Huawei Watch 3 Pro in for review
Huawei’s Watch GT 2 Pro was not only arguably the best made smartwatch on the market, but it was also bargain at just €299.
Not content to sit on its laurels, however, Huawei is back with the Watch 3 Pro, a smartwatch that keeps everything that made its predecessor great and adds a bunch of new stuff as the company move over its wearable lineup to HarmonyOS.
True to its heritage, the Huawei Watch 3 Pro has impeccable build quality. The housing is titanium, the back is ceramic and the top is sapphire glass. The combination makes for a device that’s light, but as durable as they come. The top glass sits seemingly unprotected but should be impregnable to scratches and the bottom ceramic feels smooth as silk to the skin.
While last year’s GT 2 Pro came with a special Fluoroelastomer rubber strap, the Watch 3 Pro features both a silicone and a metal strap. As with previous Huawei watches the strap is a standard 22mm size making for an easy swap if you want leather, instead of the two provided materials.
The new charging cradle comes with a USB cable attached this time around. Should you misplace the cradle or need a second one, the Huawei Watch 3 Pro can charge on any Qi-standard wireless charger you have lying around.
Unboxing the Huawei Watch 3 Pro
The Huawei Watch 3 Pro brings two major changes – a better display and a brand new OS – Harmony OS 2.0.
The watch is noticeably zippier. For instance raise to wake or tilt to wake (if you want to check the watch, while sitting on a desk) are quicker than before. The display is noticeably brighter too, Huawei claims up to 1000 nits of brightness.
Huawei has upgraded the OS experience, while keeping it familiar. A swipe from the top of the watch still pulls down toggles for settings and a swipe from the bottom still prompts notifications.
You still get customizable, side-swipeable screens for weather, activity tracking, heart rate and more. But there’s a new grid of apps that you can bring up with a press on the new rotating crown. You can zoom in and out of the grid by rotating the crown, or with touch gestures.
The bottom button can be customized to open any app or setting, but defaults to workouts.
The new grid view of apps
Huawei has also implemented skin temperature tracking to go along with blood oxygen metering and heart rate monitoring. Like its name suggests, Skin temperature measures the surface temperature of your skin, not your core body temperature. Its usefulness is slightly questionable, but a notable change in skin temperature could alert you to inner changes as well.
Temperature tracking
Finally, you can get the Huawei Watch 3 Pro with independent 4G connectivity through eSIM support, so you can leave your phone at home and be connected on the watch itself.
What’s more impressive is that Huawei claims 5 days of battery life with 4G connected and up to 21 days without.
We’ll go further into battery life, performance and features of the Huawei Watch 3 Pro in our full review, so stay tuned!
