Huawei Watch GT 3
A stylish smartwatch that offers plenty of advanced fitness features along with impressive battery life
SCORE
PRICE 42mm, £175 (£210 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com
Several companies make stylish smartwatches; several severa make functional fitnessfocused smartwatches. With the Watch GT 3, Huawei manages to hit the Venn diagram bang in the centre. centr
To look at, you wouldn’t think th this watch was geared towards fitness a at all. Its bright AMOLED touchscreen display is set in a lightweight stainless stainl steel and plastic case, and topped w with toughened glass that has a curved edge to creates the illusion of extra screen space. It comes with a variety of strap options, including silicone, metal and leather (shown here).
The watch comes in two sizes: 42mm and 46mm. The larger version has a 1.43in display with a case that’s 11mm thick, and weighs 43g without the strap. The smaller model has a 1.3in display with a 10.2mm thick case, and weighs 35g. That’s lighter than the Apple Watch Series 7 ( see issue 327, p71).
Battery life is the biggest difference between the GT 3’s two watch sizes: the 46mm version lasts up to 14 days on a single charge, while the 42mm model lasts seven days. When I used the 42mm model, tracking an average of one workout per day, the battery needed recharging after six days – highly respectable for a sensor-packed AMOLED smartwatch.
And it’s certainly packed. It offers location tracking via GPS, Beidou, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS, helping to pinpoint your location in built-up areas and remote locations alike. The updated heart-rate monitor is even better: it responded quickly to changes in intensity during tough interval sessions on a spin bike, for instance, and results were accurate to within around 5bpm compared with measurements from a chest strap heart-rate monitor.
There’s no ECG, but the SpO2 sensor can be used continuously or to
“The navigation app provides turn-by-turn directions on your wrist so you don’t have to carry your phone in your hand”
perform spot checks – a welcome option that helps extend battery life – plus stress tracking and a skin temperature sensor. That’s something you won’t find on an Apple Watch.
Like the recently released Garmin Venu 2 Plus ( see our CES feature from p26), the Huawei Watch GT 3 has a microphone that allows you to receive calls from your wrist. Unlike Garmin’s watch, however, the GT 3 also lets you initiate calls when connected to your phone’s address book. It supports music, too: you can save your own songs locally or use it as a remote to control music playback on your phone.
One feature that’s conspicuous by its absence, however, is contactless payments. That’s a real shame, and puts Huawei on the back foot compared to rivals such as Apple, Fitbit, Garmin and Samsung.
Where it strikes back is its wealth of fitness features. There are over 100 workout tracking modes, but running is where it really shines. For example, with a couple of taps in the accompanying Huawei H Health lth app, you can create a video that plays back your route, ready to send via your messaging ap app of choice. But its real standout feature is its “AI running coach”, which lets you set a goal in th the app and then generates a training plan based on your height, weight, age, current training load and personal bests. The only drawback k is that you can’t create a plan for r an event more than four months nths in future, which is an issue ue for marathon training.
Once you’ve created your plan, lan, you can sync the resulting sessions sions with your calendar, and d access it through the “Courses Courses and plans” section of the he workout app on your watch. atch. Each workout completed mpleted will be logged in the app p and your plan tweaked on the e fly as you go along.
This is all very slick, but I did hit a hurdle when I first loaded up the e Huawei Health app via Google l Play: it didn’t recognise the watch. h. I had to head to Huawei’s own app store, AppGallery, and d download l d it from there.
Once in place, the app is easy to navigate. I particularly like its “Healthy Living Shamrock”, which is a clover-shaped l shaped diagram with leaves representing ting different goals – step count, mood (via breathing exercises) and sleep. Setting your own targets makes the Shamrock a genuinely useful tool for managing life’s daily stresses and strains.
The selection of downloadable apps for the watch is limited, but there are some gems. The navigation app that uses Google Maps is particularly well implemented, providing turn-by-turn directions on your wrist so you don’t have to carry your phone in your hand in public. At the time of writing, all the third-party apps are free.
I was also pleased to see that all of Huawei’s own tools are available free of charge, including the AI training tool. Unlike Fitbit, Huawei hasn’t locked certain features behind a subscriber-only paywall.
The lack of apps compared to its rivals and no wrist payment option mean this smartwatch falls just short of a Recommended award, but if you can live without third-party apps, then it’s a superb option. CAT ELLIS
SPECIFICATIONS
Shared: 4GB storage mic and speaker
GPS Bluetooth 5.1 heart-rate sensor gyroscope geomagnetic eomagnetic sensor air pressure e sensor temperature sensor nsor 5ATM water resistance Harmony OS Lite 2yr RTB warranty. 42mm: 1.32in 466 x 466 AMOLED display 42.3 x 10.2 x 42.3mm (WDH) 35g. 46mm: 1.43in 466 x 466 AMOLED display 45.9 x 11 x 45.9mm (WDH) 43g