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Huawei Watch GT 2 review: Great battery life, but is it really a “smart” watch?

Name: Huawei Watch GT 2 Sport 42mm
Brand: Huawei

Alex Kidman

Last updated: Feb 13, 2020

Quick verdict: If you want a wearable with exceptional battery life, buy the Huawei Watch GT 2, but if you want a smartwatch with full app compatibility and music playback from Spotify, Apple Music or any other music streaming service, buy something else.

Battery life is amazing
Good for fitness tracking
Works across Android and iOS

No apps
Limited watch face customisability
Lacks NFC
Only supports music playback on the watch

Huawei's original Huawei Watch GT was something of a revelation when the Chinese tech giant unleashed it on the world for one simple reason. Smartwatches, so the industry tells us, are devices that at best can last a day or two before needing a power top-up.

The Watch GT flipped that assumption on its head, with a battery life that can be measured in weeks. However, it wasn't without its limitations, sitting somewhere between a fancy fitness tracker and a full "smartwatch" of the style sold by Apple or Samsung.

The second time around, Huawei has tweaked around the edges for the design and feature set, but it still has very much the same story to tell.

Design

42mm or 46mm watch face sizes
Band designs limited by size
Sports or Classic designs
Limited range of watch faces

Most smartwatch makers offer larger and smaller watch designs – often referred to as women's or men's watches, but really that's a distinction that's up to you – and Huawei is no different with the choice of a 42mm Huawei Watch GT 2 or a 46mm Huawei Watch GT 2 to pick.
Huawei produces the Huawei Watch GT 2 in either a "Classic" or "Sports" style, but you are somewhat limited in your choices depending on which watch size suits your wrist.
The 42mm Huawei Watch GT 2 can be purchased with either a gravel beige leather strap or black fluoroelastomer strap, while the 46mm variant sells with either a brown leather strap or a black fluoroelastomer strap. It's the same story with watch bodies, with the 46mm available in matte black or pebble brown, while the 42mm sells in night black and gravel beige tones. Want a 42mm matte black Huawei Watch GT 2 with a brown leather strap? You're entirely out of luck.
The review model supplied by Huawei was the smaller 42mm night-black sports model, and it's a relatively simple design with a rounded body that looks an awful lot like Samsung's Galaxy Watch Active 2.
It features two side buttons for menu access and quick workout access and a 1.2-inch AMOLED 390 x 390 pixel display; if you opt for the 46mm model, that bumps up to a 1.39-inch AMOLED 454 x 454 pixel screen.
The other display note that any smartwatch needs are watch faces, and here the Huawei Watch GT 2 doesn't compare all that well. There are a total of 13 watch face styles to choose from, and only one of them has any degree of customisability at all. While there's likely to be a watch face you'll settle on, it would be nice to have the ability to add additional watch face styles, especially as many of them tend towards the garish, with few resembling any kind of classic watch face design.

Performance

LiteOS still lives up to its name
Lacks NFC
Good fitness tracking

Huawei has offered Android Wear watches in the past, but like the original Watch GT, the Huawei Watch GT 2 runs on its own LiteOS platform.
I'm wary of really calling it a platform, though, because that might give you the impression that this is a smartwatch with any level of app support to customise it to your tastes and preferences. There's nothing like that at all, so you're limited only to the apps that Huawei provides on the Huawei Watch GT 2.
On the fitness side, these are actually very good, with lots of workout combinations to check and heart-rate tracking that, at least in my own testing, seems to pick up elevated rates quite well. Like any other fitness tracker, it's not a medical-grade quality tracker, but for keeping an eye on the intensity of your exercise, it does the job well enough. It's worth noting that Sydney's recent bushfires kept my own exercise ambitions limited to outdoor walks and work on an exercise bike, so I've not been able to test its more extended fitness tracking routines, which go all the way up to triathlons if you're particularly keen.
I criticised the original Huawei Watch GT for lacking music playback control, which is a very simple part of most smartwatches and even some fitness trackers. I was excited to note that the Huawei Watch GT 2 does include a music feature, but it's not quite what I was expecting.
The Huawei Watch GT 2 will allow you to transfer music files to the watch's internal memory, but that's the only way that it will actually play back music. You can have it paired to an Android or iOS smartphone via the Huawei Health app and it'll track everything else, but it can't and won't detect music playing back through any other source.
It won't even work with headphones you have paired to your smartphone; instead, it insists you have to pair your "bluetooch" headphones directly to the watch.
That's a typo that Huawei will hopefully wash out of the Huawei Watch GT 2 via a firmware update, but it would be far more convenient if it also supported streaming music services in the future. Right now from the review unit supplied though, it's still notably lacking.
Another feature also notably absent on the Huawei Watch GT 2 is any form of NFC. That sort of makes sense given it's not tied to the Android platform and so Google Pay compatibility would be tricky, but compared to other competing smartwatches, it's still a definite limitation, especially if you fancy a quick bottle of water from the corner store while you're out for a jog.

Battery life

Easy single week or more battery life
Custom charging plate
Battery life takes a big hit if you keep the display on

The Huawei Watch GT's party trick was its exceptional battery life, and it's a feature that carries through into the Huawei Watch GT 2 as well. Huawei rates the smaller 42mm Huawei Watch GT 2 as capable of up to 7 days of battery life, while the larger 46mm model can manage up to 14 days.
Those figures do play out in real-world testing, at least for the 42mm model, and indeed in my testing, I've managed to get through even more than seven days at times. Huawei isn't subtle about how it manages this, however. The lack of apps means there's usually relatively little processing going on in the background, and it's set to blank out the screen quite quickly unless you're directly interacting with it.
For the most part that works well enough, with the screen flicking to life whenever I raised my wrist. You can opt for an always-on display if you want to, but the watch warns you that this will halve its effective battery life if you do. It's not kidding either, with a typical battery life of two to three days when you do. That's more problematic when you consider that careful usage of a fully-app-enabled smartwatch can tend towards those kinds of timing, including some that include always-on displays as standard.
Charging is via the same circular custom plate used for the Huawei Watch GT, and it's nicely rapid, but again it's disappointing not to see Qi-based wireless charging at play here. Lose the charging plate, and you're not going to be able to top up the Huawei Watch GT 2 when it goes flat.

Verdict

Good battery life, but app limitations are a genuine problem

The Huawei Watch GT 2 is very much an iterative update to the Huawei Watch GT, which means that I'm still stuck. It can't quite decide if it's a straight fitness tracker with smartwatch aspirations and a somewhat higher price or a somewhat affordable smartwatch that really isn't that smart.

If what you want out of a wearable is covered by the Huawei Watch GT 2's feature set, it's well worth considering for that exceptional battery life, but if you do want more access to your smartphone's functions than it will allow, you'll all too quickly find it limiting.

Pricing and availability

The Huawei Watch GT 2 is available in a range of styles, colours and sizes in Australia.

The Huawei Watch GT 2 Sport 42mm as tested typically sells for $369 outright. If you want the classic version of the 42mm watch, expect to pay $399.

If you want the larger 46mm Huawei Watch GT 2, it will set you back $399 in the sports configuration or $429 for the classic model.

Specifications

How we score our reviews

Where to buy

General

Face Size

30.48mm

Strap Size

42mm

Colours

Night Black, Gravel Beige

Battery Life

Up to 7 days

Connectivity

Wi-Fi

Bluetooth

BT5.1, BLE / BR / EDR

Features

Accelerometer

Yes

Distance

Yes

Gps

Yes

Gyroscope

Yes

Heart Rate

Yes

Pedometer

Yes

Rechargeable

Yes

Sleep Tracker

Yes

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Alex Kidman

Alex Kidman was the tech and telco editor at Finder and is now a freelance technology writer. He's been a technology writer with experience spanning more than 20 years, writing and editing at Gizmodo, CNET, PC Magazine, Kotaku and many more. Alex has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New England and a serious passion for retro gaming.

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Huawei Watch GT 2 review: Great battery life, but is it really a “smart” watch?