Huawei Watch GT 2e review: Fighting fit

Smartwatch makers have probably understood that only equipping their products with new features isn’t going to account for purchases in India, even for fitness junkies, as they are not as hot a product like a smartphone or a laptop can be. For their product to shine in this market, the right price needs to be factored in. Otherwise, people can always just use Google Fit on their smartphones, can’t they? Chinese tech firm Huawei has been going through a rough patch in markets outside China, with the US companies withdrawing their support and recent India-China border clashes fuelling anti-China sentiments in the country.

But it seems to have got the point that launching pricey smartwatches in India won’t do, considering rivals Xiaomi and Realme are focussed on releasing affordable fitness products. The result is Huawei Watch GT 2e. Priced at Rs 11,990, the smartwatch comes in three colour options: Graphite Black, Lava Red and Mint Green. We reviewed the Mint Green variant and here are our key takeaways of the Huawei Watch GT 2e.

Huawei Watch GT 2e: Design

Huawei Watch GT 2e weighs about 43 gms, most of the weight being taken up by the dial, and measures 53 x 46.8 x 10.8 mm. The watch comes in a standard round dial fashioned from stainless steel with two buttons on the right edge.

The top button is the power button while the bottom one is the function button. Both the buttons are very securely embedded in the watch body, fixed quite tightly and do not budge even slightly from their places. However, after using the watch for more than 2 weeks, the buttons became slightly more pliable and lost a bit of the rigidity.


The watch strap is rubber-like, made of TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) and has three rows of cylindrical holes along the length of the strap for breathability. As we used the Mint Green variant of the watch, the strap (Green & Black TPU strap) has a faded green colour on the front side and along the boundaries of the backside. The rest of the backside is black in colour. Even the insides of the holes come coloured in black.

There are two types of watch straps Huawei Watch GT 2e comes in: TPU (Green & Black, Red & Black) and Fluoroelastomer (Black, White).

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Huawei Watch GT 2e: Display

Huawei Watch GT 2e features a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 454 x 454 HD. The brightness levels range from 1-5 and can be set by going to the Display option in Settings. In spite of having an AMOLED display and high screen resolution, we found the display brightness to be inadequate under bright sunlight. Despite ramping it up to full (level 5), the display is not bright enough under the direct sun, looks a bit dark and since it is a bit reflective too, we had to peer at the screen more attentively to figure out what it showed. In cloudy weather or in the shade, no low brightness issues were felt as such (but only at level 5 brightness). If you are going for an outdoor training session, it would be best to jack up the display brightness to the maximum.

When wearing the watch indoors, the brightness is optimum at level 3. To conserve battery power, you may set the display brightness at level 1 when using the watch indoors; every icon on the screen would still be visible but we would recommend you to set the brightness at either level 2 or 3 for indoor use.

The on-screen icons are sharp and well-defined with a very vivid colour setting. At full brightness indoors, the colour intensity can be felt.

Huawei Watch GT 2e: Performance and battery

Huawei Watch GT 2e has a classic wrist strap design. Initially, for some days, it may feel a bit heavy on the wrists but the sensation of heaviness wears off slowly as you start wearing it more regularly. We wouldn’t recommend wearing the watch too tightly for long periods of time (like more than 9-10 hours) as it can cause difficulty in evaporation of sweat and thus, can chafe at the skin. Wear it at a comfortable fit; there wouldn’t be an issue with recording the workout accurately if you fear that.

You can sync your data by downloading the Huawei Health app from Huawei AppGallery (sorry, no Google support, for those who still don’t know. It is all Kirin and AppGallery now).

Swipe up from the bottom edge of the display and you can see the notifications. Swipe down from the top and that lets you access Alarm, Do Not Disturb mode, Find Phone, and most importantly, Settings. Swipe left or right to see the number of steps, the heart rate, stress levels, some weather details etc.

Pressing the top button when on the home screen takes you to the full list of available options in the smartwatch, like Workout, Workout Records, Heart Rate, SpO2, Sleep, Stress, Compass, Weather, Notifications etc.

If you wish to go to the home screen, just press the top button once again. The down button, when pressed after selecting a particular workout, starts the activity monitoring by the watch. The same can be done by tapping the activity icon in the middle of the display once. To go back to the previous screen, swipe on the display to the right. The watch comes with 4GB of memory and can play music from your phone when paired with Bluetooth earbuds.

Few smartwatch faces display the battery level of the watch, with only ‘Clear’ among the default watch faces showing the battery level. There are a few watch faces by default on the smartwatch. More (a lot of them) watch faces could be installed via the Health app.

The workout modes run the gamut from 13 types of running courses, indoor and outdoor cycling and walk, Pool and Open Water Swim, Hike, Trail Run, Triathlon, Elliptical, Crossfit, Yoga, Pilates, Karate and Taekwondo to even Belly and Jazz Dancing. At this price, the watch gives you a lot of activities to choose from. The outdoor workout modes require the GPS setting (but of course).

The breakdown of the heart rate zones can be seen along a glowing arc on the workout screen. These are (in increasing order): Warm up, Fat burning, Aerobic, Anaerobic and Extreme. If you are in the habit of working out daily with set goals, you can see whether you've regained or improved your fitness levels in the workout mode of the watch.

The touch cannot be called super-smooth but it gets the job done, even with sweaty fingers. The watch is 5ATM water-resistant which means it is water-resistant up to a depth of 50 metres. Wearing this watch, you can go for swimming and other water-based workouts in shallow water (up to 50 metres) but Huawei does not recommend going for something like “scuba diving, waterskiing, or other activities involving high-velocity water or submersion below shallow depth.”

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The smartwatch charged to 18% within 20 minutes of putting in on charge via the laptop. It took about 2 hours for a complete charge.

After two days of charging, the battery was at 79% and after one more day, the battery stood at 67%. During the total of 3 days, we used it to track workout sessions about an-hour-and-a-half long daily. During that time, the display brightness was a 3, continuous heart rate monitoring was off and a power-intensive watch face was being used. The battery, irrespective of which type of watch face you use--power-intensive or low-power consuming one--drops by about an average of 15% with every 24 hours if you use the watch to measure about an hour of workout daily.

With about 90 minutes of daily workout sessions, a little or no sleep tracking and continuous heart rate monitoring off, the watch could go on for 8-9 days on a single charge if you are ready to see how long the battery life can be stretched. Otherwise, the watch would run for about a week easily.

The charging pad/cradle has two magnetic pins that attach to the Huawei Watch GT 2e in a certain alignment only. It is safe to lift up a charging watch with the help of the charging cable; the smartwatch won’t come off even if you swing the cable gently. However, if you give it a vigorous shake, the smartwatch will detach and fall down. So, don’t trust it that far.

When you begin a workout, it is impossible to assign the watch to do something else like set a timer. Sure the workout record will tell the total time you invested but suppose you wanted to see the number of reps you managed within 30 seconds or a minute? Swipe up, down, left or right, the workout mode won’t let you access any other function of the watch while it is on. Only when you end the workout, you will be able to access the other functions. This detail can be vital for those who want to see how fast they can manage a certain set of exercises or repetitions.

When the smartwatch battery level dropped to 5%, we didn’t put it on charge immediately. Instead, we decided to check how long it could go on if we used it to monitor the usual workout routine as we did when it had sufficient charge. At 12 PM in the afternoon, the watch was at 5%. Then, with continuous heart rate monitoring off, the brightness level at 3 and the screen on time being 5 minutes, we used it for a Pilates session for about an hour and 34 minutes, during which the heart rate stayed in the range of 61-155 beats per minute (bpm), the average heart rate is 111 bpm. The workout took the body from the warm-up zone (for 29 minutes) to the fat-burning zone (36 minutes) and eventually reached the aerobic zone (9 minutes). After that, the watch stayed on till 6 PM in the evening, eventually discharging at the end of a 40-minute indoor walk. So, at 5% battery life, the watch gave about six hours of battery life, and also recorded about 2-hour long workout sessions, which is pretty doughty and long-lasting at extremely low battery levels.

Verdict-


Huawei Watch GT 2e has a premium look, is very sturdily built and has a classic smartwatch design with a round dial. The battery can go on for a week if you work out for about two hours every day and longer, close to 10 days if you sweat it out for about an hour daily. It also gives you a plethora of workout modes for the price, with even dance and martial arts modes. It comes with a high-resolution AMOLED display with a vivid colour scheme. The one downside of the watch is insufficient display brightness under bright sunlight, though it is sufficiently bright in cloudy weather. At Rs 11,990, the Huawei Watch GT 2e can be a good choice for beginner-to-intermediate level fitness enthusiasts.