Keeping fit is essential for many people, especially in times of the Corona pandemic with many home office days and little exercise in everyday life – that’s where the Huawei Watch Fit can shine. Both smartwatches and fitness trackers can help people have more fun with athletic workouts. The Huawei Watch Fit is a mix of both device classes.
With its rectangular display, it looks like an oversized fitness wristband at first glance, but it also offers many classic smartwatch functions. But can it also convince in everyday use? Our test shows that and more.
In this article
Technical details
| Screen size | 1,64 inches |
| Wrist material | Plastic, Rubber / Silicon |
| Size watch case | 46 mm |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth |
| GPS | Yes |
| Battery life | up to 10 days |
| Supported systems | Android, iOS |
| Water resistance | 5 ATM |
| Display | AMOLED |
| Sensors | Barometer, Accelerometer, GPS, Pulse monitor, Pulse monitor without chest strap, Sleep monitoring, Ambient light sensor |
| Microphone included | No |
| Speaker included | No |
Huawei Watch Fit: Strong display convinces
It is already clear at first glance that the digital wristwatch wants to score with a large touchscreen. The OLED display is a whopping 1.64 inches in size and is not square, but rather stretched out a bit. This results in a resolution of 280 x 456 pixels. There are smartwatches with a higher resolution, of course. But the one chosen here is absolutely sufficient for everyday use.
You can either adjust the brightness manually in five steps or automatically via a brightness sensor. If you select a sufficient brightness, the screen is still easy to read even in strong sunlight. Depending on the selected watch face, you can also enjoy bright colors and rich blacks.
You do not have to expect any stutters in the general operation. You can quickly swipe through the menu of the Huawei Watch Fit with your index finger. On the right side, you will find a large menu button that you can not only use to call up the smartwatch’s main menu, but also to end your workouts, for example.
Lite OS with many practical features
The Lite OS developed by Huawei itself is used as the operating system. It ran stable all around in the test and convinces with a flat basic structure. Users press the side button twice to get to the main menu and can, for example, view the last workouts. It is also possible to manually measure the heart rate or blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) here.
You can also access the functions and analysis values of the sleep tracker, the stress level manager, the weather app and the alarm clock. There are also breathing exercises and notifications that are mirrored from the smartphone to the watch.
The Huawei Watch Fit does not have a separate back button. However, it is not missed in everyday use either. You can either press the side button to return to the home screen or swipe your finger from a submenu from the left to the right across the screen and you will get to the next level up in the menu structure. Simple, intuitive and well solved.
The ideal sports partner for on the go
However, the Huawei Watch Fit does not show its strengths in the classic watch mode. Especially when it comes to using the watch during sports, the advantages clearly come to the fore. In addition to classic profiles for different sports, you can access different animated workouts directly on the wrist. So, if you want to take a short sports break during your lunch break in the home office, you can do so at any time with the Huawei Watch Fit. And you don’t even have to leave the house.
Do you prefer outdoor exercise? Then you can alternatively access several pre-programmed running courses. There are suitable courses for beginners, advanced runners, and running pros. For example, you can choose between slow interval training runs, runs with a focus on fat burning or fast tempo runs. You can read off from the display which running pace is next for you. A vibrating alarm gently alerts you to cues the watch recommends for optimizing your workout.
A wide range of vital signs
Also noteworthy is the extensive range of training analyses that the watch has in store for its wearer. And not only in the visually very appealing Huawei Health app, but also on the watch itself. The Training Status menu item tells you how hard you have worked your body in the past few days.
Based on the measured vital data, the watch tells you how long you should take a regeneration break. And if you like it very individual, you can also activate personal goals in the respective training settings.
Anger with the technology
Critically, it should be noted that the GPS pairing sometimes takes quite a long time. If you want to start your workout quickly, this problem will sometimes slow you down for a few seconds. Furthermore, we occasionally noticed an inaccurate heart rate measurement – both in high and low heart rate ranges. This is offset by a pleasingly high GPS accuracy.
Automatic training detection is also available after activating it in the settings. However, it only works during walking, running, cross trainer and rowing workouts.
Strong battery life performance
The plus points of the Huawei Watch Fit also include the battery life, which is very decent for our liking. We were able to use the small smartwatch with the integrated 180 mAh battery for five to six days without any problems – three half-hour workouts with GPS recording included. If you do without the permanent heart rate measurement, the permanent blood oxygen level check or detailed sleep tracking, you can even get eight to nine days of runtime.
Of course, the battery life is strongly affected by the amount of training you do with the watch. If you use the GPS function for several hours on a hike or bike tour, the runtime is of course noticeably affected. The same applies when you activate the smartwatch’s always-on display. On the other hand, long phone calls are not a problem.
The watch can signal incoming calls on the smartphone, but nothing more. Because it lacks both a microphone and a speaker, accepting calls with the Huawei Watch Fit is not possible. Accordingly, it is of course also not possible to start calls via the wristwatch.
Conclusion
The Huawei Watch Fit is primarily interesting because of its comparatively low price of under 100 euros. And that is especially for beginners who are looking for a fitness gadget that accompanies them during their sporty workouts with many available extras. Eleven sports profiles are already preloaded, and numerous others can be added to the favorites list in the workout menu.
But not only sports fans will be impressed by the smartwatch in fitness tracker design. The large screen is quite simply a joy to look at every time. And not only because it displays colors powerfully, but also because smartphone notifications are well and reliably reflected to the wrist. If you’re looking for Smartwatch that will also be great with everyday tasks, check out our review of the Huawei Watch GT3.
Speaking of notifications: You have to activate them in the Huawei Health app first, and it is not possible to reply directly to WhatsApp messages, for example. It is also sometimes not clear which app has actually sent a notification to the watch. However, this is compensated by an overall good display of incoming messages.
