Reviewed: Huawei Watch GT2, Every Reason to Stay Strapped

The Huawei Watch GT 2 is a smartwatch that runs the company’s own mobile operating system Lite OS. It does not run Google’s Wear OS, and it’s not exactly like what Samsung has with their smartwatches running Tizen.

This watch looks a lot like most smartwatches released over the past several years, with a few watch faces built-in, a few sensors under its hood, and a decent display. But here’s the kicker: It’s got the battery life of your average tablet.

The Watch GT arrived in exciting premium packaging, and inside was a charger base, a USB charger cable, an instruction pamphlet and most importantly the watch! As we put the watch on, we notice that the battery is at 92%, let’s see how long that lasts.

Pairing the watch with an iPhone was seamless and took about 45 seconds to sync. Immediately, we noticed heart rate and steps on the face of the watch (in “clear” mode) this thing is gonna keep us in check, every time we look at the time we see our levels of productivity and “health”.

The watch comes with 14 watch face displays to suit your personality and activity. The “Clear” display mode shows all vital information, being: your heart rate, number of steps taken, calories burnt, the weather, stress levels, battery life as well as time and date. With our general preference being analogue watches over digital, we change the display to a “Classic”, which is a formal Rolex-like display – it looks elegant and still shows time date, steps, heart rate and weather. Through the Huawei Health app, you can unlock and download additional open source faces for your GT. Be warned, there are tons to choose from.

You have a few options with the display settings for brightness and when the watch displays or goes dark, amongst others.

Wearing and Activities

The watch strap is a durable rubber strap that is comfortable and soft against the skin. It’s also adjustable to the size of your wrist for the best fit. It feels light and is easy to get used to in no time. The straps are interchangeable, for instance, if Stainless Steel metal is your thing or you prefer genuine leather band strap you can flavour as you like.

One of the best things about the watch is that it has multiple display options that fits the occasion you are dressed for, without compromising on the vital information that you seek from a fitness/personal assistant watch.

The GT2 is also waterproof so you can keep it on whilst you shower. The more functional use of the waterproof feature would definitely be to track your distance, speed and breathing while swimming.

With storage of up to 500 songs, you can connect your wireless earphones to the watch and listen to music without your phone. It’s suggested that there’s 4GB storage inside, but a quick check in the “Music” section of the Huawei Health app (for watch management on the phone), it’s shown that the watch has an available 2464MB (just over 2.4GB available).

You can also receive calls and texts through the watch, which notifies you when you have an incoming call.

Gym

Our favourite use of the watch is definitely in the gym. You have 16 exercise options to choose from so that you get the best and most accurate stats for your workout, from outdoor runs to the elliptical and rowing.

We tried the watch on the treadmill, it took less than 15 seconds to select the exercise and we’re off. When in exercise mode, the dial changes to an easy to view display showing your heart rate, calories burnt and distance clearly for you to see with a quick glance at the watch.

The watch gives voice notifications at specific milestone times, such as the one kilometre milestone and the 10 minute report, that lets you know that you’ve been exercising for 10 minutes. You don’t have to stop running to hear it as the watch vibrates so you can take a quick look and carry on on your run.

Our favourite part of the workout modes is the “workout records”, which stores each workout you’ve completed for your reference later. This is awesome because it effectively files all your workouts for you so you can track your fitness levels and progress whether you have a specific goal or not. The records include the duration of your workout, the calories burnt during the workout, distance, fastest pace, total steps, average stride and heart rate. There are multiple other features that can be explored depending on how deeply you’d like to analyse your records.

Did we mention that the watch syncs to an app on your phone? Well, it syncs to the Huawei Health App which stores all the information on your watch for easier viewing and greater detail.

Through the App you can sync your daily performance to other health Apps such as the Discovery Vitality App, allowing you to seamlessly gain Vitality points, amongst other things.

The GT 2 has all the same sensors as its predecessor PLUS a couple new sensors for good measure. There’s a new Geomagnetic sensor and a new Air pressure sensor. There’s an Air Pressure app built-in to the watch – so that’s pretty neat to have in play at a moment’s notice. There’s also a built-in compass app – both of these, and the rest, are available via a press on the upper button, while the bottom button allows you to “start a workout” that’ll be recorded in the Huawei Health app.

Sleeping

The app also gives a sleep quality report, which does require you to sleep with the watch on your wrist. We tried this, and upon waking up, we had access to the report on the app which showed the number of hours we had slept as well as the sleep quality shown as a total score out of 100.

There is further detail such as the amount of hours spent on “falling asleep”, “Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep”, “deep sleep” and “light sleep”. Don’t worry, these reports are explained in individual reports and recommended ranges for your sleep score. For example, deep sleep is the deepest sleep stage and the hardest to wake from, and is referenced between 20-60%. Deep sleep continuity statistics also assist in being aware of how well you sleep and what you may need to change to improve the quality of your sleep and inadvertently, the quality of your life and happiness.

Battery Life

In the two weeks we’ve had the watch, we’ve only had to charge it twice, with full use of all the functions. The GT2 takes about 45 minutes to fully charge and one charge lasts approximately 7-8 days, which is quite amazing.

Because the Huawei Watch GT 2 runs with Huawei’s own Kirin A1 processor, it doesn’t seem capable of drawing a particularly large amount of energy from the battery at any sort of speed. The processor is the same as Huawei uses in their earbuds (FreeBuds 3) – so it’s definitely not a powerhouse – and as such, does not require a whole lot of power.

The good and the bad:

Great Battery Life. Device Agnostic, it can pair to any smartphone make. It’s light and Comfortable. It has Multiple Display options. It has a Scratch resistant screen, allowing you to be fully engaged in any activity without worrying about damaging the watch. It has a “Find My Phone” feature which allows you to locate your cell phone when you’ve misplaced it.

Conclusion:

This awesome companion, medical and life assistant and personal trainer is sleek, light, informative and fashionable. There is little to fault on this device, I would buy one for everyone I know if I could. You should definitely experience it for yourself. You’ll find the 46mm Huawei Watch GT 2 available at several retailers for approximately R4999.