of nights for the score to be about you rather than a default.
• Training load over time — the acute-versus-chronic view needs a few weeks of sessions before a normal week stops looking like a spike.
• Sleep — from the first night; the trends want a fortnight, and Readiness wants the watch on your wrist for all of them.

Zepp’s system is the closest to Garmin’s in shape — a load figure, a training effect, a readiness score — and the least documented, so it deserves the most scepticism in the first month. After four weeks the Readiness has ranges and the load history has depth; before that, PAI and the sleep score are the two numbers worth looking at.

• PAI at 100 is a health target, not a training plan. A runner in training will sit well above it; that is fine.
• Wear it to bed or ignore Readiness. It is built entirely on overnight data.
• Recovery time is a floor, not a ceiling.
• The model cannot see illness or life stress — see training load and readiness, and how much to believe .

Two figures on the Cheetah Pro are worth writing down at the end of the month, because they are the ones you will compare against later: the fitness estimate and, if the watch shows one, the morning recovery figure. Everything else is a snapshot.

These are the Cheetah Pro’s own figures, and the arithmetic the site’s battery guide applies to them. The quoted number is the best case; the settings you chose above decide which line you actually live on.

For a race, take a further fifth off for a cold day and then add your margin — or let the battery planner do the sum for the Cheetah Pro with your settings and your finish time. Everyday battery of 14 days means the charger is a weekly appointment at most.

The finder ranks the Cheetah Pro on the same figures this page uses. Its one-line verdict: Titanium, maps and multiband for the price of an entry Forerunner.

Where it is strong

• 43 g with a titanium bezel and offline maps.
• Multiband GPS that tests surprisingly well.
• Two weeks of everyday battery.

What it gives up

• Training analysis is the shallowest of the dedicated watches.
• Smaller and less mature software ecosystem.

If any of that is news after buying it, the finder will show you what the trade-off bought you — and what sat next to it in the ranking.