Huawei Watch GT 4 review: a versatile watch

Are you looking for a watch that can answer messages, use a headset, track your workouts, heart rate, arrhythmia, pay in stores, and still last more than a week on a single charge? The answer is one – you need to come to Huawei. They have been developing their line of smart watches for many years, dividing it into two branches – the regular Watch and the simplified Watch GT. And the latest member of the latter, the Watch GT 4, is here for our review.

Huawei Watch GT 4

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A brutal watch with a sporty look. That’s if we’re talking about the version that came to our test – with a silver case, black bezel and black silicone strap. There are two more versions: the all-silver version with white-green dial bezel and green woven strap, the silver version with black dial bezel and brown strap and its variation with a solid metal bracelet. That’s if we’re talking about the larger 46mm version. There are 3 more ladies’ 41mm versions, differing in case color and straps: all-gold with Milanese loop, and silver with gold bezel and either leather or metal bracelet. All straps and bracelets are easily interchangeable.

Ugh… This is the kind of variety Huawei hasn’t offered yet. And that’s a plus, because now it’s clearly possible to find a version to suit every preference. And they really do look and feel different. The only thing that unites the 46-millimeter versions of the watch is the shape of the case. The company has abandoned the fully round versions, and now they all have an octagonal shape. It looks interesting, but not flashy. Just right for an accessory like this.

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The Watch GT 4’s back cover is made of composite materials, regardless of the case style. Underneath it, you’ll find all the sensors and body readings, as well as the wireless charging coil, which is the same as the third-generation Watch. However, it uses the usual Qi standard, so you can charge the watch from any wireless pad – it’ll just be slower than with the native “puck”.

Another point of continuity with the previous generation is the Watch GT 4’s controls. There’s also a crown button on top and a flat, almost recessed key on the bottom. The crown button is used to call up the menu of all applications, access the desktop, scroll and zoom menu items. The bottom key is functional, in the workout menu it launches the selected program. In the rest of the watch interface you can assign it to launch any application. I’m most accustomed to using it to turn on the watch’s flashlight.

The display, for the first time since the first generation, is slightly recessed into the watch’s case, and the bezel protruding a fraction of a millimeter is supposed to serve as protection in case the screen collides with its surroundings. However, in fact, it is more of an obstacle to sliding your finger on the display, because the pad rests on this microbezel, which is not very pleasant. After a couple hours, though, you get used to it.

Huawei Watch GT 4 display

So here goes. The display. It’s round here, measuring 1.43 inches in diameter. The resolution is the same as on previous Watch GTs, 466×466 dots, and that’s a plus – all the apps and watch faces created for the Watch GT over the years are available here. Also, since it’s AMOLED, the display offers two small bonuses: 1. the watch can run a little longer with dark dials; 2. the Always-On mode, which keeps the hands on the screen at all times, doesn’t burn out the battery like crazy. Though it certainly has a negative effect on runtime.

The display itself is bright, crisp, and of high image quality – even gallery photos look adequate on it, just barely worse than on the phone itself. And that depends on what kind of phone it is. Photos can be used as dial covers, so the quality of the screen is really important.

Huawei Watch GT 4 system

The Watch GT 4 runs on the company’s own operating system called Harmony OS 4. If you’ve been using the 1st or 2nd generation of the Watch, the GT 4 will be a leap into the stratosphere for you. If you’ve used the 3rd generation, you’ll be painfully familiar with everything, with the only differences being the design and a couple of new features (more on them below). If you have never used a Huawei smart watch before, you will be greeted by an easy to learn and elaborate interface, which has two advantages: it is easy to customize and very difficult to get buried in it. Even the most deeply hidden settings are located so that they can be found in a maximum of 3 steps.

There’s a lot you can customize on the watch, though: in particular, what data you want to see when you flip through screens. There’s plenty of choice, with music player, sleep tracker, contacts, call list, running index, workout planner, barometer, weather forecast… There are 22 screens to choose from, which you can add to swipe the dial to the right.

All in all, you can choose from 22 screens.

If you swipe to the left, you’ll see the Smart Assistant screen in front of you – you can access the weather and any running apps – timers, stopwatches, counters, player. In turn, to access notifications, you need to pull your finger from bottom to top on the home screen (on the dial). From top to bottom, and it will open the quick settings panel. And those quick settings are probably the only thing on this watch that’s not customizable.

The Huawei Health app is used to sync with your smartphone, which records all your vitals and from which you can customize the watch itself. For example, you can set alarms, customize the apps whose notifications show up on the watch, and edit quick replies to messages. And, of course, you can see how many hours you’ve slept and in what phases, track your heart rate stats, choose a watch face, install apps from the AppGallery store, and so on.

The watch communicates best with Huawei smartphones, of course. When connected to them, firstly, the alarm signal from your phone will be broadcast by vibration to your arm. And secondly, you will be able to control the camera shutter and shoot by pressing the button on the screen of the watch, not the phone. A small thing, but a nice touch.

Otherwise, the watch’s functionality doesn’t differ much when connected to other Android smartphones or iOS devices. Workouts are still synced, notifications still arrive, and you can still respond with the same customizable pre-recorded messages.

Huawei Watch GT 4 dials

Let’s put them in a separate paragraph, because they’re hardly the most important thing about a smartwatch. There are 11 preset dials, and almost all of them are customizable: style, color, display, even the thickness of individual elements. But if that’s not enough for you, you can always download alternatives from independent developers. There are literally thousands of them in the dials store in the Huawei Health application, both free and variants for 30-180 rubles (payment from Russian Mir cards goes through without problems). In general, for every taste, both the most pretentious and the most insane. Sometimes it’s amazing what variations of time and data display their creators come up with.

Huawei Watch GT 4 runtime

It’s simple: 10 days from a single charge with no problems. The company has increased the battery capacity compared to the previous generation, and now it’s not 455 mAh, but 524 with the same case dimensions. As a result, we get 10 days with all the notifications, tracking workouts one and a half or two hours a week, sleep tracking, calls… Of course, if you turn all this off, they will work for 2 weeks without any problems. But then there’s no point in having a smart watch if you turn those smart features off.

If you put a lot of strain on it by running GPS tracking every day and leaving Always-On on, you’ll see its runtime drop to about a week. However, if you want to, you can go shorter. Overall, though, it all depends on the individual usage of the watch. On average, we’d say you can aim for a solid 8-11 days of use on a single charge. It takes about an hour and a half to fully charge.

Conclusions about the Huawei Watch GT4