Huawei revamped their lineup of products including the new Matebook and GT Watch with the recent launch of the Huawei P30 series. This was the freebie for all who pre-ordered the P30 and P30 Pro last Q1 of 2019.
Design & Impressions
The Huawei GT Watch is a 46mm circular watch face with an OLED screen. The display is crisp and clean as compared to top tier smartwatches.
The frame is made of metal with two buttons for back/menu and a quick access button for the exercises. It’s running on its own OS as compared to previous smartwatches under the Google Wear eco-system. This means that Huawei optimized the GT Watch to its own preference, we think its kinda similar to Samsung’s Galaxy Watch series in terms of control and focuses on a single screen instead of multi-tasking.
The strap is rubberized that can fit small to large arms, overall grip is welcomed and comfortable. Unlike the Fitbit Versa, even long term use didn’t show up excessive sweating, which we highly appreciate.
Watch Faces
Huawei offers 12 watch faces from dynamic functions of being classic, health-oriented or even organized in notifications. Right now, there is no way to download new watch faces unlike with Google Wear, so you’re kinda stuck in what Huawei provides.
Huawei Health App
In order to sync the Huawei GT Watch to the phone, you must download the Huawei Health App. Here you can see most of the data you can meddle with the app, including exercise summary, steps, sleep and other indications like weight.
Battery Life
One thing that surely impressed us the battery life that is claimed to last up to 2 weeks. In my active lifestyle of 3 gym sessions a week, even heavy on messaging and notifications, the GT Watch surely outlasted any wearable I owned before.
Charging is also easy through its included dock adapter, no wireless charging here but we’re ok with it to avoid increasing the price and charge faster as you can fully charge in an hour.
Exercise Interface
Selecting an exercise will lead you to the screen of showing your overall performance during and after the workout. The color-coded interface and complete information are what I like, as compared to others that just give a summary after the session.
Problems
After an intense workout at the gym, I was able to notice that the reading of the Huawei GT watch was far away from my Fitbit Versa, but after removing it and cleaning the back, it returned back more accurate and closer to my Fitbit Versa. To be clear, in Anytime fitness there are machines to calculate the heart heat as well such as the treadmill, the reading of the Fitbit is always the closest as between the two as reference.
Seems this wasn’t an isolated case as a week after we received an update for the GT Watch that solved the issue. Now the discrepancy between the Precor machine and Fitbit is just 5-10 bpm.
Returning back to the gym afterward reveals a more accurate reading which we are glad to see. Also in the overall screen of the Huawei GT Watch is a better understanding of the exercise session in my opinion. Everything is color coded including the type of bmp.
Conclusion
For the Huawei GT Watch offers great features on a smartwatch as compared to more expensive competitors like the Galaxy Watch or even the Fitbit Versa. What’s lacking with the GT Watch is the eco-system for friend interaction, so if you’re into co-motivation or you have a lot of friends using Fitbit, then you might want to reconsider.
Then again, we think the outstanding battery life is a big relief of avoiding to charge your smartwatch every 3 days like the Fitbit Versa. I honestly use this more than my Fitbit cause of no worries in charging.
Overall we think the GT Watch is a great smartwatch for its price and if you’re serious about having one, then we say get this one.
Pros
- Outstanding Battery Life
- Clear and big display
- Clean and easy to understand Interface
- Active software update
Cons
- Limited feature in interacting with co-fitness wearable users like Fitbit’s friend eco-system
- Limited Watchfaces offered
- Heart Rate is still not that accurate as compared to Fitbit
- No call on watch function
