Huawei Watch GT: Not The Smartwatch You Think It Is

We went to review the Huawei Watch GT but was delayed for a bit as the Galaxy S10 & G8 came into play and pushed this back a bit. But during that time our current president declared war on the company and made selling their products a lot harder. That didn’t stop us from finally give this the attention it deserves. This looks like another smartwatch from Huawei but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Let’s dive into it along w/ its strengths and weaknesses. Here is our Huawei Watch GT review in full.

Huawei offers a lightweight look/feel w/ a plastic band for the Watch GT. Like any other wearable, you can swap out the bands for something a little more premium – a leather perhaps. The central part is a ceramic bezel covered in stainless steel houses several sensors like a continuous heart-rate sensor, a good-sized battery, GPS, barometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, & barometer. The total package is an overall comfortable fit + feel for daily use. For everyday out-and about, working out, and even sleeping. No complaints here.

So not a lot of storage for music playback or anything like that. You got limited notifications like you’ll get text messages and subjects of emails only. But remember isn’t a smartwatch, it’s just dressed like one. As far as notifications, you can get Twitter, Gmail, Google Voice, Android Messages, Google Hangouts, Slack, and more. You can’t expand them as you can the main part especially for emails.

Where it excels at is on the health-focused features. It does a pretty good job in monitoring your sleep (deep, light, REM, etc), heart rate, and step counter. You get limited info on the watch as you have to download the Huawei Health app to get all of the details. However, you can access fitness modes to track your exercises from the watch though. So you have running, walking, climbing, trail running, cycling, swimming, triathlon, and more. It will measure your heart rate (of course), pace, distance, steps, cadence, calories, & time. Definitely does a pretty good job at it as well.

So the watch itself isn’t powered by Google’s WearOS but Huawei’s own LiteOS. Which is pretty bare bones but effective enough – for the most part. You don’t get a lot of picks for watchfaces or no way to expand on your notifications. It’s not unbearable but not what many would be used to w/ smartwatches. A new update in between reviewing this, it now adds always-on display which was a much-needed addition. However, it does excel at the fitness part of things. By tracking various exercises, heart-rates, and sleep tracking. So you gotta take the good w/ the bad for that part.

Huawei quotes the Watch GT to get up to 2 weeks of juice on a single charge. Now it’s not BS or a marketing ploy as you can. You just need to have the Bluetooth Sync off in order to pull it off. I normally had Sync on, Continuous HR on, and only email + text message notifications on. This got me around close to 4 days on a single charge which is still great in the smartwatch world. I’m still happy about it.

The Huawei Watch GT: part FitBit, part older smartwatch.

Currently, if it ain’t the Apple Watch or a FitBit, wearables aren’t really selling. Despite describing it as a mixed bag, I actually enjoyed my time w/ the Watch GT despite it not having the full-fledged smartwatch features I’m used to. With the troubles Huawei is currently going through w/ the US, this is probably one of the devices that isn’t affected by it.

Now at 2 million sold of the Watch GT, the people still want it. With a great variety of fitness tracking and a battery life unparalleled, this is a great option for those seeking something different. This gives this a great balance of things to stand out w/ in regards to wearables.