Huawei Watch GT 4 review – A new standard of elegance and functionality

Tags: Review | Huawei | Smart

30.10.2023 | 8 MIN

Perhaps every fan of this Chinese brand is looking forward to the Huawei Watch GT 4. After all, this is a reasonably priced watch, packed with great features and incredible battery life. But the new generation brings much more.

I knew that this watch would be a blast and that Huawei would want to shine in the best light, but it still exceeded my expectations with some of the specs. Which ones?

• A sleek look indistinguishable from a classic watch
• Two sizes: 41 and 46 mm
• Great 1.43" AMOLED display
• Sensor overkill
• Decent battery life
• Sporty soul
• Urban and fitness features

On the other hand, I was a bit disappointed with the crown function, which hasn't changed like, for example, the Amazfit brand. I also expected the two new models, the Watch GT 4 and Watch 4, to already have a payment gateway enabled. Anyway, enough of the introductory chatter and let's get to the review.

If I hadn't told you the watch was smart, you wouldn't know it

The design is one of the few things where I didn't expect any miracles to happen. I was wrong. The Huawei Watch GT 4 is literally pleasing to the eye and its curves definitely impress. Both the women's and men's model is simply elegant and if you didn't know it was a smartwatch, you'd mistake it for a classic one.

The case on the larger model looks very similar to the Huawei Watch Ultimate. I wondered for a long time which classic watches I've seen this design on, and finally figured it out. Huawei took inspiration from Audemars Piguet – RoyalOak or also Casio GA-2100. The oddly angular watch has a steel case complemented by a glass case and a silicone, leather or metal strap/band. The dimensions of the men's version remained at a comfortable 46 mm. Although the watch is a bit heavier through the steel case, it fits like a glove on the hand.

The weight with silicone stopped somewhere around 75 grams, which is such a sobering figure. Of course, with leather and metal, it's a bit more. The lunette then, is again steel with minute markings on the men's model. The plus point is definitely that the lunette protrudes above the glass, so it also acts as a protective element.

The women's version is again a little more elegant than its predecessor. They worked on the strap attachment, which again reminds me a bit of the Garmin Lily. Huawei presents three models also with a steel case, with one on leather and the other two on metal bands. One model is gold with a Milanese loop and the other is a combination of silver and gold. From the photos it looks like the last metal loop will have some sort of special clamping to the case, so I'm curious to see how that will work. I do have a man's model on my wrist on silicone.

But Huawei is aware that design is an important parameter for women, so they've done a decent job on it. The dimensions have remained the same, 41 mm diameter with a weight of around 37 g without the strap.

Both models are then identically fitted with a crown and a bottom programmable button, where sport is initially selected. I like that the watch is made solidly and the crown doesn't wobble at all and is solid aswell. Overall, I have nothing to fault the design and it's a really hilarious piece of elegant steel.

Display – No surprise

Huawei has been fitting damn fine displays into its watches for some time now, and the new Watch GT 4 is again no exception. For the smaller variant, we encounter a 1.32" AMOLED display and for the larger one, a 1.43" one. What's interesting is the identical 466 x 466 pixel resolution on both models. The display is literally amazing and feels a bit bigger than the previous generation, although it has remained the same. In direct sunlight, there was no problem with readability and the display's fineness is 327 PPI.

The glass on both is Gorilla Glass, which is understandable for a mid-range watch. The men's models are pretty well protected by the lunette, the women's ones have no protection, so I would think about a protective film.

Controls a bit better, led by the new widgets

Looking at the watch's controls, there are pluses and minuses. The biggest minus is the still unimproved functionality of the crown, which takes you to the menu... where you can scroll through things, but that's about it. Press it again and you're on the main page and it doesn't "scroll" anywhere.

Six new icons.

But the hilarious thing is definitely the new widgets on the main page, where swiping left to scroll through your chosen widgets is a slight improvement. For example, next to the heart rate graph you'll find icons to expand sleep, breathing exercise, stress, body temperature, pulse ox or health shamrock. The next one again has music, calendar, weather and calls. This sorting can make the watch quite fast to operate.

Then, of course, there are notifications in the bottom bar and the control center with shortcuts at the top. Move to the right to see the weather and music widget.

Sensor equipment at high level

Barometer, accelerometer, magnetometer, heart rate, pulse oximeter, Multi-Band GPS controlling GPS, Galileo, GLONNAS, QZSS and Beidou. This handy wrist assistant can do it all. What more to write? Simply great.

The accuracy of the measurements is great for me. You can go anywhere and the GPS and heart rate monitor will back you up. And you can trust the data. What bothers me a bit is the closedness of the app and the truncation of the data because they can't accurately show you the resulting data. The heart rate monitor sat beautifully and when running, the watch showed exactly the same as the Garmin Fenix 7X PRO. On average, the data was no different at all and I watched the watch throughout my workout – the heart rates displayed exactly the same.

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The GPS works just as well as the heart rate monitor. The training miles fit and the accuracy is awesome. I can show you this on a map.:-)

Blue – Fenix 7X PRO, purple – Huawei Watch GT 4

"Coach, I'm tired today, how should I train?"

AI-built trainers have been a hit over the last year, with more and more watches being put on. In simple terms, this means that if you specify a trainer for your dream time on your run and you sleep poorly, the trainer will adjust your workout so you don't get killed by intervals when you need to rest.

But the Watch GT 4 is stuffed to the gills with sports features. Aerobic/Anaerobic Training, _VO2 Max, Recovery Time, Running Performance Index, Training Load and so on. It's a lot, and if you want to push your training somewhere, the watch can help you out decently.

Huawei Health is a decent app.:-)

Again, there are so many sports activities here that there's something for everyone. Although 3/4 of it is just heart rate, calories and time, they are here. What I take as a huge plus though is the ability to pair any Bluetooth sensor. I've tried the chest strap from Polar and STRYD and both worked great. You also have the ability to share your heart rate to other devices, which can come in handy if you own, lets's say a bike computer. Tested this with a Garmin Edge 530 bike computer.

Charge it once and you're good for at least a week

Huawei has always been good with battery and battery management. And here again it confirms the quality in the form of 14 days in smartwatch mode with occasional use and 8 days when you use the watch really hard. For the smaller variant, the numbers are then 7 and 4 days.

The battery life for the GPS is not exactly specified. But if you look in the sport mode settings and click on battery management, you'll get an idea of how much the current expected battery life is. On the best GPS mode, it reports around 10 hours of endurance for me at 50% charge. Which translates to around 20 hours overall. Pretty decent number for a Multi-Band. With the battery saver you get somewhere near 40 hours of battery life.

They won't go to the toilet for you, but they'll pick up the rest

I'm always surprised by the advanced metering. The watch measures heart rate throughout the day (continuously), sleep, steps, active minutes, calories, stress, skin temperature and more.

One of the cool things I've used throughout my testing is the health shamrock. You set these up to suit you in terms of how many steps you want to walk in a day, water you want to drink, hours you want to clock off and so on. You can also choose already created plans depending on if you want to lose weight or maybe be more active. And there's so much more. During the day, the watch then checks and reminds you with different tasks.

With these metrics, a watch can help you manage your daily fitness life, adjust your habits and alert you to an impending cold or illness, so it's a good idea to wear it all day to get as much data as possible.

Smart features as a cherry on the top

I'd say the watch is decently packed with features. Both smart and fitness ones. And as the cherry on the top, they bring a lot of smart features as well. The watch can make phone calls within range of your phone, has music storage (Android users only), can read every notification from your phone including emojis, weather, alarms, compass, flashlight, calendar and much more.

If you're literally hooked on the looks, you can download millions of them via the Huawei Health app. I also appreciate Huawei for having them beautifully numbered from 1 to 3 based on battery consumption.

If I had to disparage one single thing that I miss in the watch, it would be again the NFC payment. If we had the ability to pay with the watch, there would be nothing to worry about at all. If I apply this to a similar category of watches, a lot of people will now be wavering between the Huawei Watch GT 4 and the Amazfit Balance, which are functionally similar and also throw in just card payment.

Why prefer Huawei?

Huawei has made a really beautiful watch with quality and accurate sensors, great durability and cool features. This is a sentence that perfectly describes the Huawei Watch GT 4. There are smaller and larger variants to choose from. The strap can also be selected and you don't have to be ashamed of it on any occasion.

The base price tag starts with the sale at 250€ with silicone and I would say that we won't find a better watch in this class. As I complained above, too bad about the NFC, but otherwise this is a watch with a capital W.

I would see a competitor in the Amazfit Balance, which will be even a bit more urban and with NFC payment support. I'd check out the Xiaomi Watch S1 or maybe the Samsung or Apple models next.

And that's it folks. How do you like this model you can write in the comments.