Since 2019, Huawei has pushed its strategy for its smart products, similar to how the company charged into the smartphone market a few years back. And this year, the company has launched a bunch of interesting smart products including the Huawei GT 2e smartwatch.
The Huawei GT 2e is a new product in the GT 2 lineup. Compared to GT 2, it’s sportier but at the same time, reserves a polished design for daily use. The biggest difference is that the GT 2e doesn’t feature a speaker for music playback. But except for this, both GT 2 and GT 2e are almost the same in terms of features.
Huawei GT 2e Review: Design
The Huawei GT 2e features a 1.39-inch AMOLED display, paired with the durable stainless-steel frame. Compared to the Watch GT 2, the more compact design of the GT 2e makes it sporty and fashionable. And with the lightweight multiple-color sporty straps, the total weight of 70g is still acceptable for most people.
We knew AMOLED display was the best choice for smartwatches due to its power-saving ‘always-on’ feature. During these two weeks of wearing the GT 2e, we truly experienced the efficiency of the display. The feeling of wearing the GT 2e was also familiar to a traditional watch. As we turn on the standby watch face, there is no need to check the time by waking the screen, though the GT 2e also allows wrist raise to light up the display. In addition to this, the GT 2e also supports auto-brightness adjustment. Even as we enjoy outdoors and are exposed to sunlight, the watch display is still clearly visible.
Meanwhile, for personalization, users can customize their own watch faces through the dial store. There’re various watch face designs for free, or just customize the watch with your favorite photo.
Huawei GT 2e Review: Features
The GT 2e sports almost all the important fitness features that a smartwatch product should have in 2020, like 100 sport modes tracking, heart rate tracking, sleep monitoring, blood oxygen saturation tracking, and stress tracking. The GT 2e also supports an auto-detect feature for 6 sport modes – indoor or outdoor running/walking, elliptical, and rowing.
While jogging, the GT 2e was perfectly showing all the important details on its screen, such as heart rate monitoring, average pace, distance, and so on. And thanks to 4GB storage, you are able to wear your Bluetooth-connected earbuds and play the music from its internal storage without carrying a phone. The same storage space allows you to freely store and view all the important tracking records on the GT 2e.
Going back to the phone app, Huawei Health, you would find an even more detailed report generated by the watch, including the route detail shown on the map. And you can also open the dynamic route to check a short video about the whole running, which is really motivating for users to keep running.
The smartwatch also shows some workout information that we’ve never seen before. For example, several diagrams show changes in heart rate, pace, cadence, altitude while running.
It even shows you how hard you train. For example, in one of the evaluation reports, the watch suggested me to be careful not to overtrain, and have enough rest time to avoid injuries. And the suggested recovery time it gave me was 96 hours.
And the maximum oxygen uptake index shows that my aerobic capacity and lung function is just at the average level. The Huawei Health app suggested that it could be improved by taking long-term systematic training.
All the features we mentioned above could be activated independently without connecting the phone. The route information was provided by the watch’s GPS sensor, while the music play function was supported by the internal storage and Bluetooth connectivity.
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No doubt that the Huawei GT 2e is one of the most-sporty smartwatches I’ve ever seen, not just because it could accurately record the exercise information but also for its superb user-experience. What it provided was professional and exceeded my expectation.
Besides the professional performance of sports tracking, other fitness tracking features were also working well. For example, sleep tracking is sensitive and accurate. Compared to Xiaomi wearables, the sleep tracking report is more specific and helpful as it tells users about their sleep quality and offers some quiet sounds or music as sleep aids to improve sleep. And the new stress test is also helpful to know better about your mental health.
For the blood oxygen saturation tracking, we sent the watch to my friend who is a doctor, and asked him to compare the Sp02 watch performance with professional equipment. He told us that the results were very close. Even so, we still need to remind you that the watch is not professional medical equipment, and don’t judge your physical health only with the smartwatch.
The other features like remote camera control, notifications, weather, compass, barometer, are very practical for those who love outdoor activities.
Huawei GT 2e Review: Battery
Thanks to the power-saving algorithm of the Huawei self-developed chip Kirin A1, the GT 2e is optimized for a longer-lasting battery. During our daily use, the Huawei Watch GT 2e lasted for around 12 days. Though it’s a bit shorter than the 2 weeks claimed by Huawei, we have to say that the actual use should be very close to the 2-week battery life, considering that we turned on almost all the power-consuming functions including most monitoring and standby watch face during our testing phase
The GT 2e is 5ATM waterproof, which means that it could be used for shallow-water activities like swimming but should not be used for diving or other underwater activities.
So, the GT 2e is definitely our pick in the smartwatch segment in the first half of 2020. Especially if you’re using Huawei phones or Huawei earbuds, the GT 2e should be an ideal companion accessory to track your fitness and health.
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