5 months with a Huawei Watch GT2

This is the Huawei Watch GT2 Classic Edition, and this is a long term review. It is a beautifully crafted watch and it sits between the regular GT2 and the GT2 Elite with the latter getting its title because of the titanium body and band.

The GT2 Classic was my favourite choice of the 3 because it comes with a leather strap. It sort of gives this watch a dual personality because it works perfectly well whether you are feeling casual or formal. Just swap the straps.

Since I have had it for about 5 months now I thought I would share my thoughts and experiences living with the Huawei Watch GT2. For some epic visuals you can check out the video below.

Huawei Watch GT2 Classic Edition 5 months later

Design

I quite like the traditional design with the round face as well as the exquisite build quality. The top is pretty much glass, the frame is stainless steel and the base is plastic. All pretty solid materials except for the last one but it’s an elegant design overall. The digital watch faces that came with it are great and they have been my default throughout the whole time I have had the watch.

You can download and buy more watch faces through the huawei health app which recently got updated to allow other Android and iOS devices to be able to download and buy watch faces as well, something that was only exclusive to huawei smartphones only.

Most Used Features

Apart from checking the time, which is the primary use of a watch, some of the functions I used most on this watch are the health monitoring features specifically measuring my heart rate, my stress levels and my sleep quality.

Another feature I frequently used was fitness tracking. Its measuring various aspects of my fitness routine which was primarily waking and just monitoring areas such as my pace and the distance I have covered thanks to the built-in GPS.

It’s convenient to not have to pull out your phone every so often to glance at the stats but instead just raise your arm and everything awaits you. For the more serious fitness mafia the watch can give you goals to live up to during your workout stent which is beyond me. Yes, I’m a bit lazy.

More features I used frequently that deserve mentioning include the flashlight feature which I actually assigned to the programmable button, the built-in mic and speaker for when you have to answer calls and your phone is not within reach and the weather app for when I am curious about the moon phase and it’s name.

Customization

I have to be honest, I only used 3 watch faces on the GT2. The daily driver being the urban watch face, the speedometer watch face when I’m doing some manual labour and the classic watch face whenever I have an event that requires me to swap out the rubber straps for the leather ones.

But what if you want to go more custom? There are a heap more watch faces you can buy and download in the Huawei Health app but if you want a REALLY personal look you can go into the Huawei Health app, select watch faces, select mine and select gallery.

Here you can take any photo you wish and use it as a wallpaper for your watch. You can even put multiple photos and whenever you check the time on your watch you get a fresh wallpaper. The downside to this watch face is it limits the information you see at a glance to just the date and time. No more steps, calories, heart rate etc. If losing that info is a small price to pay for that red onion wallpaper then this one’s for you.

Just to be clear, it doesn’t mean you totally lose the data. You can still swipe right or left to access the data that you need so there is that. You’re also able to make the watch face match the one on the smartphone’s always on display. Unnecessary flex? Yes? No? 

Performance

It’s a watch so really the most important performance metric is how often I needed to charge it. In my case the battery would last me about 10 days give or take a day or so which I felt was super impressive.

No lags, or stutters or crashes to speak of since I got it on day 1. Everything still works as smoothly as it did 5 months ago straight out of the box. Support has been pretty decent. The watch has received 4 updates so far with one of it bringing new features like severe weather warning when the atmospheric pressure rapidly changes and a redesigned weather app with added sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset and tide information as well as lunar information like the moon’s phase.

Compromises

There obviously will be some quirks that come with it which include the lack of more durable glass on the top like sapphire or a more premium material for the base like ceramic.

Sleep tracking comes at a price. It’s not the most comfortable accessory to sleep with especially if you like resting your head on your hand. It’s something all smartwatch owners will have to deal with if they want that sleep tracking. 

You can use the watch to find your phone so long it’s within the Bluetooth range of the watch. However you cannot do the reverse of finding your watch with your phone. Something that I think they took for granted but should be an easy fix via software updates.

There is no eSim support or built in WiFi so for communication features the watch relies 100% on the phone through the bluetooth connection. This means it does not have the standalone capabilities that smartwatches with more sophisticated comms have.

Battle scars

As much as I try very hard to take good care of my tech, accidents do happen. In the second day after I got the watch, I inadvertently grazed a wall and it left deep scratches on the point of contact with the watch and also chipped the top glass.

In another occassion I chipped a different part of the glass and left a couple of deep scratches on the face whilst doing some DIY work.

This has been my long term review of the Huawei Watch GT2 Classic edition. Let me know what you think about it in the comments and if you want more content on the Huawei Watch GT2 you can click here