The Huawei Watch has been toted as the most ‘watch like’ looking smartwatch to date.
But with a price point similar to the Apple Watch, will new kid on the block Huawei be able to compete with the big boys? And will you be buying?
Here’s our video roundup of reviews, from those in the know, to give you a bit more insight…
PocketNow
Huawei Watch Review: Sharp Style at a Princely Price
Michael Fisher
Michael Fisher at PocketNow highlights the risk Huawei has taken to price their watch at the top-end of the market, but is impressed with the results. He cites it as ‘a beautiful piece’.
“When you’re principle stand outs in the United States are fringe or affordable smartphones, you’ve got to have some serious stones to price your first Smartwatch like this. At $349 only one other Smartwatch in the Google Store is as expensive and that’s just the entry tier. Does Huawei bring enough quality to justify the coin? I’m Michael Fisher with Pocket Now and let’s find out in our video review of the Huawei Watch.
The Huawei Watch was designed to make an impression and it does from the moment you open the package. Huawei loaned us the base model of the watch to review but nothing about it says basic. The 42 millimeter casing is 316 L cold-formed stainless steel made it to a twenty one millimeter black souter stitched leather band, that’s both more traditional looking and more rigid than the soft leather of some other smartwatch bands.
Every Android Wear manufacturer in 2015 seems to be using the same strategy when it comes to design, de-emphasize the geekiness of a Smartwatch by amping up its style, and while this is certainly subjective I don’t think anyone this year has done it better this year than Huawei. From its blended loans to its brushed finish to its sapphire crystal, this is an absolutely beautiful piece it’s ready to ip67 for water and dust resistance but it’s such a great looking watch you’ll probably find yourself taking it off well before you get near either of those. About the only hardware complaint I’ve got is thickness, at over 11 millimeters it’s got some girth, that’s part for the course in today’s smartwatch world.
And you forget all about that thickness once the display comes to life, it’s a 1.4 inch full circle screen at a resolution of 400 by 400, the highest you can find on Android Wear. Compared to much of its competition everything on the Huawei Watch looks incredibly sharp, the deep color saturation of AMOLED makes the on-screen graphics pop in full brightness, while its high contrast means the time is usually still visible even in power saving mode. Toggling between the two is as simple as pressing the crown at the 2 o’clock position which like everything else feels very well made. Unfortunately there’s no ambient light sensor here to change the display’s brightness you’ve gotta go to the settings menu, its pretty common for smart watches, but it still feels archaic and such an otherwise advanced product.
When it comes to software, Android Wear is Android Wear, Google gives manufacturers precious little room for improvisation or expansion. To be candid that’s probably a good thing. Huawei has seldom impressed us with its software design on smartphones. That said there are a few bits of custom work here, most notably in the fitness suite the daily tracking app is a straightforward way to keep track of your step count and calories burned and Huawei says its heart rate readings are more accurate than the competition due to its use of two optical sensors instead of one. I can’t speak to the accuracy but it did seem a bit faster. It’s weird to even think of the Huawei Watch in a sporty sense though, maybe it’s because I don’t have the black sports edition seen here, but this is a watch that gets along much better with a business suit than a track suit. And Huawei includes over 40 watch faces out of the box to make sure you can find a match for whatever you’re wearing.
No matter which watch face you’re running the Huawei Watch seems to have no trouble keeping up – standard hardware load out of a Snapdragon 400 with a half gig of ram serves it well, making for very fluid interactions whether you’re swiping, tapping, gesture scrolling or commanding it with your voice.
Where the Huawei Watch differs from a typical hardware load out is in acoustics, according to Android Police there’s a speaker underneath the casing. There must be some reason Huawei has included it but for now is one of those mysterious touches we have to assume is for future expansion. A shame that Huawei didn’t take that a step further and include in NFC, which is just as absent here as on any other Android Wear device.
I’ve tested the Huawei Watch for five days during which has been paired with the Moto X pure addition, the watch is also capable of working with the iPhone but we stuck to Android. Depending on where you look Huawei claims up to two days or 1.5 days battery life and my testing I found the shorter figure more accurate. With the ‘always on’ display enabled but WiFi disabled I managed to get about 18 hours on a single charge. That means most people will be charging this thing every night and that’s kind of ashamed because this charger isn’t the greatest. Like the Apple Watch charger it’s a nondescript magnetic puck but Huawei’s disc issues wireless charging for a set of tiny pins don’t always line up on the first try, what that means is that sometimes the magnet will attach but charging won’t take place and unless you remember to look for that charging indicator you’ll be none the wiser until you wake up the next day to a dead Smartwatch. For a watch this expensive it would have been nice of Huawei to bundle a more convenient charger, the Motorola MOTO 360 comes with a cradle in the box so the watch can double as a bedside clock and that watch starts at $50 cheaper than the Huawei Watch.
The Huawei Watch is available in three colors with several options for bundled bands, prices stretching all the way up to $799 for the Gold Edition and additional bracelets available in several styles at similarly steep prices, and as I said before, even our entry level review device here is a not insignificant $349. Is it worth it? Yes, but only if you’re already sold on Android Wear as a platform, for some the interface is still too convoluted and the added convenience of an Android Smartwatch still doesn’t offset the inconvenience of charging yet another device every night, for them the Huawei Watch is likely to be just as ill-fitting as any other. But Android where has come a long way in a short while and nothing exemplifies that better than this device, from where I’m sitting it’s got the best display, the best industrial design and the most elegant look and feel you can find in the Google Store right now. Like the Apple Watch and the Watch Urbane I do think it’s too expensive, especially at the higher tiers but as Huawei continues to remind us, this is a product aimed squarely at wristwatch lovers and the fashion-conscious, both groups are accustomed to spending money. If you’re looking to kick off or upgrade your Android Wear experience and look and feel matter more to you than anything else, well it just doesn’t get any better than this.
Of course the Huawei Watch isn’t alone in the marketplace and we saw almost all of its competition at 20:15 in Berlin, check out our related hands-on coverage from that show here on YouTube and be sure to also taken the written version of this review at Pocket Now linked in the description below and available on September 22nd.
Till next time, this is Ben Michael Fisher with Pocket Now, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.”
TechnoBuffalo
Huawei Watch Review: Worth the Premium Price?
Jon Rettinger
“What’s going on everyone? Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo here. Android Wear devices and other wearables are coming out at a clip but this guy caught my attention more than any other at Mobile World Congress a few months ago. This is the Huawei Watch, used it for eight days, five days with the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus and the Moto X Pure Edition and three days with iOS. I want to share my thoughts and opinions and most importantly answer the question: Would I buy it? I’m Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo and this is my review of the Huawei Watch.
Right off the bat, this is a gorgeous looking wearable, I’m probably going to say that a lot during the review so get drinking if you want, but it’s the best looking and Android Wear watch ever used. When reviewing an Android Wear watch it’s kind of simple because the software’s all the same on hearsay save for a few watch faces, so we’re gonna focus on some different things, we’re gonna look at design performance, battery and other kind of features.
So it is starting at $349 this is not a cheap wearable but it is a bonafide computer on your wrist. The screen is 400 by 400, it’s a complete 360 degree circle, no no flat tire in the bottom *cough Moto 360*. It’s a beautiful AMOLED display that looks really nice, it’s the best looking screen I’ve ever seen on a wearable. Ah, 1.2 gigahearts Snapdragon 400 chip, 512 megabytes of RAM, 4GB onboard storage. This is essentially a phone on your wrist, really quick, I never notice any sort of lag, never notice any sort of stutter, I never felt at all any lack of performance here, very nicely specked watch, a kind of weird thing to same about a watch, but…
Now I imagine I’m going to say this a lot but the design it’s gorgeous. It is easily the best looking Android Wear watch I’ve ever used and I love this blade, just goes all the way around. I will say this though it does look a bit weird on smaller wrists since it is thick, so if you’ve got thin wrists I would try in the store before you buy it. The button or crown, whatever you want to call it, the 2 o’clock position feels really nice, I know it’s weird to kind of gush about a button but it feels nice, got the right amount of click attitude to actually let you know you’re doing something and it looks like an actual crown on a typical watch, so hats off to Huawei.
This is their first watch that they’ve built, they’ve had other wearables, but this feels like a fifth, sixth or seventh effort – designed years, really credible. I talked about the screen a little bit earlier but it looks incredibly sharp here. At 400 x 400 it’s one of the highest resolution screens out there and you can tell, things just look crisp and clear, the watch faces look great. It’s also sapphire crystal, so if you accidentally hit it against the door or desk or something you are not going to scratch it, so very durable here.
But not everything is perfect in Huawei Watch-land, there are some weird things here as well. It has as you’d expect and optical heart rate monitor, erm obviously on the back, but it’s not going to continuously check your heart rate like on other devices, like you might see on the FitBit charge for example or the Apple Watch, it’s on demand so you have to actually do it if you want to check your heart rate, go through and do it manually. Might be a big deal for some, might not be big deal for others, but I thought that most like to always know your heart rate at a glance, you’re gonna have to keep going through settings and open up the app and check it.
It’s got all the sensors you’d expect from modern wear, we hear things like gyroscope, accelerometer and barometer as well. I thought you’d like to know there’s no GPS like you might find other watches like the Sony Smartwatch, Moto 360 Sport. Also is you’re planning on picking one up for a workout watch I probably wouldn’t recommend it, it will though track basic activities like steps distance and calories burned, so if that’s important to you it will do that. I would like to see NFC here as well for mobile payments but it’s not here, also another admission there’s no ambient sensors so it won’t automatically detect the light and change itself you’ve sort of gotta go through and set it, it’s sort of a strange omission on otherwise a really nice watch. So I mentioned at the beginning that I used it for three days with iOS, I should have been more specific and said that I tried to use it for three days. The last one I tried it with was the iPhone 6S Plus and it wouldn’t hold the connection to that either.
Battery life is about what we’d expect, I could get through a day and a half without charging it, for me though I can charge it at night. If you’re the kind of person that like to charge your watch every two or three days look elsewhere, but if you can do it every night you’re going to be fine.
Ah, so the the question I try to answer in all my reviews is would I buy it? Yeah I would absolutely buy this watch, it looks incredible, it almost looks like a normal watch, the Huawei watch faces that that come with it are gorgeous, if you’re a fan of classic watch complications those are going to be in there you can customize it, they just look nice. So yes, I would buy it, the only thing that would give me some pause is the price, starting at $349 it’s not cheap and it goes up to $400+ depending on the bands that you want, like this blingy metal band that we have here, so if you’re price conscious there are other options out there that give you a similar experience for less money. The current generation Moto 360 is the first one that comes to mind, but I do love the screen, the full 360, it’s a beautiful watch to look at, it’s bright, it’s clear, the text looks awesome and I really enjoyed wearing it. So if you’re not put off by the price jump in, Huawei’s got a big winner on their hands here, just don’t try and use it with iOS.
Anyway what do you guys think? Leave your comments down below. I’m Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo, see you guys in the next one.”
Android Authority
Huawei Watch Review!
Josh Vergara
Android Authority highlihts how smartwatches have gone round this year and flags the Huawei as one of the first smartwatches to get the round design right.
“There’s been something of a trend going on in smartwatches this year, they all seem to be going round, and one of the first ones that we were really intrigued with was one by Huawei. Now Huawei may not be a company that’s really all that known in the West, but has been really making waves with the SmartWatch that a lot of people have been clamoring for.
It’s Josh Vergara from Android Authority, what’s going on everybody, and this is our full review of the Huawei Watch.
Design is the crux of the Huawei Watch experience and that was pretty obvious when we unboxed it. After all even that was a pretty luxurious experience. the design is of a metallic body, of course with a round face right here that has sapphire glass covering the screening and there are numbers on the top and bottom that curve down in order to meet the straps. One button is at the two o’clock position and it’s very large really, not all that shy about its appearance, and has a really meaty feel to it, now those nubs on the top and bottom do allow for easy change of the watch straps which are standard and they also have quick release bars so it is really easy to change them. We do think that this executive design for the Huawei Watch hits a lot of the right notes, this in particular has a tuxedo like design that has the silver and black and in its leather strap, but we do also think that because it feels quite luxurious it doesn’t necessarily meet all of the different style standards. If you have everything from business casual to the fanciest of clothing, then of course it’s going to fit right in, but if you really slumming it then this might feel just a bit out of place – think your typical gym clothes and what not.
Now we did also get a different version of the watch in hand this time with a snapping metallic band, though not quite on the level of the Moto Maker for the Moto 360, there are a lot of options available aside from these two you’re seeing – silver black and rose gold finishes are coupled with a number of watch bands and you can get them all in a number of different colors, but they will make you shell out a lot more, depending on the style that you want.
Now we were introduced to the Huawei Watch awhile back and we did think that it was one of the first smart watches to get the round design right. It does have a very classic look and feel to it but then has to contend with the troups of being a smartwatch. The nubs on the top and bottom curve down a little bit but seemed just that little bit out of place to the rigid lines that surround the actual screen itself and then the fact that the watch has to be as thick as it i,s just over 11 millimeters, actually detract from the overall look because this is one of the thickest watches that are out there.
Don’t get us wrong we do think that the Huawei watch is one of those examples of a seamless melding of classic design and current technology, unfortunately that has just as many advantages to it as it does disadvantages.
Now one place where there was a great choice in this watch is the AMOLED screen. This one point four inches in diameter screen comes in at 400 x 400 resolution, meaning this has one of the highest pixel densities that are available in a Android Wear SmartWatch to date. And that means that text is going to be really crisp and easy on the eyes, and pretty much everything is readable and viewing experience is pretty great, but also the AMOLED display provides a couple other benefits – not only is the screen going to only turn on the pixels that it needs to show the display, it also will help with battery life which we’ll get into a little bit later. And while the screen does make viewing quite great it again tries just a little bit too hard, though without an ambient light sensor here the screen is left at the user-defined a brightness, making the user micromanage the watch a little more than might be desired. You’re pretty much going to have to change the brightness to what you want it to be if it’s a little bit too bright or a little bit too dim for you. But thankfully there are no problems viewing the screen in daylight so even if it’s a little bit powerful in the dark you’re not going to have any problems when it’s really bright out.
Now it’s a little tough to talk about performance on an Android device because there isn’t much to do on one other than swipe around the different notifications and cards and to occasionally talk to it. That said however the Snapdragon 400 Processor is backed by half a gigabyte of RAM and this is the package that you’re pretty much going to expect with most Android Wear innovations today. And in our daily usage there still aren’t any problems getting applications to load, having notifications pour in and even occasionally getting our health metrics. In a way this is a benefit of Android Wear, the performance aspect is pretty reliable no matter what watch you get and the Huawei Watch is of little difference here.
In hardware we are talking about a pretty standard package that you would get with any other Android Wear device. Now the heart rate sensor is something you would find here and it is actually a little more accurate as Huiawei claims because they did add in a second one, and I did check it against one of my Polar heart rate monitors as well and the margin of error happened to be pretty small, so I would say that this one is pretty accurate.
There is a fairly large battery in here and with the Super AMOLED display it doesn’t get some pretty good life, however the charging cable that comes with it is proprietary. There are no wireless solutions here, there is a magnet on the back has to latch onto the back of the watch and then connect a few pins. The problem is when it does latch onto the back it might not actually make the pins connect and in that case you have to double check if it’s actually charging, if you mess up you’re not going to get any power when you want to put this watch on. Huawei did say that a day and a half to about two days was going to be possible here but a day and a half was already pretty accurate, we only had to really charge this watch maybe every other night, but that’s a marginal increase in terms of what battery life is for smartwatches today.
And finally of course there is the microphone input, one of the main ways that Android Wear is Android Wear. Now it might feel a little bit weird from time to time to actually talk to your watch but if you already used to it you have the main issues, the same goes for pretty much any other Android Wear device where if you’re in a very loud environment it may not be able to hear your voice, so you have to get in really close or just use your fingers to swipe around and get things done that way.
And finally in software we have well Android Wear, Android Wear is a pretty cut and dry experience and if you’ve ever experienced before there’s not a whole lot that’s different here. You have cards that go up and down on here and you swipe around and you get notifications and suggestions based upon your search history in Google Now. You can swipe over to the side in order to respond to some of your notifications or control them in certain ways, and you can swipe over the watch face in order to access the built-in applications. Now companion applications can be pretty nice but they are really kind of far and few between compared to the overall crux of the experience and that is of course the fact that Android Wear is a notification center. Certain applications do definitely shine on Android Wear, in particular using maps on it when you’re driving, but then there are also some disadvantages there like I’ve always said well you’re looking at yet another screen that you have to touch from time to time in order to control it and that is not really advantageous when you’re driving. And while Huawei does try to inject what it can from its own ecosystem into Android Wear, that really is just in the form of a lot of different watch faces, and even though it adds a little bit more customization ultimately Android Wear is Android Wear and that is what you get.
The Huawei watch us available in a number of different colorways and even material choices, the one that I have on my wrist right now is the base model at $349, there is another version of this that has a metal band and maybe a couple of colors for the body that comes in at $399, the most premium of them however have gold in the body and in the band and that can cost you up to $799. See unless you’re actually really looking for a classic look, that classic look on this device could actually make it a little bit boring, I will admit that this tuxedo color scheme is partially to blame, if I had my pick the black-on-black with a classic blending would be more exciting but not by so much, not to mention it requires a bit more money to get those design aspects that are much different from the norm. We give Huawei a lot of props are really putting the watch back into SmartWatch but it only really managed to do that without going truly above and beyond its competition, in an increasingly round SmartWatch landscape can boast about being the first one that pretty much got it right but it isn’t alone anymore, and that just might be its biggest problem.
The Huawei Watch was really anticipated and we were really happy to be able to test it out and bring you this review but we ended up thinking that even if the luster in the beginning was there in may have faded away just a little bit when we finally got to spend some time with it. It’s not a horrible watch by any means but it just doesn’t offer that much more than many of the other smart watches do already, so with all that in mind you can keep it tuned to AndroidAuthority.com for even more smartwatch news, watch all of the content from my colleagues in Android and then download the Android Authority app over there in the corner, so you can get to our podcast and to our website and AndroidAuthority.com because we are your source for all things Android.”
So there you have it. A run-through of the initial impressions on the Huawei Watch.
We hope you found these reviews interesting and always don’t be afraid to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.