Huawei Watch GT 2 Pro unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm Richard Neil, and today we're unboxing the Huawei watch gt2 pro so um. This is a product that I am fairly excited about, and you know I say that in a lot of videos, but that's because I get excited about a lot of products. I mean it is my job to love. If I didn't, if I didn't love these products, but I didn't get excited about them, I'm probably in the wrong profession, but anyway I digress. So one of the reasons I'm excited about this is because I love the watch. Gt2 um.

It's kind of that simple. You know what I mean it's its um. This has become my go-to smartwatch for all platforms. I mean you'll, see me, I mean if you watch my videos, you see, I wear a variety of smartwatches and it's usually between this one, a Samsung Galaxy, active 2 and a Apple Watch, and you know sometimes with an iPhone as an Apple Watch, sometimes with the galaxy phone I'll use a Samsung watch, but that's it like. You really won't see me wearing Wear OS too much, because Wear OS is kind of a bad product.

I'm excited to see the new ones that are coming, and you'll see that I'm pairing this watch with the Huawei P30 Pro and the reason for that instead of the p40 pro plus that I have is because I do need Google Play Services, because I do have a wearable aware OS watch coming, but back to why. I love this, and you'll notice that I do have a few other products sitting on the on the table in front of me um. But this is this, is this: is the Huawei watch 2. And man? I hated this thing um. This is.

This is actually a Wear OS watch um, it's probably running some old soft works that have been powered up in forever, but man I just want, like I like to bring this stuff out to point out just how much I hate it, why I hate it um and why I love the newer products. You know like look how thick this thing is and like look, how it doesn't um. You know. There's no removable bands here, and it doesn't really it this. It does not look comfortable to wear it's not really comfortable where it's thick.

It's bulky and I hated it and, like you, look at how big those bezels are compared to the screen you know and what they did with the gt. I couldn't find the original gt around here, but whatever they're not running uh Wear OS anymore, it's called light OS, and it's its a lot. Thicker. The bezels are a lot smaller, but it maintains that same design. You know but um one thing they did with light OS.

It gets two weeks of battery life, and you know, with most other smartwatches, Wear OS Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy. You get maybe two days and the thing is like you can't even get two days because, like you can't start off the next day, assuming you'll get to the end of the day, with a charge so like, I wouldn't risk two days on any other smartwatch, but you get about two weeks of battery life. Okay, so then came the watch. Gt2 like I enjoyed the watch gt. It's a good product, you know like the battery lasted um, you know I mean they say two weeks.

It's like 10 days, but I mean come on. You know 10 days still um, but then um they did watch gt2 and the design is very much refined. You can see that it's got the uh curved glass, you know there are two different sizes, and honestly I like the smaller one, a little better but um. Nevertheless, you know um and it just it to me, it along with getting that kind of battery life um it does what I want a smart smartwatch to do better than anything else. I'm not looking for an app-centric experience on a smartwatch, and I know that there are some people that do the thing about smartwatch.

Is its such a personal product? You know everybody's going going to want something different from it and that's something that I try to understand. When I write these reviews. I don't want to say this is the best one for everybody, because it's not, you might want those apps, because there aren't apps on this. You know like there's, no app store. You know there isn't enough storage on it or ram, but although there is much more than the original watch gt because they added things like local, music, playback and um, you know stuff like that.

But you know you might want that eccentric experience. But what this does well is one it does fitness really well uh it does sleep tracking really well and that's something that, like I've used so many devices that do sleep tracking, and they tell you, you know how much you slept what time you woke up, uh, how much deep sleep you got, how much light sleep, how much uh rem, sleep and um once you get all that data, there's just nothing, you can do with it, but um Huawei health actually gives you insights. I'm like here's. How you can sleep better you know like here are some things that you can do and um. So, there's stuff like that and really like it, gives you notifications, it works well and um, and you get that that battery life, I never have to think about charging this, like you know it's its a certain peace of mind when, like I wake up- and I have this on my wrist and I go to sleep, and I have it on my wrist and I just I don't think about charging it, and then it gets down to like I don't know, 35 or something after you know eight days- and I say you know, I'm going to throw it on the charger for a little and like I'll go in the shower put on the charger I get out it's at like 70, and I'll just wear it for a while, then maybe the next day, I'll get it up to 100 whatever you know it, but it's its something I think about, and you know forget the watch.

I can't look at that thing anymore, even though it's still in my view, but it's not in yours, so we're in good shape the that was the watch too. Did I say: watch gt2 whatever a couple other things that Huawei has sent me over the years? This is the band 3 pro and this is the band 3e and like these things are cool because, like they actually have very similar functionality, um to the watch gt series of smartwatches, obviously they're not as pretty they don't have as much functionality, but you know um, but they're super cheap. You know the watch uh, the band 3 2 was 69.99 when I reviewed it, the band 3e 30 bucks like if you're looking for a good fitness tracker that gives you a notification, it doesn't show you all your it tells you. You have notifications, so you'll see a little speech bubble for messages on the band 3. I believe the band 3 pro actually um shows you show you can read your messages off of it, but sing 30 bucks.

You know, and you can pop it out, you can. You could uh this. It comes with a clip that you could put on your shoelace if you want to just walk around with it. That way and like it's a really cool product, you know- and it's got a little display on here, and you know and like Huawei health is so good and that's part of the reason that I really like Huawei's smartwatch. So let's get this open um, because I know you spent a lot of time.

Listening to me talk. This is a very nice box like look at this. You know, Huawei makes great products and man. I love the hardware like I'm in the United States, it's getting harder and harder to get review units, especially since we have people at Edwin that are from other countries that Huawei serves more than the US, but you know smartwatch is like. I can still tell you to buy this here, because you can still use it in the United States.

You know they'll sell it on Amazon at some point, but I just want to like to take a moment to observe the box is the perfect time to get a little up, close and personal, and just to see what we were talking about. Here's that watch too, with its terrible band and how thick it is, yeah and like just to look at the watch gt2 next to this one. You can see now like, like notice, how I said it's got that curved glass on side so on the side, so it doesn't have that metal bezel anymore. This one seems to be made of bezel uh. It's got a ceramic back.

Actually, so we're gonna just take this off, and I guess this is where we'll find oh- and this is one feature that I love wireless charging, okay, um man. I have been calling for this for so long from Huawei, for you know for anybody that doesn't do wireless charging, and let me tell you, there's this USB type c yeah, it's a type, a type c cable, we'll just leave that in the box for now. But let me tell you, I have been calling for this any OEM that doesn't use wireless charging and Samsung and Apple do but pretty much everybody else doesn't Motorola. Did it on its original Moto 360, but the new ones they all use, pin charging and the thing about. Pin charging right, and you notice we actually have different ones on these different uh watches.

You know um this one's. You got two in the middle of the gt2 four on the side of the watch too, and the thing about these things is that they get dirty. Furthermore, you know you wear these things like, like, especially with the gt you're wearing this thing constantly day and night, and you sweat and eventually those pins get dirty, and that gets to be a real pain, because sometimes then you go to you go to charge it, and you can't because the pins don't connect, and you got to clean them. Furthermore, you got to clean the charger and, like fossil, has an innovative solution to that, where they actually just have circles around the back, and you can connect to any point in that circle, but really like just give us wireless charging. So I'm super excited that while we finally went down this route, I hope that I like to believe that they did it because they watch my videos, and they know how much I care about that feature, but I'm not so self-centered to assume that now, let's take a look at this very pretty watch, it's got a ceramic back um.

Like honestly, I I I I by the way over 100 workout modes, they said um, you know if it's it. You can measure speed at the driving range for your golf club, um that you could do a route back from a hike which is actually kind of cool. Let's see, can I power on there because yeah, oh, this is beautiful. Like this thing just looks, awesome look at this wow, so yeah like a root background. It's funny I was just saying.

Oh, this was quick. It is a very fast operating system because it's very light. Hence, it's called light OS, but um. I was just in Acadia National Park, and I was just hiking up and down a mountain which is kind of ironic like I would have loved to have this feature that that lets me kind of go back to um, to where I was going so anyway or to where I came from English. We want we're pairing now we have to find we're still on watch gt2.

Let's add that and a smartwatch, and hopefully because this it's got the watch fit which they should be sending me the watch fit. I don't know why it's not here yet, but anyway um. Hopefully you should just watch gt2 series, because if it's not then we're just, I have to wait for them to announce this before I can ever actually pair it. That's, oh, no! We're looking for watch gt2 pro and it oh! Yes, it's there sweet. I was afraid that they were going to have to update this on the back end, and it's not gonna.

It's not going to work. So yeah. We can auto update, auto download packages um yeah, so we got 68 battery on here already, which is nice um. So yeah look at that beautiful display. This thing looks so nice, the metal, chassis, uh, super um, classy! Look if you, if you ask me, I think they did a.

They did another great job on this, and it's something like I when I unboxed the gt2, I pointed out that they continued to refine this design over time. You know like, if we look at the design, like that's the gt2 and this is the watch too- and man the watch too, is an ugly. It's an ugly thing yeah. I would never like. I would never wear this.

Furthermore, I reviewed it for a couple of weeks, and it's been in a drawer ever since it comes out for unboxing. You know but, like I said, like the watch gt, it was just thinner lighter, like it looked like this, but with smaller bezels, and it was thinner. It was just refined and then like when you look- and you put this next to the watch gt. Those look similar, but the metal bezels are gone. It's glass now and it's got.

It's got those that curved glass on the sides. You know, and now you got this and like now, you can see the similarities between these two watches and what's funny, though, is like you could put any two generations next to each other, and you could see the similarities, but you put these two next to each other and man. That's called evolution of design, guys and and and Huawei really um did a great job with that. So they said um over 100 workout modes, uh 200 watch faces. You know, um, there are 96 workout modes on the watch fit.

I can't like. I want to try the work the watch fit, because the watch fit is really all about guided workouts and um. Obviously, there's a ton more features on this, but this is not a and one thing I asked about this. This is not a complete super set of the features on the watch fit. The watch fit is more about guided workouts and honestly.

If they don't send me, the watch fit I'll, buy it because I'll use both uh side by side. You can easily do that with Huawei watches. You know you can see. I have two paired in the um in the health app. So you know this is just for recording workouts, you know, gets the job done.

Fasten your watch tightly. Oh, this is for uh the heart rate stuff, and you know um you could do uh a test. Stress sleep tracking and sleep tracking is automatic. You know you just you to no no tapped away. I might have to turn that on, but yeah you just turn on do not disturb through here and, and you know, you won't get disturbed through the night.

You know I have to say one of the things I'm most excited about is wireless charging, and you can see like you, can see the difference in the ceramic back like this is a sexy device. This is an it's its. The pro version like you're, not getting a lot more because, honestly, it's its! It's not a refresh of the watch gt2, it's the pro version of the watch gt2. It does have an always on display that you can use. If you want it will affect battery life.

The only thing is um raised to wake. Doesn't work if you um, if you have the always-on display on, so that's called standby watch face, and if we pick this, this will cut you. This will cut your battery time in half and disable raise to way continue, I'm going to say no, because I'd actually rather have rays to wake than have the always on display and have to press the button in order to in order to wake it up. Let me take a look at what's going on in the health app here, and we see we have a firmware update. That's just happening.

I did uh, I did check off automatic updates, so there's a lot of stuff going on here and there's like I, I learned a lot about this app because before I reviewed before the watch gt came out, I reviewed that band 3 pro and stuff like that and for those smaller fitness trackers that always sells. You have to control them completely through this app, but obviously the smartwatches have a lot more controls anyway. You'll find notifications here and what's actually pretty cool about this- is that you can decide which apps can send you notifications quite easily and if I'm not mistaken, they're all turned off by default, which is awesome because notifications suck they are a bad product in pretty much every way in pretty much every app. So you start with nothing, and then you could turn you can opt in as you go along. This actually just took my settings from the watch gt2 that I already had set up in there and so yeah, I'm happy to just have messaging apps turned on.

I didn't. I didn't have to go through 100 apps and turn them all off to get to this nope. They were all off and I just found my messaging apps and I turned those on which is awesome. Okay, um these are this, is device stuff and, like you can check your device steps. I guess I can't expand on that.

You do music right, you! You can add music on here. Furthermore, you have to do local music, so I mean, I guess, a lot of people just have streaming services these days. So the only thing about doing local music is that you don't really have any local music, but that's okay. You know, there's also no LTE version. Uh weather reports like you could turn this on, and off.

Um uh favorite contacts, alarm device settings where you're going to get your actual um health data, because now I have two devices connected here, but where I can get my actual health data is in the health tab. In that app and there's a lot of cool stuff, you see you can see my exercise records uh. This is from July 8th because I haven't actually used this phone in a while um my sleep from August 28th. You know I mean, but after a walk, see this is my apartment complex. It actually just um knows where I walk to, and this is I mean Huawei.

Health is perfect. As far as fitness tracking apps go, I really recommend it. Even if you don't have a Huawei fitness tracker like you can use the app, and you know it's perfect. You can monitor your stress through the watch. Sleep, like I said and, like I said, with sleep, you can actually well I'd have to go back to something.

I actually tracked. You know, but you could see your average nightly sleep. You know. I'm not going to go through this because I have to I'd have to find something you know, but it gives you insights into how you can actually sleep better. So it's there's actually a lot of perfect stuff.

Here, see those watches it's a little bigger than um. Then the gt2 it's um I mean it still should be 46 mil it's also a little heavier one thing: that's that's, definitely notable um. You know I also. I really do want to check out the watch fit. I you know.

If you watch my videos um, then you know that I really, really like Huawei products, and you know there 's's. Oh, damn! This is comfortable. This is more comfortable than the gt2. I don't know what's going on here, because I mean the band is still a silicon band anyway, you know, I really enjoy Huawei products, um, there's no, like anybody who watch my videos knows that um I enjoy their smartphones. I think they make the best cameras around.

I've said it before when I travel on a trip or if I'm going anywhere, where I'm going to care about the quality of photos that I take, I make sure I have a Huawei phone with me. Um they make awesome laptops. You know, I mean it's hard to say they make the best laptops around just because there are so many. You know so many great laptops, and they all use. Furthermore, you know similar up to shelf parts intel processors whatever, but I mean they also like they have Huawei share built into their laptops, which is awesome like I can, you know if I have a Huawei laptop, I can pick a bunch of videos and photos um from the gallery, tap it against the laptop, and it just transfers them it's.

It's awesome. It's its like it's like apple um airdrop, but for Huawei phones, it's awesome, you know and so yeah. I like, I, like the watches too, not this one, this one's awful. But you know like that's a few years ago that and like I bring it out. I like bringing it out because it really shows that the product has evolved into something, that's fantastic.

You know um but yeah. So like. I said I do like Huawei products and I feel like I sing their praises so much that it almost takes away from the credibility. But I want you to know that I believe the things that I say, and I use these products even when like this, I reviewed like a year ago and like I still use it to this day, because it's just that good of a product- and you know a ton of other smartwatches- have crossed my desk since then. You know I've got like five or six Wear OS watches in a drawer.

I've got another one on the way which I'm actually looking forward to because it's got the new snapdragon where 4100, but I don't want to get too deep into that right now because it's about this, but you know I really do I really like Huawei products. I think they make an awesome product and um. You know you should buy this. You know, that's it guys, I'm gonna review in a few weeks, uh, hopefully Huawei, does send me the watch fit because that looks super cool, and then I'll also have like. I said I have a Wear OS one coming, so there's going to be a certain um, I'm going to have a lot of smartwatches to review.

So you know I don't know what the timeline is going to be. What I'm going to review first, because there's going to be a lot of stuff, so stay tuned guys, I'm rich from Edwin have a great night. You.

Source : Neowin