Huawei Watch Fit Review

Huawei Watch Fit Review

Data about our health is more important than ever before. From heart rate to stress data, we are fortunate that these are accessible from new IoT products such as the Huawei Watch Fit.

Today, we’re reviewing the Huawei Watch Fit, a PhP4999 smartwatch, which Huawei is currently selling in the Philippines. For someone who has been following our site, this is a follow up to my first impressions posted on this page.

Device Agnostic

This smartwatch brings premium features to a budget price point. Regardless of software ecosystem you’re using – iOS or Android, this watch will work and sync valuable data to your Huawei account. Thanks to the availability of Huawei Health in various ecosystems. I tried this on my iPhone X, Huawei P40 Pro and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2; and reconnecting to various devices is such a breeze. Provided that gathered data is synchronized to you Huawei account, it’ll simply capture incoming data to the watch and sychronize it as you go through your day.

This level of device agnosticism is one of the strongest points of this smartwatch, which somehow eases the issue of ecosystem tribalism. If you’re a sucker for Apple, owning this should not be an issue because it will work without issues. If you’re using a Huawei smartphone, which runs on EMUI on top of Android, you will not have any issues either.

Similar to other smartwatches in the market, Huawei Watch Fit requires Huawei Health, which acts as the user dashboard and guide. The app may be downloaded in AppStore, Google PlayStore and Huawei AppGallery.

A Mini Watch GT!

The user interface and even experience on the Watch Fit are not too different from the Watch GT. It may not have the same form factor, but the experience is pretty much identical. It is in carousel view so you can easily get you to various features such as heart rate, stress, summary, etc., by swiping right or left.

Swiping down brings you to settings shortcut. A single of the shortcuts enables or disables specific settings. Swiping up, on the other hand, would show notifications. This setting, as previously mentioned, works regardless of device you’re using, provided that you have Huawei Health installed.

Speaking of its form factor, the watch has a 1.64-inch AMOLED display with 280×456 resolution. Pixels are crunched in the resolution at 326ppi, and can display up to 16M colors. These specs result in great looking display with individual pixels that you can hardly see.

Data is Life

Time and again, we’ve been telling our readers that if you value your health, you need to learn to gather and interpret data. Owning a Huawei Fit is a great start because it provides an immense amount of data for interpretation. This is a great start, but I do believe that Huawei needs to be more open with how the data can be culled and collected. Moving forward, information may be put in the form of CSVs or sheets, which can then be extracted via Huawei Health that may then be sent to medical practitioners. Right now, there is no easy way to extract the data unless you have a Huawei device and use this tool from GitHub. Huawei to GPX, as mentioned in their page, “… allows you to convert raw files from the app and generate GPX files for use in your tracking app of choice (e.g. Strava). The outputted GPX files will contain timestamped GPS, altitude, heart-rate, and speed data where available.”

Despite this concern, if you’re not after extractable data, then you’re better off with the surface-level information Huawei Watch Fit can provide.

Speaking of information, here are my observations:

• Heart rate monitoring is accurate and may be set either on-demand or continuously. It provides range of BPM and resting heart rate.
• Sleep monitoring detects light  and deep sleep, and are represented by pale and dark violet colors respectively.
• Stress monitoring requires recalibration each time you pair the watch to a new device. It provides stress level range from relaxed to high. If the calibration was successful, the data you can gather can definitely help you manage your stress level.
• Sp02 level provided blood oxygenation data. This will matter more if you have a chronic diseases. Changes in Sp02 levels will help determine if any medication you’re getting is working or not.

Apart from all these tests, Watch Fit also provides “workout assistant” that   shows various courses with 12 kinds of animated quick-workouts and 44 standard movement demonstrations. It’s a smart way to educate users how the workout is done. The smartwatch will not tell you to flip your smartphone open to watch a demonstration video. Everything is on your smartwatch. Call this untethered workout.

Also, if it notices that you have been moving too much during the day, it’ll constantly remind you to get up and move around.

Other features that make it a better affordable smartwatch

Apart from being a health monitoring tool and timepiece, Huawei Watch Fit comes with essential tools that can make it a better affordable smartwatch. Features like interchangeable bands and watchface are aesthetic features that spice up your user experience and swag levels. More over, tools like flashlight, alarm and Find Phone are essential additions to the smartwatch, which make it more than just a watch.

If you own a Huawei smartphone, you will be able to use the watch to trigger the shutter button so your phone can snap a photo. It’s a good addition, but it isn’t something that will push you to own a Huawei smartphone. This is good for Huawei because they have potential sales even from those who don’t own their smartphones. This is also good for consumers because they are not forced to buy a Huawei smartphone just to be able to enjoy this smartwatch.

The battery life on this device is insane. Consumption rate is 10% per day, which means that this will run continuously for 10 straight days from a single charge. There are several factors to consider here though and it might not always be 10 days. Heat, usage and efficiency decay are external factors that can affect battery performance.

Overall…

Well, overall, the Huawei Watch Fit is a fantastic smartwatch that merges great things of Huawei’s Band and Watch product lines. It is able to deliver in its USPs based on my weeks of testing without any significant issues. At PhP4,999, there is absolutely no reason to not even consider getting this especially if there is a need to have one. Yes, there are minor flaws like third party application support and data extraction, but these are definitely not reasons to give it a shot.

The Huawei Watch Fit is available in 3 colors: Cantaloupe Orange, Mint Green (the color of our review unit), and Graphite Black. If you purchase one during the holidays, you will get a free Moon Night lamp.

Giancarlo Viterbo

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Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.