Review: Huawei Watch GT 2e
The fitness watch comes with key health trackers and a good battery life
With most of us restricted to our homes or only permitted brief exercise regimes outside, keeping track of our fitness routines can prove challenging. It is easy to skip a workout or lose track of time when you are slouched in front of your computer, flexing just the muscles on your wrist and overstraining your exhausted eyes.
A good assistant comes in the form of the latest Huawei Watch GT 2e, which aims to help you lead an active lifestyle. From reminding you to stretch your legs if you are seated for over an hour, to taking stress tests, monitoring your sleep patterns and offering 100 workout-tracking modes, the watch is well-equipped to track your fitness goals.
One of the useful features of the watch is its heart rate monitoring technology – available in real-time 24-hours a day – through Huawei’s TruSeen technology along with AI smart heart rate algorithms. It will also alert you when your heart rate is too high or too low for more than 10 minutes.
The GT 2e also allows users to track their Sp02 rates – an estimate of the blood oxygen saturation levels – in a first for Huawei. The process is quick and simple and you know the results immediately. From a usage perspective, it’s not something most of us tend to track regularly, but it is a quirky feature and offers an interesting conversation topic.
On the other hand, one feature we have used extensively is the sleep pattern tracker, which not only counts the number of hours you sleep, but through Huawei’s Health app, also provides details such as hours of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and deep sleep every night to understand how well you are resting.
The Covid-19 situation has most of us stretched thin, so we were not too surprised with the results of our stress test conducted by the GT 2e. The watch does suggest breathing exercises to calm down, which helps. Slow down. Inhale. Exhale.
More in line with most other fitness watches, the GT 2e can track most of your regular workouts, be it walking on a treadmill, using an elliptical machine or going for a run, cycling or swimming. Overall, it has 15 professional workout modes which include common outdoor and indoor sports, as well as 85 other sporting activities covering everything from hip hop and rock climbing to skateboarding, surfing, tennis and baseball. On record, we haven’t gone rock climbing or skateboarding right now (yes, we admit we haven’t gone surfing or played baseball either), but the options on the watch cater to a variety of exercise and workout regimes.
From a design perspective, the classic round and large 1.39-inch display is easy to read but may seem too bold for those with slender wrists. The sporty straps are good during a workout but may seem a tad out of sync when paired with an office suit. The one thing design-wise that bothered us was that we found it very difficult to charge the watch on a flat surface due to the natural fall of the straps.
That said the relatively long battery life – Huawei claims it can last up to two weeks, but we have charged it more frequently to avoid hitting zero – means that at least you don’t have to worry about draining out the battery after every workout.
Entering the crowded wireless headphones market can be a daunting proposition – there’s a host of these audio devices already present on the market and so the competition is stiff. Last month, OPPO introduced its first wireless headphones, the OPPO Enco W31, in the Middle East.
The reason that wired headphones were long favoured over wireless devices was that Bluetooth inadvertently led to a slight distortion in the audio quality.
To counter that, OPPO has developed these headphones with a binaural low-latency Bluetooth 5.0 transmission mechanism. In non-tech speak, binaural equates a 3D stereo sound effect while ultra-low latency lends a unified and synchronised audio experience.
The Bluetooth function has a range of up to 10 metres which allows for a decent range of separation from your smartphone when using these headphones.
Compatible with both Android and iOS devices, these in-ear headphones also feature anti-wind noise chambers and two internal microphones on either side. Thanks to a nifty algorithm developed by OPPO, much of the background noise is blocked out during calls.
Beyond the smart algorithms backing it, there is material innovation found here too which aids in better overall sound quality. These headphones use dual composite thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) and graphene diaphragms that are geared towards improving frequency response.
The headphones, backed by 7mm dynamic drivers, has a sensitivity of 95dB at 1kHZ.
It can be operated in two modes – Balanced Mode and Bass Mode – with a frequency response range of 20Hz-20Khz. The former mode is perfect when using these headphones to take regular calls while the latter is ideal when using them to listen to music instead.
The earbud-style device has an ergonomic in-ear design that allows it to remain in place even during a workout. With an IP54 rating, it is designed to be water and dustproof too. The headphones which can be charged via a USB-C cable and will connect to your smartphone the moment the charging case is opened.
Its inbuilt sensors will automatically start the audio when you put them on, and will likewise pause it when you take them off.
It also has touch controls built onto it. To change the audio mode from balanced to bass, double tap the left earphone; to bring up the next song, double tap the right earphone; and to activate the voice assistant, triple tap either of the earpieces.
At 50 per cent of the maximum volume, these headphones can play music for up to 3.5 hours on a single charge.
With the charging case, it can return 15 hours of music playback and 12 hours of call time. When it’s time to plug it in, it can charge fully in 2.5 hours.
OPPO is making sure that nothing is middling regarding the performance or specs of their latest headphones.