Review of smart watches Huawei Watch 3

Huawei continues to develop its own ecosystem of HarmonyOS devices. On the one hand, their perseverance is commendable and their success is considerable. On the other hand, the smartwatch market has reached the point where the whole variety of different systems begins to boil down to two options: WatchOS for those who use Apple devices, and WearOS for Android fans.

The same Samsung will very soon show its first WearOS watch, although it fiercely resisted the inevitable. There are perhaps only niche products left, such as ultra-expensive sports trackers from Suunto and Garmin, but they also have smart capabilities in addition to fitness functions.

And this is the main problem of Huawei Watch 3. By developing its own ecosystem, the company cannot merge with the existing one and take a place in it. Let's see what features of the watch you can put up with and with which you can't.

Specifications
Appearance
Screen
Application
Smart features
Sports functions
Autonomy
Outcomes

Specifications

Display	AMOLED, 1.43 inches, 466 × 466 pixels
Material	Case - stainless steel and zirconium-coated ceramic, strap - silicone
Water resistant	5 ATM
Sensors	Accelerometer, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor, optical heart rate sensor, light sensor, barometer, temperature sensor
Smartphone connection	Bluetooth 5.2
Control	Upper rotary button, lower normal button, touch screen
Compatibility	Android, iOS
Applications	Huawei Health
Battery	450 mAh
Dimensions (edit)	46, 2 × 46, 2 × 12, 15 mm
The weight	54 g
Peculiarities	eSIM with support for 2G / 3G / 4G (LTE), NFC

Appearance

This is a large watch - comparable in size to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 we recently tested. The entire front panel is covered with a convex glossy protective glass.

For control, in addition to the screen, the watch has a rotary wheel with a button function and a separate programmable key. Clicking on the first one brings up the main menu from which you can select applications. Using the key, you can activate, for example, the training mode or launch another application - this is selected in the settings.

The case back shines as if in dark chrome, on which the inscriptions are engraved. From them you can understand that the watch is made of stainless steel and ceramic, as well as find out the serial number of the model. In the center of the back cover, optical sensors are mounted in a small bulge.

The cover itself is attached to the body on four small screws for a hex screwdriver and is replete with holes. We counted eight of them: four on the same side as the buttons are used for the speaker, three more are under the strap, and the last one is on the side opposite the buttons. Apparently, some of the holes are needed for microphones.

At the same time, the watch has 5ATM water resistance and even a special function of blowing out the speaker after the pool and shower: it triggers an incredibly nasty audio signal.

Our test device had a black silicone strap - versatile, suitable for both everyday wear and sports. Together with it, the Huawei Watch 3 looks pretty discreet: this is the degree of minimalism that can already be considered stylish. Neat engraving on the swivel wheel, pleasant curvature of the screen, the shine of the ceramic-chrome back cover add up to an overall austere grace. A very utilitarian item.

Screen

Huawei Watch 3 is available in several versions, but the screen is the same for all - AMOLED 1.43 inches with a truly huge resolution of 466 x 466 pixels for such dimensions. It is juicy, bright, responsive - it responds perfectly to touches and swipes. True, because of the rather wide frames, there is a slight feeling of incompleteness, but with the black dial it disappears.

The readability is excellent, all messages and notifications are clearly visible, the fonts are large and comfortable. The localization is well thought out: there was no need to resort to unsuccessful abbreviations due to the fact that the words in the menu items are displayed in different font sizes. Yes, it looks a little messy, but you don't have to play a guessing game. True, in a couple of places the translation into Russian is not very accurate. For example, customizing widgets is called Customize Icons, and you don't immediately understand which ones.

The animation is neat and as elegantly minimalistic as the watch itself. Gentle flashes, a spiraling galaxy - everything is somehow so unobtrusive, light.

There are a lot of screen design options. There are several dials available, which, in addition to the main design, have a simplified Always On mode, which displays a minimum of information and consumes less battery. For those dials that do not have a simplified version, you can choose a separate screensaver (by the way, some of the screensavers repeat the design of famous German and Swiss mechanical watches).

But you can also collect your own version by adding the necessary application icons to the picture you like. Swipes to the left and right of the main screen show widgets: weather, activity, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation. The latter are also configurable - but only four of them.

The only problem with the screen is more likely to do with the software in general. After the update, our test device automatically switched from the black dial to the white one, and even when the dark version is set in the settings, the clock stubbornly shows a light one when it wakes up.

Because of this, in the last days of the test, I had to use the Do Not Disturb mode. The screen wake-up can be adjusted by touching and turning the wrist, and with a white dial it is simply impossible to toss and turn in the middle of the night: the display lights up from the slightest movement, turning into a real searchlight in the dark. And the "Do not disturb" mode prevents the watch from responding to hand rotation and touch: you can wake up the device only by pressing the jog wheel.

Application

For smartphones on Android and iOS, the Huawei Health app is provided. There is no current version in the Google Play store: to download, you will have to scan the QR code with the instructions that came with the watch, and go to the Huawei website, where the apk file will be. You can also find it through the App Gallery, the Huawei app store, if one is installed. For Apple technology owners, everything is easier: Huawei Health is available in the App Store.

In the application, all the data received from the watch is visible in convenient large windows. They are customizable: you can display a variety of parameters.

Synchronization between the watch and the application happens as if by accident. It happens that, for example, Huawei Health receives information about a night's sleep after lunch - and it is at this time that it notifies that your six hours are broadcast at 78 points. And the training results appear in a couple of hours. You can forcefully synchronize the application and the device by restarting Huawei Watch 3. But this process is not the fastest: to start it, you need to go to the settings in the system menu. That is, the button itself is hidden deep enough.

Smart features

The menu resembles Apple Watch - application circles that can be zoomed in and out by turning the wheel. Launching the desired program is easy: just touch it. And the clock responds quickly. Their hardware platform is quite serious: the processor is not the fastest, but economical, and it is quite enough to perform all tasks. And there is also 2 GB of RAM on board, and the interface never freezes during operation.

In fact, the interface is implemented so well, and the screen is so responsive, that during the test we used the jog wheel literally a couple of times - just to check in what situations it generally works and makes sense. And in most of our use cases, it turned out to be unnecessary. All its tasks are perfectly performed by the display itself, and there are no cool things, like the same chirp that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 has on the bezel.

Perhaps the only time a jog wheel can come in handy is when rewinding screens and adjusting the volume of the player in the pool. Capacitive touch displays are not very friendly with water and readily read parasitic presses, so a mechanical control option in such a situation will be more than helpful. And the level of water resistance allows you to swim without problems in the Huawei Watch 3 - just don't dive deep.

We were unable to control the music from the watch. Moreover, we launched both streaming service applications and tracks from the phone's memory. We even searched for additional applications in the Huawei store, connecting the watch itself to Wi-Fi, but we could not find a working option.

However, there is synchronization with a smartphone on which the Huawei Music application is installed - and it reads tracks from the phone, however, it does not work with streaming either. And you can also upload music to the watch itself: as much as 16 GB of memory is intended for user data. For a swim, for example, this is quite enough. And there are already available playlists, the last 50 tracks listened to and other functions.

The watch displays notifications from instant messengers and various applications without any problems. And that's all. That is, suppose there are no options for a quick response for the same Telegram. In fact, you have a compact pop-up window on your hand, and the only way to interact with it is to swipe to the side.

From the watch, you can receive calls and even dial a number manually. If Huawei Watch 3 is connected to a smartphone, then they will simply act as a headset: they have both a speaker and several microphones. The communication quality is quite tolerable: speech sounds clear, the interlocutor's voice is not picked up by the microphones, and there is no additional echo. And the watch also supports eSIM, in which you can duplicate your own number and walk without a phone at all. True, there is no information yet about which of the Russian operators will support this function.

From monitoring health indicators, in addition to the usual pulse and the blood oxygen level sensor, which has already become the norm for modern watches, there is also a measurement of skin temperature. Of the 30 test studies, only five showed the parameters of a more or less living person - above 35, 5 ° C. In other cases, the sensor preferred to give out temperatures from 33.3 to 34.8 ° C.

Oxygen saturation is a function just as random: in two dimensions with a difference of five minutes, the watch showed 91 and 98%. In the other twelve, the spread is about the same.

Stress and breathing exercises are also in place, as are the alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, calendar and other familiar things. The watch itself has an App Gallery store with many different applications, including, for example, from S7 Airlines and Maxim taxi service. There are several sleep trackers, calculators, workout programs, maps, radios, translators, but no popular messengers or streaming services. Which is understandable, but it doesn't make it easier for the user.

The description says that the watch supports NFC, and some news portals said that it would be in this model that the payment option would appear. However, now on the official website of Huawei this technology is only briefly said "Supported". But what contactless payment apps should be used is unknown.

Sports functions

The step count is not very clear. For example, where Garmin vivoactive 3 showed 4,307, Huawei only 4020. Running and walking is the same: Huawei has always shown less distance than Garmin.

In terms of heart rate, everything is more or less normal: the readings almost coincide with the measurements from the Wahoo Tickr chest heart rate monitor. Unless, on average, they are slightly overestimated within 5 beats per minute and with strange peaks. But you cannot connect an external heart rate monitor to the watch itself and display readings on it.

Heart rate readings during exercise, Huawei Watch 3. Strange peaks are visible; the maximum value recorded by the watch is 159 beats per minute

Heart rate readings during training, Wahoo Tickr 2 transmitting readings to Garmin vivoactive 3. No unexpected peaks, maximum heart rate is 141 bpm

At the same time, several dozen activities are available in the watch - as many as 13 options for one run. And for each you can set goals: by calories, by time and by other parameters, if any. That is, in terms of tracking various types of fitness, the Huawei Watch 3 is well equipped. Some of the activities are monitored and started automatically by the watch.

Huawei's most surprising solution is the coach-assistant. During the lesson, every 10 minutes the clock in English (even if Russian is set to the system) tells how much time has passed, what is the owner's pulse at the moment, and encourages. These sound alerts can be turned off: go to the training menu and adjust the volume with the slider. It would seem that the most obvious option is to put the adjustment on the swivel wheel, but no: during the lesson, it scrolls through the parameter screens.

The problem is that the volume is set to maximum on every next workout and has to be turned off again (at least on our test device). And it's easy to forget about it.

And in the end, for example, during squats, the watch can happily notify the entire gym that my wonderful owner has been engaged for 10 minutes already, he is so smart! And the speaker of the Huawei Watch 3 is loud, and especially at such moments.

Autonomy

In a normal cycle - walking, training, alerts, sleep monitoring, constant heart rate reading - the clock lived for about two days. This is an average figure among modern wearable electronics: they will not have to be charged daily, but once every two days. But from such a large model, and even with not the most powerful processor, you subconsciously expect less modest results.

There are some minor problems with charging. Includes a wireless charger with USB cable. It needs to be connected to the power supply. And with the same power supply, our watch was charged in different ways: in one case, it barely gained 15% in an hour, in the other, from scratch, it reached 100% in 2.5 hours. What this is connected with is not clear. So it is unlikely that it will be possible to quickly energize the watch before training, if it suddenly has only 10% left: the process is unpredictable.

But if you have a smartphone that supports Qi wireless charging at hand, it can be used as a power bank for Huawei Watch 3. This somewhat reconciles with the unstable behavior of the gadget when charging with a complete module.

Outcomes

Huawei has released a beautiful watch - and its beauty is functional, utilitarian. Even the glossy black casing doesn't get so ugly in prints as it could.

Their main problem is insufficiently honed work at a premium cost. From hours for 29,990 rubles (now for the action - for 25,990) you expect, if not ideal, then a high level. And you can't even pay for a bun with a device.

GPS positioning seems to be not the best - it is because of this that walks went out shorter than on the Garmin. The pseudo-medical features clearly show why such devices should not be trusted.

And everyone perfectly understands why this happened: this is a model on a proprietary OS, sharpened for use in its ecosystem. But the Huawei ecosystem in Russia is not developed and is unlikely to develop at the pace that the company needs.

And in the end, the Huawei Watch 3 is such a monument to hopes. This is a good watch, it is conveniently made, it is pleasant to use it, it has a great responsive interface. And yes, the company broke the dial with the latest update, although it's not so bad, it will fix it.

But the watch lacks the simplest everyday functions. Replies to messages in applications, in principle, the most convenient applications from third-party developers, streaming control, contactless payment and some other things that people are already accustomed to and which are taken for granted in smartwatches.

You look at them and think: how nice it would be if they worked on WearOS! All that smoothness, neatness, non-overloading of the interface, but in a much more functional system, and it would have turned out to be an ideal device. Except, of course, for the obsessive voice trainer.