Over the past 8+ weeks, our founders Elan and Eric have been testing the new HUAWEI Watch GT 4 and posting about their experience in the community. Today they review their experience in detail.
Unboxing
When HUAWEI put up 4 x HUAWEI Watch GT 4s for the Sleekgeek 8-Week Challenge (we’ll be announcing the winners soon!) they also sent Elan and Eric a pair to test out too.
Community Poll
In preparation for this review, we decided to poll the Sleekgeek Community to see what features were important to them when it comes to a Smart Watch, here were the results from 244 votes:
🥇Battery Life was a winner by a long shot (which is great news for the HUAWEI Watch GT4 with it’s ~2 weeks of battery!).
Followed 🥈Step Tracking (which is a given for any Smart Watch these days) and 🥉GPS Tracking (which has been show to be comparable to the best smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and top-end Garmins, while at a much more affordable price).
Some of the runners-up features were 🎖️Workout Tracking, 🎖️Water Resistant, 🎖️Heart Rate Tracking, and 🎖️Sleep Tracking (all of which the HUAWEI Watch GT 4 more than ticks the boxes for too).
Eric’s Highlights
There’s a lot to cover here, but these are the important points that stood out for me on the HUAWEI Watch GT 4:
- It’s a beautiful, aesthetic-looking watch. HUAWEI’s “fashion forward” approach has paid off.
- It truly feels like a premium watch with its solid build quality and high-quality materials that withstand everyday wear and tear.
- The battery life is phenomenal, with up to 2 weeks of battery life and only using about 5-10% battery per day depending on GPS / workout / screen usage.
- The GPS is very accurate, comparable to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and top-end Garmins at a much more affordable price. But, the GPS can sometimes take a little while to connect.
- It has all of the workout and health-related features that you would expect, and more.
- It does NOT support LTE connectivity or NFC Payments (Apple Pay / Google Pay).
- At R6,999 this is a very good value-for-money watch that holds its own weight against much pricier competitors.
Previously, Elan was using a Samsung Watch and I (Eric) was using an Apple Watch. From the day we put the HUAWEI Watch GT 4 on about 8 weeks ago, neither of us have even thought of switching back.
We are both genuinely impressed with the HUAWEI Watch GT 4 and would recommend it based on our own personal experiences of using it so far (see Elan’s thoughts in more detail further down).
Battery Life
At Sleekgeek, we often joke that if you didn’t track your workout did it even happen?
The good news is that the HUAWEI Watch GT 4 is unlikely to die on you mid-workout because it offers up to 14 days of battery life for the 46 mm version and up to 7 days for the 41 mm version.
This long battery life is phenomenal in a world of smartwatches where most require daily or every other day charging. We found that the watch only uses about 5-10% battery per day depending on GPS / workout tracking / screen usage.
In practical terms, this means that you can expect the watch to last through extended periods of use without the need for frequent recharging. This includes continuous activity, sleep, and health tracking, as well as reliably getting you through long runs or extended workouts.
Charging time
The device supports fast charging, meaning a full charge takes approximately 100 minutes (which is relatively quick for a smartwatch). This is super convenient if you need to quickly top up your battery before heading out for a workout because even a 10-minute charge will give you more than enough juice.
Health and Fitness Tracking
The HUAWEI Watch GT 4 excels in health and fitness tracking, with a wide range of features as well as a focus on gamifying activity tracking to motivate you.
It includes:
- 👣Step Tracking: The watch includes meticulous step tracking by continuously monitoring and counting the number of steps you take throughout the day. You can set up custom step goals and get rewarded with digital medals.
- 🌐GPS Tracking: The watch includes incredibly accurate built-in GPS tracking as one of its key features, with a fun way to share your routes in a dynamic video where you can add in photos and stats along the way.
- 🏋️100+ Exercise Modes: Track your workouts with over 100+ exercise modes to choose from, catering to different workout preferences and needs. This includes both indoor and outdoor activities, ranging from eSports to Strength Training to Yoga to Trail Running and just about everything in between.
- 💦Water Resistant: The watch is IP68 certified for dust and water resistance, with an ATM 5 rating for swimming compatibility so that you can track your swimming workouts (or super duper sweaty workouts) no problem.
- 💓Heart Rate Monitoring: The watch includes accurate all-day continuous heart rate monitoring, crucial for tracking exercise intensity, resting heart rate, stress levels, and overall heart health. It’s great to be able to see the data in real-time as well as trends over time as your fitness levels improve. It will let you know about your heart rate zones during exercise and can alert you if your heart rate is going too high or too low for your goals.
- 😴Sleep Tracking: HUAWEI’s advanced TruSleep 3.0 technology allows the watch to track sleep patterns and offer analysis to help you improve sleep quality. It tracks your different sleep stages including deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep, and awake times, as well as monitors your breathing quality to determine how soundly you’re sleeping. The long 1-2 week battery life means that you don’t need to worry about “wasting” battery overnight.
- 🧘Stress Management: The watch includes stress management tools, allowing users to monitor and manage stress through various inbuilt features. The continuous heart rate monitoring means that it can identify physiological markers indicative of stress levels, including Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which is the variation in the time interval between heart beats – a well-recognised indicator of stress and relaxation states. HUAWEI helps you to visualise your stress levels and also provides guided breathing exercises as well as other recommendations and tips for managing stress.
- 🧑⚕️SpO2 Monitoring: It offers blood oxygen (SpO2) monitoring, a feature that measures the oxygen saturation levels in your blood, providing insights into your respiratory health and fitness levels
- 🏃Personalized Running Plans: HUAWEI empowers users to create and follow personalised running plans, which adds an element of customization to fitness routines. For example, you can create a custom 3km beginner running plan or a marathon running plan, depending on your abilities and goals.
- 👟Running Analysis: After you’ve got a few runs under your belt, the watch provides a running analysis looking at things like your Running Ability Index, current Training Load, your Training Index, your Recovery Degree, and estimates V02Max.
- 🚀Fitness Motivation and Gamification: HUAWEI has incorporated a gamification approach in the Health app, with challenges and medals designed to motivate users to stay active and reach fitness goals.
- 📊Misc Metrics: The watch also tracks additional metrics like distance travelled, meters climbed in height, calories burned, time spent doing different workout activities, etc.
Elan’s Thoughts
Very simply. I am in love with my HUAWEI WATCH GT 4.
I am someone who prioritises aesthetics over features.
Usually watches in my budget range that have excellent features are not attractive. They just look wrong in a social or business context. Conversely, the aesthetically more pleasing smart watches I have owned have lacked the features I required.
Luckily for me, the GT 4 has nailed both categories.
The GT 4 is sexy, looks and feels like quality with its aerospace-grade titanium case. The sapphire glass cover delivers unbelievably impressive screen clarity.
Practically, the weight of the watch is perfect. Not too light that it does not feel solid and not too heavy that it is not comfortable enough to be active with.
The game-changer for me, compared to my past smart watches, has been the incredible battery life. As a result:
- I can easily run a half marathon or go on a long hike while using GPS and not stress about my watch battery dying.
- I can finally track my sleep. Before, I had to charge my watch overnight and sacrifice these health insights.
- Instead of using my phone alarm and waking my wife when I go to gym at 5am, I now use my watch alarm. The vibration is enough to wake me without disturbing her.
There are more features you could ever need and I am still constantly discovering even more exciting capabilities in the extremely useful HUAWEI Health App.
Overall, while sophisticated, it is rugged and edgy at the same time. It suits the boardroom, the beach, a braai, a marathon, the dance floor and will turn heads in every scenario.
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