This is Huawei’s newest smartwatch to hit the market, the Huawei Watch GT2 Pro. It features titanium chassis, a Sapphire Watch dial, and over 100+ workout modes, and tons of health-focused features with a touted long battery life. How does it fare in the market today? I’ve had this for months now, and here’s my full review.
Unboxing this package reveals just the basic things you’d find on devices — there’s the watch itself, a wireless charging plate that can be connected to the USB-C cable, and some documentation for manual and warranty.
Design
Outstandingly Amazing
The watch itself, at the first glance, is stunning. The watch feels so premium with its titanium frame. There are two buttons at the sides — one is a menu button, while the lower one is for a quick shortcut to an app you can configure in its settings. These crowns are meant to be pressed and not rotated.
The main watch area is molded circularly onto its body, giving it an elegantly classic look. While it does raise some anxiety that I’d get the glass scratched one way or the other, it wasn’t an issue at all thanks to the Sapphire Crystal glass.
The unit we have offers a rubber band with a double lock to firmly secure the watch on my wrist. As with my experience, it didn’t really fall off nor unlatch involuntarily. the rubber material was similar to the one used in the Watch Fit, albeit a lot more sturdy, and we did not experience any discomfort while wearing it.
Under the watch is a raised part for the monitoring sensors such as heart rate, as well as the main component for its charging wirelessly through Qi. We tried it with an assortment of wireless Qi chargers available with us, and we are surprised to see it working with all of them. We also like the bundled wireless charger because it can be connected to just about any USB Type-C cable to get charging.
Overall the watch feels on the heavy side when we’re comparing it to other available smartwatches in the market, but it does not feel that hefty when worn on the wrist for the whole day. I even forget at times that I have a watch when I work. There are also no worries with water here as its water resistance is great that it can be used for activities such as swimming.
Display and Performance
Easy Peasy
The GT2 Pro’s 1.39-inch rounded OLED display is a remarkable screen — it’s well-seen even at high noon outdoors, the colors are rich and vivid, we had no complaints on viewing it from any angle and the contrast is great. You can set the sleep time and brightness on the settings, as well as if you want an Always On Display (which warns that it may reduce the expected battery life).
It also features 32MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, and it features Huawei’s own LiteOS which we’ve been really accustomed to with other smartwatches we’ve had such as the Huawei Watch Fit. This time around, you can preload some files into the watch directly (i.e music) and do activities without the need to bring a phone. Navigating the OS is really familar if you’ve had a Huawei watch before, but for those who are not yet into these wearables, here’s a summary:
- Swipe up to see notifications
- Swipe down to see your quick toggles
- Swipe left and right to have quick access to certain apps you choose, and of course you can organize them
- A push at the top-right button opens the watch app menu, which in list mode.
- The bottom-right button is a programmable key for a quick shortcut to your most used Watch app.
- To turn back from a menu, swipe right.
Performing tasks with the watch is generally smooth, even smoother than the Watch Fit I think. It’s nowhere near other expensive watches, but it’s good enough to get the job done.
You’ll need to have the Huawei Health app installed on your phone to record data your watch got, add music files to your watch, or download new watch faces from hundreds that are already readily available. You can also toggle to limit notifications from certain apps, change how the watch is performing heart rate monitoring, or enable other features such as Huawei TruSleep (sleep monitor) and even add additional apps.
To be fair, this device really is connected to my phone (another brand) for the whole day and it really gets the job done. I see important notifications, stretching exercises are being reminded after sitting for a long time, and even gives me the option to accept and reject calls once I receive them.
Exercise-wise, we get to have a watch that doesn’t depend a lot on the phone itself. I’m in love with the exercise modes here – I frequently use brisk walking to pace myself around my neighborhood with only this and a Bluetooth-connected device such as the Huawei Freebuds Pro, on me. The Dual GPS function is accurate and is able to pinpoint most of my location at a given time. A Route Back feature is here in case you get lost, with voice guidance too.
One thing that I really noticed that it’s lacking is the idea of being smart in itself. I still cannot reply to notifications nor provide voice commands to the watch. Celia is supposed to be a feature for some regions, but I haven’t seen it yet here with my watch.
Connectivity and Battery Life
An Impressive Feat
If I thought the Watch Fit’s battery life that good, this one takes the cake for Huawei’s wearables. The GT2 Pro clocks in at an average of 12 days of use on a single charge, which is great enough for those who want long-lasting battery power on such a small device like this. Recharging this will take around
