Huawei Watch GT 2 — The Best Smartwatch?
The current complication between the US and China has created the latter’s technology company Huawei to vary its production strategy in respective foreign markets, including that of South Africa. Recognised for its impressive smartphone releases, Huawei declared in 2019 that it would bring its ecosystem productions to more countries. Shortly after, the company released its flagship smartwatch in SA, the Huawei Watch GT2.
It is priced at R3,699; the Huawei Watch GT2 (46mm) has carried in a few interesting characteristics, in addition to the daily fitness-related ones:
- Design: The Huawei Watch GT2 has a sophisticated design that goes well with most outfits. It has an annular case with a slightly raised touchscreen with a pulse rate sensor at the bottom. Rounding the display is a metal frame built with chromium steel, giving it a durable, high-tech look. The right side of the device has pair of buttons: a primary menu button and one to control the exercise menu.
- Display: The Huawei Watch GT2 design is emphasised by a bold-looking 1.39-inch OLED touchscreen featuring a 454×454 resolution. The screen is all gesture-controlled, allowing you to swipe-down for settings, swipe-up for notices, and swipe-horizontally (left and right) to access the music player and data related to pulse rate, stress, weather condition, steps count, and so on. The screen is sharp, colourful, and has great readability in the sunlight. The watch supports customised watch faces, even allowing you to turn some images from your phone into a watch face screen background.
- Health and Fitness: The Huawei Watch GT2 is packed with many health and fitness characteristics, including stress and atmospheric pressure monitors, along with a pulse rate sensor, which precisely registers cardiac rhythm during active and non-active hours. Through this detector, the watch can inform you of your stress levels and includes built-in breathing exercises – nifty! The pulse rate sensor also doubles up as a nap monitor to record sleep quality, so you can ensure your shut-eye gets properly monitored.
As for physical fitness features, the watch supports a lot of activities, including running, track running, walking, cycling, pool and open water swimming, hiking, trail running, triathlon, elliptic exersizes, and rowing.
- Battery: Complementing the smart watch’s impressive display and valuable health and fitness characteristics is the Huawei Watch GT2’s on-battery time. However you utilise the smartwatch, you get (at the very least) eight days of on-battery time on one charge.
- Memory/Storage: The Huawei Watch GT2 has 4 GB of collective internal memory. Of that, only 2.2GB is available for storing information — audio files, different watch faces, and so on, which is something to take into account.
- Huawei Health App: The Huawei Watch GT2 is dependent on the company’s Health app (Android and iOS). Unluckily, the app has its shortcomings, and given the difficulty in acquiring the app on Android and iOS devices, it can be a hindrance. Thankfully, the watch does come packed with a lot of pre-installed watch faces and features that you would have had to previously download.
- Operating System: The Huawei Watch GT2 has smooth performance thanks to Huawei’s lightweight OS. While smooth, Huawei’s proprietary OS does lack a few features, such as quick responses to notifications.
Verdict:
The Huawei Watch GT2 operates a lot like a well-equipped physical fitness band rather than a fully-fledged smartwatch. Its good-looking design, battery life and precise health and fitness tracking is impressive, but keep in mind that its bounded companion app (Huawei wellness) does have its limitations.