By now, it’s likely that you’ve made your decision on whether you’re going to wear a watch or not in life. Those who do, have a choice of a legacy watch, or a smartwatch. One of the latest smartwatches to hit the market is the Huawei GT 3 Smart Watch which improves on previous generations of the product.
One of the big challenges of modern life is ensuring you have the very latest information and a key strategy to do that is to leverage notifications on your smartwatch. There are lots of situations that mean accessing your phone is not possible or would be inappropriate, but by leveraging a smartwatch, you can stay up to date.
After living with the watch for the past few weeks on my wrist, it’s time to detail my thoughts and let you know if you should buy one.
DESIGN – Available in 2 sizes
Huawei offers the Watch GT 3 in two classic sizes, 46mm and 42mm which refers to the diameter of the watch face.
The hardware design of the watch itself is becoming similar to the design of modern smart phones, in that it barely matters. Sure the surrounding black ring with numbers on is a nice touch, as is the metal finish to the chassis and of course there’s the watch band that can match your personal colour and fabric preference.
The single most important aspect of the watch is the display. Thankfully the display is bright, colours are rich and it offers a great resolution. The watch offers multiple digital watch faces out of the box, but also a lot more from a digital store, many are free, but some are premium and are available at a cost.
The watch itself tips the scales at just 42.6g for the 46mm version and just 35g with the 42mm model. Having a relatively light watch on your wrist, enables you to forget you’re wearing it, and within a few minutes of strapping it to my wrist, I did indeed forget about it until the first notification rolled it.
On the back of the watch are some smart sensors to measure your biometrics, which is input data to the Huawei Health app, enabling you to track your health and workout performance.
The back of the watch is also magnetic, which is particularly useful as you place it down on the wireless charging dock, ensuring that it dock correctly every time. After using this, I wish every smartphone and wireless charger also featured this.
FEATURES AND SPECS – The detail on what’s on offer
With the watch strapped to your arm, it’s time for some of its smartness to help enhance your life.
The Huawei Watch GT 3 is powered by HarmonyOS 2.1 supporting both Android and iOS devices, which means notifications can flow from your phone, to the watch. While certainly not unique to this smartwatch, this is easily one of the best features of having a smart watch, enabling you to screen calls, and messages and respond to just the most important ones.
When it comes to Apps, there are many. Accessing the apps on the watch is as simple as pressing the top button on the right which displays a grid of apps. To select from the app list just tap and drag around to find the app of choice. If you want to re-position them, just tap and hold, then drag, which feels very familiar from using smartphones for so long.
Apps you can choose from include:
| Find your phone (calls your phone) Alarm Activity Reports (Rings for Calories, Distance, Steps etc) Air Pressure Breath Call log Contacts (via Huawei Health) Heartrate Messages Music O2 Measurement | Petal Maps (GPS and Navigation) Records Recovery Settings Skin temperature measurement Stress Stopwatch Sleep Timer (1m, 3m, 5m, 10m, 15m, 30m, 1hr, 2hrs and custom) Torch Weather |
That list of apps is really impressive out of the box and obviously can be added to. From the list of apps, you can tell just how focused this watch is on health, despite its styling being a professional, modern look, rather than sportswear.
When you sipe down from the top of the watch display, you can access settings, drain, find your phone, Do Not Disturb, Alarm, Screen on, as well as quick access, to review your battery level and the current day and date.
I was interested to see a feature called Drain, which prompts you to shake the watch, presumably to remove any water that has found its way into the chassis. I expect this is most likely going to come from sweat, as owners wear it during workouts, but could also come from being caught in the rain, or running past a sprinkler.
When it comes to Battery Life, this 46mm version is fantastic, we’re talking more than a week and potentially as much as 14 days of use. When it finally does get low, it’ll let you know and that night you can drop it on the wireless charging dock.
ISSUES – Not everything’s perfect
Whenever I review products there are generally opportunities to improve the product in future versions. Now in version 3, the GT smartwatch by Huawei is sophisticated and avoids any basic mistakes, however, I do have a couple of thoughts on what version 4 could improve on.
On the right of the watch face, you’ll find two buttons, the top being a button, but also turns to act as a legacy watch and allows you to scroll any longer interface screens. This feels a little redundant given the whole display is a touchscreen that supports swipe gestures. I think we could leave this legacy dial in the past and firmly embrace the all-digital future.
The bottom button can be set to open the app of your choice. If you understand the desire for users to have a physical button to launch apps, then why not leverage the left side of the device to add 2 additional hardware buttons for quick shortcuts.
Finally, I miss the voice assistant integration. If you’re wearing the watch and say ‘Hey Google’, the watch does nothing, the phone in your pocket reacts but the whole point of wearing a smartwatch is to leave your phone in the pocket and interact with the watch. This is a big omission, but a symptom of this not being a watch not built on Wear OS. Given we see Bluetooth headphones be able to launch the voice assistant of the paired phone, there has to be a way for Huawei to make this happen.
PRICE & AVAILABILITY – How much and when can you get one ?
The Huawei Watch GT 3 is available now from the retailers below. The 42mm Black edition costs A$399.00 and the same watch in white costs $50 more at A$449.00. Naturally, they fancy Gold version costs the mast at $100 more, for a price of A$499.00.
The larger 46mm version starts at A$449.00 for the black, A$499.00 for the brown (reviewed).
- JB Hi–Fi
- Amazon
- Mobileciti
- HUAWEI Authorised Experience Stores Auptimal
- HUAWEI Authorised Experience Stores Digimart
- The Good Guys
For more product details, please visit here for GT 3
OVERALL – Final thoughts
Overall what Huawei has created here is a smartwatch with a serious feature list and the fact it’s available for both Android and iOS smartphone platforms increases its total addressable market.
Ultimately if you’re not diametrically opposed to Huawei, then you should definitely consider this watch (especially with that amazing battery life) if you’re in the market for a smartwatch.
The fact the Huawei Health app that compliments the phone is not in the Play Store was not really an issue, just scan the QR code on the box, which takes you to the Huawei Health page on the Huawei AppGallery. From here you download the APK, which does need to be approved for installation. It is an extra step from your normal installs, but a one time deal that really isn’t so bad.
While many of the features on the Watch will work out of the box, some do require you to sign up for a Huawei account for them to work.
There are many decent smartwatches on the market in 2022, given we’ve had years to evolve from the original concepts. The decision on buying this one, really rests on the long list of health features, exceptional battery life and great personalisation. The design and weight are in line with expectations and should appeal to many.
All things considered, Huawei has created a really compelling entrant into the category and should definitely be a consideration.
