We wore the Cheetah Pro daily for a month, swapping it in for a Garmin Forerunner during a half-marathon training block. Pace accuracy in a city park with patchy GPS was within a few meters of the Garmin. Heart rate held up well during steady-state runs, though it lagged a beat or two during quick interval ramps, which is normal for wrist-based optical sensors.

The watch face options are deep, and you can sideload custom ones. We ended up using a minimalist face that showed the date, battery, and step count at a glance. The button feel is a small thing but it matters when your hands are sweaty mid-run, and the two physical buttons are tactile and easy to hit blind.

Where it falls short: the app ecosystem. Zepp is fine but you can tell it lacks the maturity of Apple Health or Garmin Connect. Most data is there. Some of the deeper analytics are not. For most runners that is a fine tradeoff at this price.