Amazfit GTS 4 Mini Review

First Impressions

I got the Amazfit GTS 4 Mini as an upgrade from my current GTS 2 Mini, as there were a few features that I really felt were lacking from the GTS 2 Mini. I also have a Samsung Galaxy Active 2, which I use a bit and can compare against the Amazfits I have. My impression of the GTS 4 Mini is that it is a very nice, slim watch with an excellent screen and great battery life. The UI has been completely overhauled over the GTS 2 Mini and seems a little cleaner and easier to read at a glance.

Screen

The screen on the GTS 4 Mini (1.65” 384×336) is slightly larger than the GTS 2 Mini (1.55” 354×306), which also increases the case size slightly as well from 40.5mm x 35.8mm to 41.8mm x 36.66mm. In daily usage, there isn’t much difference between the two as for visibility or readability, as both are quite good. The AMOLED screen on the GTS 4 Mini is definitely a major step up from the TFT screen of the Bip series (Bip 3 Pro). Text is very clear, brightness is easily visible in daylight outdoors, and touches are recognized well.

Notifications

Finally you can clear notifications from the watch and have it cleared on the phone, too! On the GTS 2 Mini, it does not clear it from the phone, so I have to clear from the watch, plus clear from the phone. I do like some notifications on my Galaxy Active 2 a little better, as motion alerts from my Wyze camera will actually show a snapshot of the video on my Galaxy Active 2 on the notification, where the GTS 4 Mini just shows the text of the motion alert.

Negatives

  1. Some watchfaces aren’t fully developed. For example, the “Future Impressions” watchface has a lot of useful info, but the time shows “AM”, no matter if it’s actually morning or evening. This is basic watch functionality, why is this an issue???
  2. Customization – There are 49 watchfaces currently and most of them cannot be customized to show the data you want. You are stuck with the color and whatever data that face shows. Samsung is much better about this, with most watchfaces letting you edit the Complications to show the data you actually want to see.
  3. App Store – This is borderline for me. The GTS 2 Mini didn’t have any App Store functionality, but with the apps available for the GTS 4 Mini (Brush tooth guide, Color Blindness check, Water Time), this seems like a pretty worthless addition at the moment. Unless the selection drastically improves, this is useless.
  4. Weather sync – Still no way to set the update frequency or manually refresh the weather. This is such a simple thing, why is this an issue?

Upgrade over GTS 2 Mini?

So, the main upgrades of the GTS 4 Mini over the GTS 2 Mini that I feel like are worth mentioning are:

  1. Calendar integration – Finally I can see my calendar items! No calendar integration was a HUGE issue for me on the GTS 2 Mini and one of the main reasons I started wearing my Galaxy Active 2 more.
  2. Battery – 270mah vs 220mah. Though with the bigger screen, this only results in 1 day more in the Typical (15 days vs 14 days) and Heavy (8 days vs 7 days) use patterns.
  3. BioTracker 3.0 – The sensor array has been updated over the BioTracker 2 on the GTS 2 mini, but I don’t really see any improvement in day-to-day use. Compared to my Samsung Galaxy Active 2, both BioTracker versions are not quite as accurate.
  4. GPS systems – The GTS 4 Mini supports all 5 GPS systems (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BDS, and QZSS). For me, this is a non-issue, but depending on what country you are in, this could be nice vs the GTS 2 Mini with only GPS and GLONASS. Both do a good job of tracking walks and runs on open trails, but both come up a bit short for me when mountain biking on off-road trails in wooded areas.

Overall

At the current price of $119.99 on Amazon, this is a hard recommendation from me. You can get a new open box Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 for $130 on eBay, or a Galaxy Active 2 for well under $100. The GTS 2 Mini regularly goes on sale and can be had for around $80 or less. While the GTS 4 Mini is a good watch overall, I feel like you could spend basically the same money on something with much better functionality, or spend a lot less on the GTS 2 Mini and basically have an almost as good experience.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Z6GMPC6?tag=tdb010-20

Acer Aspire TC-1760-UA92 i5-12400 Review

Overall Build Impressions

The Acer Aspire TC-1760-UA92 is a fairly small desktop computer with a budget build. The case is nothing much to write home about with no fans present at all for airflow. There is a large vented section on the side above the CPU fan and a mount on the rear for an 80mm or 92mm case fan, but the front of the case is completely solid with no venting at all. There are three expansion slots in the rear for PCIe cards. Ports are limited to a single USB 3.0 Type A and a Type C port on the front, one USB 3.0 Type A and four USB 2.0 (???) on the rear. At least there are two HDMI ports for outputs, but port selection is very limited on this desktop. There is a slim DVD burner on the front, which is getting rarer to see these days. Overall, this is a very lightweight, budget build that might be ok for light use for someone just needing a basic machine to browse the web or do finances on, but not recommended for more serious use or a younger user who might want to play a game or two.

Performance/Benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy v1.2                   662 Overall, 572 Graphics Score, 6301 CPU Score

PassMark v10.1                 3097 PassMark Rating, 16936 CPU Mark, 337 2D Graphics Mark, 1452 3D Graphics Mark, 2505 Memory Mark, 17972 Disk Mark

CPU-Z V2.0.1      680 Single Thread, 4961 Multi Thread

Cinebench R23                  1703 Single Core, 10730 Multi Core

CrystalDiskMark v8.0.4                   1808.77 MB/s Write, 2469.20 MB/s Read (SEQ1M Q8T1)

Windows 11 Boot Time                  11.67s (from power off to desktop)

*Note – All Windows 11 Updates and latest drivers were installed prior to running benchmarks. I removed as much bloatware (Norton and some other applications) as I could before running any benchmarks.

Temperatures

As I mentioned earlier, the Acer TC-1760-UA92 does not have any fans mounted in the case, relying only on the fan on the CPU heatsink to move air around. Due to a low PL1 TDP of 65W and a PL2 that doesn’t seem to go over 80W, temperatures are kept in check, with a maximum temp of 79C observed during benchmarking. Idle temps are around 31C and the system is quiet in most all use cases.

Temps during Cinebench R23 Benchmark

Power Consumption

Using my Kill-A-Watt, I measured the idle power consumption at the wall at 10.5W. The draw on load during the 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark was measured at a max of 97W during the CPU test for several seconds before dropping down to a fairly steady 60W for the majority of the test.

Internals/Hardware

Looking at the internals of this desktop, you can see a lot of cost cutting. The motherboard is a custom layout with two ram slots (occupied by 4GB and 8GB Micron DDR4 3200 CL22 sticks in an odd 12GB total dual-channel setup), a single M.2 2280 NVMe slot with a WD SN530 512GB SSD, an M.2 for WiFi populated with the Intel AX201NGW card, two PCIe expansion slots (x16 and x1), and two open SATA ports for drives. The Intel H610 chipset is used here, so PCIe support is limited to PCIe 3.0 only. There is no cooling whatsoever on the VRMs, and the heatsink is a custom basic aluminum downflow unit. There is a free fan header if you wanted to add an 80mm or 92mm fan to the rear of the case. The power supply is a custom 300W 80+ Bronze unit from LiteOn that supplies two 12V 16A rails. Upgradeability is next to nothing on this machine, so don’t count on being able to add much of anything later. Most parts are replaceable, but if the motherboard or power supply goes out, there is zero chance of being able to replace with off the shelf parts, with second hand eBay from other broken machines being your only potential source.

Network Transfer Speed

The Acer TC-1760-UA92 comes with an Intel AX201NGW dual-band Wi-Fi card. I connected to my AX router and was able to sustain 70MB/s transfer from my NAS to the desktop from approximately 10ft distance through one wall.

Accessories

The Acer TC-1760-UA92 comes with a very basic thin wired keyboard and wired mouse in the box. While they are functional, they seem cheaply made. The keyboard is very flexy and does not provide a very stable platform. The mouse feels ok, but these are two items I personally would be upgrading from the start.

Other Notes

The front I/O only gives you a single USB 3.0 Type A and Type C port, headphone jack, and microphone input. The spot for an SD card reader is a plastic filler piece; there is no reader behind, so just something to be aware of. There are mounts for up to two additional hard drives and screws and vibration dampers are included to mount one. There is even SATA power run to the bracket and a spare SATA cable included in the box. If you want a second SATA hard drive, you will have to get your own power cable or SATA power splitter, as there is not another plug available as it ships.

Final Comments

At the current price of $583 on Amazon, I’d have a hard time recommending this machine. For around $400, you could build a machine with standard, off-the-shelf parts that would allow you to upgrade or replace components if needed, and be much higher quality to begin with. For someone just needing something basic, this desktop might be ok for a couple years, but looking at the quality, I’m not sure I’d trust it much longer than that. If this desktop goes on sale for around $400, I think it could be a good budget system for someone needing a basic PC.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09V1LKTPH?tag=tdb010-20