Huawei Watch GT2 Pro Review: Most Affordable Premium Smartwatch?

The Huawei Watch GT2 Pro is Huawei’s newest flagship smartwatch, and it screams premium all-around with the titanium case and sapphire glass surface while managing to maintain a lower price point than offerings from Apple and Samsung. It’s not all sunshine and roses though, because there are some downsides to the watch. But overall? It’s extremely impressive.

Let’s talk about how it looks first. You get two purchase options, but there’s only one watch. It comes in a single colour, gray, and the Sport edition ships with a black rubber strap that definitely gives the watch a more sporty look while still remaining quite elegant.

There’s also the Classic edition which is the same watch, but it ships with a beige-ish leather strap, which I personally am not a big fan of.

The watch itself is very lightweight, due to the titanium casing, but it doesn’t feel cheap at all. The sapphire glass offers excellent scratch protection, and I’ve noticed that fingerprints are slightly less obvious here compared to other smartwatches, and they rub off easier too.

The back is made of ceramic and is home to the magnetic charger and optical heart rate sensor, which is very accurate. But more on that later.

Huawei is still using a magnetic charger for the watch, which is very convenient. I’m able to charge the watch with either the included charging puck, another Huawei wireless charger for my phone, or by using reverse wireless charging with my P40 Pro+.

Moving on to the specs of the watch, it boasts a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with a 47mm case, which might seem a bit large, but definitely helps with legibility of what’s on the screen. There’s 4GB of memory, for people who like to store music on their smartwatch, and if you have some Huawei FreeBuds, you can pair them to the watch and leave your phone at home but still be able to enjoy music when out exercising.

Performance is incredibly smooth and I’ve not noticed any issues with the watch at all. It’s running on Huawei’s own Lite OS, which means software for the watch is very well optimised, and battery life is rated at a whopping 14 days. Unfortunately, this focus on battery life is where some problems start.

Because of the approach that Huawei has taken, there are essentially no third-party apps for the GT2 Pro. In fact, there aren’t all that many apps from Huawei either, only six show up for me in the Health app.

So if you’re looking to customise your watch with plenty of apps, you’ll have to reconsider the GT2 Pro.

And if you’re looking to reply to notifications from your watch, don’t bother. The GT2 Pro doesn’t support that either. What it does support, however, is calling your contacts (that you have to add beforehand in the Huawei Health app) from the watch directly, in addition to notifications being able to be viewed on the watch.

The Huawei Watch GT2 Pro is one of the few smartwatches out there that actually work with both Android and iPhones, so if you’re an iPhone user but want a round smartwatch, this is definitely one to consider.

As a fitness tracker, it works well to track steps and even has over 100 sports modes for fitness enthusiasts. I can’t comment on the accuracy of the sports modes, but I did find that the Watch GT2 Pro was a bit overenthusiastic about counting my steps. Every 10 steps I took was counted anywhere from 12 to 15 steps on the watch. It’s not a big dealbreaker, but don’t be too happy about how much the watch tells you you’re walking.

There’s also 5ATM water and dust resistance, so you’ll be able to bring this into a swimming pool with no issues. Just remember to rinse it out with clean water afterwards, or the chlorine might pose an issue to the durability of the watch. Heart rate tracking was accurate, as mentioned above, having tested it side by side with another smartwatch.

Let’s talk about battery life though, because that’s honestly my favourite part of this watch. I’ve tried smartwatches that only last a day or two on a full charge, and it really detracts from the experience because you have to remember to charge them, or else it might just die when you’re tracking an exercise session.

The Huawei Watch GT2 Pro claims to have up to 14 days of battery life, and it’s actually quite accurate if you turn off continuous monitoring of certain metrics. With continuous heart rate tracking on, sleep tracking (Huawei TruSleep) on, automatic stress monitoring on and the always-on display turned off, I averaged about 10 days on a full charge, even with notifications popping in constantly.

If I had turned off continuous heart rate and sleep tracking, I’m very sure I would have gotten the full 14 days. With continuous SPO2 tracking turned on, I’m still getting around 8 days on a full charge, which is excellent.

Another point I’d like to note is that the Huawei TruSleep sleep tracking is insanely accurate. It’s able to detect the exact minute I wake up and the minute I fall asleep. I tested this one night when I woke up in the middle of the night and used my phone for a few minutes. The next morning, I checked the Huawei Health app and saw that it tracked my moments awake precisely.

The feature also tracks REM sleep, deep and light sleep and gives an analysis along with some advice, which is pretty nice for people who want to improve their sleep quality.

So all in all, is the Huawei Watch GT2 Pro a worthwhile buy? Yes, but only if you don’t need features like notification replying, watch payment or third party apps.

If all you want is a smartwatch that looks and feels premium, shows you notifications from your phone, tracks your health metrics and lifestyle, the Huawei Watch GT2 Pro is an excellent buy, I think. It provides a lot of value at just S$398.

More information on the Huawei Watch GT2 Pro (S$398) and purchase options are available on Huawei’s website.