The Huawei WATCH GT 3 Pro, Huawei’s flagship smart sports and health monitoring watch, captured my attention right from the start. As someone who appreciates sport watches, I was drawn to the elegant design and the ECG heart rate monitoring function that comes standard with the GT3 Pro. Let’s dive into how this Huawei watch performs.

Design

From its titanium alloy body to the sapphire glass screen, and the increased memory and storage space, Huawei has done an excellent job with the design and hardware of this watch. The 46mm Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro health smartwatch has an elegant overall design, with a matte-finished titanium alloy casing. The watch’s dimensions, thickness, and weight are just right, making it very comfortable to wear.

The watch face features an inverted triangular hand with silver markings at each hour position and numerals between them, along with small markers. There are two buttons on the side: a power button and an ECG function button. The upper button is circular, and the lower one is a flat press button. Both buttons can be pressed, and the upper one can be rotated to scroll up and down between different screens. Between these two buttons, there’s a speaker, and the microphone is on the opposite side. The number of sensors has increased from four to eight, enabling more accurate health monitoring. These sensors can measure heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), and stress, among other things.

The watch strap is attached to the watch using a standard quick-release clasp, making it easy to replace. The strap has rectangular holes on both sides, which not only serve as a design element but also make it comfortable to adjust the watch to different wrist sizes. There are also two retaining rings on the strap. The one closer to the watch has a protrusion that can be inserted into holes on the opposite side of the strap, helping secure it next to the classic buckle.

Display

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro features a 1.43-inch AMOLED 466 x 466 high-definition sapphire glass AMOLED touch screen. The watch boasts a pixel density of 326 PPI. This AMOLED screen displays vibrant and lifelike colors. The touch screen is responsive, whether you’re swiping left or right, up or down, or interacting with watch faces and apps.

Setup/Usability

Initial setup requires pairing the smartwatch using the Huawei Health app on your phone. You grant permissions, select the device tag, and add the smartwatch. Once the pairing is successful, health and fitness data, contacts, and location information sync to the Watch GT 3 Pro.

Users can also enable notification permissions, allowing the smartwatch to receive notifications from the phone.

Long-pressing the power button allows you to turn the watch on, off, or restart it. A short press opens the app selector, providing quick access to about 25 pre-installed apps. In apps, settings, or notification screens, pressing the power button takes you back to the main screen.

Pressing the ECG function button quickly navigates to the exercise mode selection screen. Exercise modes include guided running courses (running/walking, fat burning, aerobic exercise, etc.), outdoor running, indoor running, outdoor/indoor walking, outdoor/indoor cycling, swimming, open water swimming, climbing, hiking, cross-country skiing, skiing, triathlon, elliptical trainer, rowing, and other sports. Huawei claims to offer over 100 different sports. Each sport has a settings option that allows you to switch notifications for distance, heart rate, and guided training effects. Once you start an exercise, the watch guides you through different exercise phases.

Other functions are similar to most smartwatches and fitness trackers. They can receive notifications for calls, messages, WeChat, weather updates, and control music. The watch has a speaker and microphone, so you can answer and make calls on the watch, although it should stay close to your phone.

Moreover, the watch can add bank cards, access cards, and transportation cards. When adding access cards, you can synchronize cards from the Huawei Phone Wallet.

Long-pressing the watch face interface allows you to quickly change the watch face, which is very convenient. There are 33 free watch faces pre-installed, which should be sufficient. The default watch face is in Simple mode. You can swipe left or right to switch between different screens. Swiping left includes heart rate, SpO2, stress, sleep, and daily activity trackers. These data are displayed without the ability to view detailed information. If you need to check detailed data, like heart rate, you need to press the power button and select heart rate to view it. You can also swipe up to see daily heart rate zone statistics on the same screen. The sleep section displays a breakdown between sleep and naps, and the activity records offer some more detailed screens. Swiping right leads to the weather interface, swiping down opens the settings, and swiping up reveals notifications.

Software

HarmonyOS

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro runs HarmonyOS 2. The system is smooth, but there are hardly any customization options on the watch. As mentioned earlier, the watch has a watch face interface and screens for heart rate, stress, weather, music, and daily activity records. You can modify the display order of these screens or add different tiles like sleep or SPO2 and then rearrange them. The watch also includes other functions like a barometer, compass, exercise, alarm, timer, and more, but these features can’t be added to the main screen.

Of course, Huawei offers custom watch faces, but the options are limited for true customization. In the default watch faces, only some allow slight customization. Some of them can display different statistics, and a few allow you to select primary and secondary time zones. While customization options are not extensive, Huawei at least offers a watch face download feature.

Huawei Health App

Huawei Health provides detailed tracking records for heart rate, SpO2, stress, sleep, and physical activities. Each tracking function has statistical data for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly summaries. The heart rate settings allow you to set heart rate warnings and heart rate zones. These zones include warm-up, fat burning, aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, and maximum effort.

Each activity has an info interface that displays useful information and provides advice for improving sleep quality and reducing stress. Overall, it’s quite powerful in tracking and reporting data.

Performance

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro comes with 32GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. The touch and swipe response on the watch is excellent. Apps load quickly, and I haven’t experienced any lag or other issues during use.

Launching exercise apps is straightforward; however, GPS positioning can be slow, taking 30 seconds to 1 minute to acquire a signal, but the accuracy is good.

Speaker Quality

The Watch GT 3 Pro can be used to answer calls. For such a small speaker, the sound quality is excellent. It’s quite loud and clear, even better than some lower-end smartphones. Therefore, using the Watch GT 3 Pro to listen to music while walking or running is entirely feasible, and call quality is also good.

Battery Life

The watch comes with a wireless magnetic charging cable (5V-9V/2A) that provides a fast charge. The watch can be fully charged in less than two hours. Huawei claims

that the Watch GT 3 Pro can last up to 2 weeks under normal use. However, if you use the GPS tracking function extensively, the battery life will be reduced to 8-10 days.

Summary

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro offers outstanding quality, robust features, a stylish design, smooth operation, and acceptable battery life. You won’t need to charge it every day, which is a significant advantage. With features like a library of over 100 sports, GPS, and call capabilities, it’s certainly a smartwatch worth considering for fitness enthusiasts, and it should suffice for most users.