To date, Huawei’s most advanced wearable is now available, with better location tracking, GPS, and offsite music playback. It’s an excellent GPS sport watch, but it’s not available in the US. The Apple Watch is the market leader in smartwatches, and if you want a watch that can run third-party apps, there is no other choice.
Garmin and Samsung GPS sports watches with a complete monitoring system and offline audio capabilities are popular. The Huawei Watch GT 2 offers many of the same features and functionalities as Garmin and Samsung watches but at a lesser cost.
High Quality With GPS
The Watch GT 2 is a high-quality, GPS-enabled wearable that can be worn 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It also has a speaker, so you can use it to make phone calls with a connected phone, similar to how an Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch works. It just receives basic notifications from your phone and does not have access to a third-party app store.
I tested the Huawei Watch GT 2, a black stainless-steel case with a slick black high-quality polycarbonate back. Huawei now offers stainless steel and titanium grey stainless-steel casings. It has a fantastic AMOLED display with a smartwatch-like high resolution.
A front bezel with large numbers spanning 0 to 22 and five tick marks between the even and odd digits replaces the glass. I’m not sure what these numbers mean other than providing it a sporty look.
Matte Finish Rear
The rear of the watch is primarily matte-finish hard plastic with a projecting heart rate monitor in the middle. This is also where the charging puck fits, which incorporates magnets for accurate alignment and a USB-C connection that connects to a charging cable.
On the right side, there are two large buttons and a speaker aperture. The Watch GT 2 has a microphone and a speaker, allowing you to make phone calls using a paired phone right from the watch. The speaker can also play music if your headphones die or if you wish to work out while listening to music. It’s a decently loud and functional speaker.
The top right-hand button opens the app launcher and returns you to the watch face, whereas the bottom right-hand button opens the activity launcher. While on the training launcher screen,
the lower button can also be used to select items. You can restart or turn off the watch by pressing and holding the top button.
Powered by Huawei’s Lite OS
Huawei’s Lite OS, similar to Samsung’s Tizen OS in several ways, powers the Huawei Watch GT 2. Huawei’s Health app is available for Android and iOS devices. When you turn on your watch, the first screen you see is the watch’s face.
Press and hold the display to see the available watch faces. There are 14 various faces to pick from, some of which can be customized in some ways. The range is quite extensive, with both digital and analog options available.
You can also choose between an analog or digital, always-on watch face. However, Huawei states that the latter would significantly reduce your battery life. In addition to using the two hardware buttons for navigation, you may swipe left or right from the watch display to see the many available widgets.
Activity Report
You can access your activity report, music player, weather, stress summary, and heart rate summary. When you’re in one of the apps, swipe left to right to return to the home screen. The option can be chosen by simply tapping on the screen. By scrolling up and down, you can navigate across the various lists.
Swipe down on display from the watch face to access quick settings. Among them are do not disturb, showtime, find phone, alarm, and settings. The connection status, remaining battery life, date, and weekday are displayed on these tight controls.
Like previous Garmin, Polar, and Fitbit models, the Huawei Watch GT 2 is a capable 24/7 activity tracker with enhanced sleep tracking capabilities (sleep score and REM). It even includes an intelligent wake feature that allows you to create a band around your alarm time to get you up while you’re sleeping light.