A new contender emerges

Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro has it all – attractiveness, battery life, functions, durability, build quality

published : 19 May 2022 at 00:01

updated: 19 May 2022 at 09:00

newspaper section: Life

I could easily say that the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro is my favourite smartwatch to date. The watch lasts for two weeks per charge. It has a vibrant, colourful and responsive screen, and a slew of health tracking capabilities. Its lightweight body is comfortable to wear and does not look like a toy.

The watch has a very mature look: clean, strong, shiny.

Its titanium body and sapphire screen should offer users peace of mind that it won't break or dent due to minor accidents or mishaps.

Compared to my previous smartwatches, this is by far the best to wear, even in bed. My previous watch, the heavier TicWatch Pro, is uncomfortable to wear in bed which caused me to stop tracking my sleep after a few days.

The GT 3 Pro has a crown knob on the upper right that lets you smoothly scroll up or down the watch's menu. A second button is used to trigger specific exercise tracking, but this can be customised to call up any app on the watch. Moreover, this button can be used as a secondary way to measure your heartbeat.

I used the watch throughout the day, continually leaving on all health tracking apps and receiving around 200 notifications a day, and even with that extensive use, the watch lost about 3-7% of its battery per day. At that pace, it would take about 14 days before its next charge, which is exactly what Huawei claims on the box.

The charger is well designed and connects magnetically to the bottom of the watch. With my last smartwatch, I had to be mindful to balance it at a precise angle or it wouldn't charge.

Moreover, I found the watch's speaker unexpectedly loud and it can play MP3 music files.

The watch tracks SpO2, or oxygen in the blood, which can be useful in spotting Covid-19 symptoms and general weariness. It can withstand 30m diving sessions while tracking your ascent, dive speed and depth, while chiming in with safety reminders and providing training to maximise breath control. It also supports golf sessions by displaying maps of the golf course while tracking your swing.

Regarding health tracking, the watch gave me the same vitals I receive during a health checkup, which indicates accuracy. This also is the first smartwatch to track my progress on an elliptical machine.

The Huawei connects to your phone via Bluetooth, which allows the user to make or receive calls from their wrist. Downloadable watch faces can be purchased for about 15-120 baht each, with more than 1,000 choices.

The GT 3 Pro runs on Huawei's HarmonyOS, which offers a similar experience as Google's Wear OS. The user swipes down for quick settings, right for weather and media control, left for customisable health reports, and up for notifications.

It also accepts notifications in English and Thai, which is a terrific upgrade from my previous Huawei smartwatch where the Thai language was shown as gibberish.

If you don't want a severely trimmed down selection of watch faces and app selections due to China-US economic sanctions, there is be a roundabout procedure to bypass restrictions. First, users need to install the Huawei AppGallery, then from the newly installed app, find and install HMS Core. After that you can install the Huawei Health app, which lets you configure, control and add more watch faces and apps.

My previous smartwatches needed a factory reset before connecting to another phone. Not this watch though. I can simply disconnect the watch via its Bluetooth setting and connect to another phone by scanning a QR code on the watch.

Overall, this watch provides you with a great balance of attractiveness, battery life, functions, durability and build quality. Strongly recommended as the smartwatch pick of 2022.