What’s in the box?
- Huawei Watch GT
- Charging pad
- Charging cable
Accessories
You really don’t get anything more than the basics with the Watch GT. There are no additional straps or anything that could really be considered as an accessory.
However, we should also recognise that this is the same case for the vast majority of wearables.
Perhaps only one area where we could criticise is the fact that the charging pad gives us our first hint that the Watch GT does not offer wireless charging, but instead relies on contact pins.
Well, at least the charging pad does have built-in magnets to help you align the Watch GT to the charging pad correctly.
Design
Perhaps the most striking thing about the Watch GT is just how much its design mimics that of a traditional analogue timepiece. It features a stainless steel case and even has a bezel just to the outside of the display area. But, this isn’t just any bezel, this is made out of ceramic, the same super-hard and scratch-resistant material used on the bezels of many dive watches, including newer versions of the iconic Rolex Submariner.Using ceramic is great as it is exceptionally resistant to damage from bumps and knocks, and the bezel is usually the area on a watch that gets subjected to the most frequent bumps, so it does serve an important function in terms of protecting the display. It sits about 1 or 2mm above the display, ensuring that most day-to-day bumps will hit the bezel and not the display.
Speaking of the display, the 1.39-inch AMOLED display used here looks fantastic. The 454 x 454 resolution gives a nice, crisp density of 326 pixels per inch, which means that you have to look pretty close in order to really notice any pixilation.
Another standout element is the design of the 2 buttons which look very much like the pushers you’d see on a traditional chronograph. There is a little bit of play with these buttons, which may or may not have an effect on the water resistance. But, we’ll discuss the water resistance a bit later.
The rest of the case is definitely one of the nicest, if not the nicest I’ve seen on a smartwatch type of device. The metal seems to be well machined and there’s even a mix of brushed and polished surfaces. No, the finishing and design of the case is nowhere near as intricate or refined as what you’d get on a quality wristwatch, or even something as affordable as a Seiko 5 SNKL23, but for a smartwatch I think it’s perfectly acceptable, or at least it’s acceptable for now until other manufacturers catch up and start to raise the bar in this area.
In essence, I think the case-work is about on par with what you’d get with fashion watches from the likes of Fossil.
If we flip the watch over we get an immediate reminder that this is a smart device, not a traditional timepiece. Besides the light emitters and receivers used for the heart rate monitor, we can see that the back is mostly made of plastic. This is a bit unfortunate as it does cheapen the overall look and feel of the design in my opinion, but there’s probably a good reason for this, if not just for the sake of saving in the cost department. Perhaps the non-reflective nature of the black matte-textured plastic is necessarily for the heart-rate monitor to function accurately.
While looking at the back we can also see that the strap features some quick release spring bars. This is great as it not only means that you can change the straps without the need of a springbar tool, but more important is the fact that that you can use regular watch straps, not something proprietary. This means that you’ve got a huge choice of straps out there – just be sure to get ones that have a width of 22mm.
The included strap on this model features brown leather on the front and black silicone on the rear. The silicone will definitely help with keeping moisture away form the leather, but I would still recommend changing the strap for a reason that will become clear later on.
A quick little strap change can really change the look of a watch, and here I’ve swapped out the standard strap for a sand-coloured suede strap, as well as a brown embossed alligator strap, just to give you a little bit of an idea as to how the Watch GT might look with a different colour or textured strap.Overall, I think the Watch GT has quite an attractive design, especially for a smart device. The biggest downside for myself, however, is the size, which can especially be a bit of an aesthetic issue if you’ve got smaller wrists.
You see, the Watch GT has a case diameter of just under 47mm, along with a monstrous lug-to-lug distance of about 54mm. This is rather big, even by today’s fashion standards.
If we compare the size and fit of the Watch GT to this Seiko Presage we can see that the traditional watch just look way more in proportion with my wrist and the lugs of the Seiko curve down and hug the contour of my wrist, rather than sticking out like the lugs of the Watch GT. Now, I will grant you that my wrist size of around 6.5 inches is towards the smaller end of the spectrum for men, but still, I think it would’ve been nice if Huawei had reduced the size just a bit to give this device a little more of a traditional look and feel.
As briefly mentioned, the Watch GT does offer some water resistance, but, not a whole lot. It’s rated to just 50m, which is starting to become the norm for many of the recently released fitness bands and other smartwatches.
But, if I can give you one piece of advice which I carry over from my experience with traditional analogue watches, then it would be to be very careful with water resistance ratings.
It’s not unreasonable for you to assume that a water resistance rating of 5 atmospheres or 50m means that the watch should be ok for swimming to a depth of up to 50m…after all, that’s exactly what the figures imply, right?
However, this just isn’t the case, and in my opinion should perhaps be considered as false advertising to some extent, but on the part of the entire watch industry, rather than just Huawei.
Consider the fact that recreational diving doesn’t tend to go beyond a depth of about 40m, so that should imply then that a watch that has a water resistance rating of 50m should be perfectly fine.
Well, let’s take a look at this table which can be found on Wikipedia.
As we can see, not only is a water resistance rating of 50m not suitable for ANY sort of diving, but there’s also a difference between a normal water resistance rating and that of a Diver’s water resistance rating.
So really, these resistance ratings are in dire need of proper regulation and streamlining as it’s super easy for someone to be under the wrong impression as to what their watch or other wearable is capable of.
So, getting back to the Watch GT, it’s perfectly OK to use it for surface swimming, such as doing laps in a pool, but keep it away form a bath, shower, or whilst doing the dishes as hot water and steam has a tendency to get past the already fragile seals.
Oh, and speaking of the seals, I also wouldn’t push my luck by operating the buttons whilst in the water. I don’t know how well they are sealed, if at all, so if you press them in the water they might open up a gap just big enough to let in some moisture into the watch. It’s actually for this very reason that dive watches and other water resistant watches most often feature a screw down crown or pushers in order to ensure that the case is completely sealed before it hits the water.
I also mentioned that I recommend that you change the strap, and this is just because moisture should be kept away from leather products, and that includes the leather found on the included strap.
For affordable silicone/rubber straps I highly recommend buying from cheapestnatostraps.com.
They’ve got a variety of strap styles and colours, but unfortunately none of them currently have quick release springbars. If you’d like to stick with the convenience of quick release springbars, then perhaps have a look at the silicone straps from Barton. They also offer a number of colour options, but the styling is very plain.
Software / Functionality
Ok, so now let’s dig into the software and functionality of the Watch GT. Over the last 24 months or so smartwatches have definitely improved quite a bit.
The last proper smartwatch that I owned was the Samsung Gear S2, which was a pretty good device while it lasted. But, time has moved on and so has the industry. Today’s smartwatches are crammed with even more features and increasingly smarter software.
The Watch GT, however, is very different to what you’d get from the likes of Samsung or Apple’s latest smartwatches. Let’s get all of the negatives out of the way first.
We do get a total of 12 watch faces, but none of them offer any particularly interesting design, and you also don’t have the option of installing new designs.
The Watch GT is capable of relaying information such as your step count, some weather information, and your heartrate.
It can also show you notifications such as incoming calls and various other incoming messages. But, the reliability, especially with incoming calls, can often be a little shoddy. Sometimes it works great as the watch starts vibrating and shows the incoming call a moment before the phone even starts to ring, but at other times it doesn’t seem to register an incoming call at all.
The way it displays messages is also quite limited as you’re only able to see a very small portion of the notification, and there’s no option to reply to messages either. The integration with your mobile phone also leaves a lot to be desired as clearing the notifications on your phone does not clear the notifications on the watch, and likewise, clearing them on the watch does not clear them on the phone.
Perhaps if you were using a Huawei phone the integration would be better, but this is not something I could test out.
Then there are the apps, or rather the lack thereof. You see, unlike the smartwatches form the likes of Samsung and Apple, you don’t have the option to install new apps onto the Watch GT. What you see is what you get, and what you get is severely limited.
We’ve got access to a number of health and exercise-related functions, as well as the last recorded sleep info, a record of the day’s barometric pressure, a compass, basic weather info, a stopwatch, a timer, some alarms, a flashlight feature (which simply turns the brightness all the way up and makes the screen white), and finally a ‘Find my phone’ feature (which makes the phone ring).
So, as a smartwatch, just what is the point of the Watch GT. Well, as a smartwatch, not much to be perfectly honest with you.
As far as the functionality is concerned, the Watch GT is just way behind other true smartwatch devices. So why on Earth would anybody want one?
Well, as it turns out, there are 2 very good reasons.
The first is an aspect that I haven’t really spoken about, and that is fitness tracking. You see, as a smartwatch, the Watch GT’s feature-list might be very limited, but as a fitness tracker this device offers some very decent value.
As mentioned, we do get sleep tracking, step counter, and a heart-rate monitor, but there is also an on-board GPS chip, meaning that you don’t need to carry your phone along with you in order to track your morning run, hike, cycle, or swim.
However, the best part of all of that is the battery life. Seriously, you can run the heart-rate monitor and sleep tracking constantly and the battery will last you well over a week. Huawei quotes battery-life of around 2-weeks for typical usage (which comprises of continuous heart-rate monitoring and 90-minutes per week of exercise tracking), or up to 30 days if you were only to receive alerts for incoming messages and calls. If you were to throw in GPS tracking then the battery life decreases dramatically to around a maximum of just 22 hours. But still, that’s vastly superior to what you’d get with other smartwatches. On proper smartwatches you could expect an absolute maximum battery life of about 4 or maybe 5 days, but only if you severely limit the number of active features, which essentially takes away the whole point of a smartwatch.
As I said, there are 2 very good reasons why you might want the Watch GT, and the second reason is the price. The official MSRP is around $220 or so depending on the region, but you can often find it for considerably less than that online. In fact, this particular watch was purchased for roughly $160 brand new. You really aren’t going to find another fitness tracker that’s better or even equally as good-looking as the Watch GT for that amount of money.
As far as fitness tracking is concerned, the biggest downside is the partner app. As with all fitness trackers, the device itself is useless without some kind of mobile app to compile and make sense of all of the data for you, and in the case of the Watch GT (and indeed all of Huawei’s smart devices) the app is called Huawei Health.
I have to admit that I really love the clean and well-laid-out design of the app, but that’s pretty much where the benefits end.
Whilst it’s perfectly capable of showing your logged exercise and sleep sessions as well as graphing out your recorded weight, heartrate, and daily steps, that’s essentially all you get.
So, in that respect the apps for Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung devices is considerably more feature-rich.
But, perhaps the most lacking feature of the Huawei Health app is the fact hat you have no connected profile, meaning that all of your data is stored on the mobile device and ONLY on the mobile device.
So, if you were to get a new phone or, for whatever reason, had to do a factory reset on your mobile device, all of your previous data would be lost.
If Huawei just at least implement the ability to store records on a Google Drive account, that would already be a big improvement.
Value
So, if we consider the overall value of the Watch GT, we really should focus first and foremost on what a person’s intended usage is.
If you’re looking for an affordable smartwatch, well, then I’m not certain if the Watch GT would be a viable option for you. As I said, its smartwatch features are just too limited, so much so that it barely makes it a smartwatch at all.
Fitness tracking and, especially battery life is where this device really shines. So, if you’re the type of person who doesn’t really care for getting rich notifications on your wrist, or being able to reply to messages or read the latest news articles, then the Watch GT might just be an excellent choice for you.
I know for sure that there are many people out there who don’t find smartwatches useful for themselves, and I must admit that when I had my Gear S2 I also ended up using it mostly for fitness tracking as the whole novelty of smartwatch features started to fade away for me after the first 2 weeks or so.
In that event, if a person is looking for a well-designed smart-device for primarily fitness tracking, then it doesn’t really make sense for them to be paying for full-on smartwatch features, does it?
And that’s where the value of the Watch GT comes in.
Yes, it’s lacking in smart features, but that might just be exactly what you’re looking for, and if it is what you’re looking for, then few if any other devices would make as much sense as the Watch GT.