Huawei Watch GT Active Review: Stylish with great battery life

Huawei certainly likes making a stir. That was undoubtedly the case when Huawei announced the original model of the Huawei Watch GT, a smartwatch with a claimed battery life of two weeks. Competing models such as the Apple Watch Series 4 (or the newer Apple Watch Series 5) measure their endurance in hours, not weeks.

The Huawei Watch GT Active is essentially a style makeover of the existing Huawei Watch GT model, which has more of an impact in design and comfort terms than anywhere else. It's a very good option if you want a long life watch with some smartwatch features, although as I noted with the original, the lack of apps and certain features does make it a less compelling option than many "true" smartwatches.

Design

• Lighter and more comfortable straps
• Limited watch faces

• Read our full review of the Huawei Watch GT Active's design

  While Huawei did dip its toes into the Android Wear space with timepieces like the Huawei Watch 2, for the past couple of years, it's been working on its own platform, first announced with the Huawei Watch GT.

  The Huawei Watch GT Active is essentially a restyling of that design, with an attractive Titanium Grey finish around the watch body. It sells with a Fluroelastomer strap – this is meant to be a watch you'll sweat on, after all – in either orange or green. Orange is going to be the extrovert's choice there, but Huawei supplied me with the more sedate green strap, which I think matches the colour of the watch body a whole lot better.

  I've used the original Watch GT a lot since launch, largely because its impressive battery life means it's a good travelling companion, but immediately on putting the Watch GT Active on my wrist, I could feel the difference that the new strap makes in overall weight.

  It's much more comfortable, and that is of course key if you're going to be using it for exercise purposes. Huawei is also selling an "Elegant" edition of the Huawei Watch GT that is substantially lighter, although at the cost of display space.

  The Huawei Watch GT features a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with a 454 x 454 resolution, exactly the same as on the now-dubbed "Classic" edition.

  I'm not entirely sure how a watch that's less than a year old is a "Classic", but there you have it. It uses a round design with just a small selection of the same watch faces found on the Classic, with absolutely zero customisability.

Performance

• Covers most of the basics well
• Good heart rate tracking
• No music control for connected phones

• Read our full review of the Huawei Watch GT Active's performance

  The Huawei Watch GT Active is still essentially the same watch that the Huawei Watch GT Classic is, save for a few firmware updates that Huawei claims have tightened up general performance and features such as the heart rate tracking along the way.

  That means that basically every one of my observations on the original Watch GT still apply here. You're still stuck pairing via Bluetooth with Huawei's Health app, which naturally enough you'll find pre-installed on a Huawei phone. It's also available on Google Play and the iOS App stores, although with Huawei's recent woes with the US government, it'll be interesting to see if it's still able to list and supply apps – even free ones – that way.

  Does providing a free app contravene the US government's edict? I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really know. In any case, I tested the watch paired with a Huawei P30 Pro just to be on the safe side.

  Huawei's Health app covers most of the basics you'd expect out of a health-tracking application, such as your heart rate, exercise records and sleep patterns. The exceptional battery life of its wearables makes sleep tracking feasible, although you've got to be comfortable wearing a large watch to bed in order to do so.

  There's a word to describe the Huawei Watch GT Active's feature set, and that word is basic. I've long pondered whether it falls more within the "fitness tracker" category than the true "smartwatch" one because, while it covers matters like GPS tracking, heart rate and notifications quite well, there's no additional app store to extend its functionality or add new watch faces.

  Like the Classic watch, there's no facility for music control, something I think is a vital part of the true smartwatch experience. It's an odd matter, given it's connecting over Bluetooth anyway, and I can only guess that Huawei either didn't prioritise adding it or somehow found it affected battery life adversely.

  That lack of apps also means that while notifications are plentiful from your phone, almost all of them will push you towards your phone screen for further detail because there's simply no way for the watch itself to display further information.

Battery life

• Astonishingly good battery life
• Custom charger is a pain if you lose it

• Read our full review of the Huawei Watch GT Active's battery life

  Huawei doesn't reveal specifications for the battery that underpins the Huawei Watch GT Active, and even a teardown doesn't give too many clues as to how much power it's actually packing. In many ways that doesn't matter because the effective answer may as well be "more than enough".

  Huawei claims a battery life of "up to" 14 days for the Huawei Watch GT Active because it really is just the Huawei Watch GT in a fancy new hat. My own testing with both the Active and the original really does bear that out, although it won't take you all that long to work out the ways that Huawei manages that particular feat.

  The Huawei Watch GT's feature set is limited, and that no doubt lets it sip gently from its sealed battery reserves. More importantly, it's very aggressive when it comes to blanking out the screen. It will wake the screen when it detects your wrist turning upwards, but then five seconds later, it'll blank out again. If you want a timepiece with an always-on display, this is as far from it as you can possibly get. Get used to tapping the side buttons to wake it if you want more persistent screen display action.

  It's worth pointing out that the "Elegant" edition, which features a smaller screen and body, sacrifices battery life as a result. Huawei only claims seven days for that model.

  Like the classic model, charging is via a custom round charging plate with pogo pins that connects out via USB C. That's handy in the sense that you can use your existing phone charger with it, although it can be a real pain if you lose the actual circular charging plate, which is pretty small.

Should you buy it?

• Refined looks, but that's about it
• May be worth waiting on the Watch GT 2 anyway

The Huawei Watch GT Active has taken its time landing on our shores, and that presents a rather obvious problem for it. Huawei's already announced its successor, the Huawei Watch GT 2, and that's a slimmer, even more refined model that does include a level of music playback (albeit on the watch itself) while still retaining that two-week battery life claim.

We don't know right now what the Huawei Watch GT 2 will cost in Australia, or even when it will launch, but it's got to be top of mind when considering the Huawei Watch GT Active. On its own merits, it has superb battery life and handles the very basics of smartwatch notifications and fitness tracking quite well, but with a new model waiting in the wings, it might be wiser to hold off.

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