Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm Review – Sleek Steel Wearable with Fitness Tracking Tested

Arriving in the Malaysia market with surprisingly modest fanfare after its global reveal in Barcelona earlier in September, the new Huawei Watch GT 4 smartwatch aims to continue the tradition of its predecessor, the Huawei Watch GT 3 from 2021 by blending a stylish design with as much fitness tracking functionality as they could cram into its stainless steel chassis.

We managed to get an early Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample ahead of its official launch – here’s what we think of their latest premium fashion wearable…

Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review – Build and Design

Aesthetically speaking, our Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample has the sort of build and design that can rival traditional mechanical timepieces and looks suitably premium indeed.  

@hitechcentury We got a firsthand look at the all new Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm smartwatch that offers up to 14 days of battery life and sleek stainless steel case. Looks posh, feels comfy and hosts 24/7 -health monitoring and over 200 workouts to choose from! 4#malaysiatiktok #techtok #cool #sembanggadget #malaysia #hitechcentury #fyp #FashionForwardSmartwatch #RedefiningTechFashion #longervideo #longervideos #tech #huawei #huaweiwatchgt4 #smartwatch ♬ Aesthetic – Tollan Kim

The Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm makes for a striking design with an octagonal-shaped case hewn from stainless steel that’s 10.9mm thin at its thinnest point though the 1.43-inch Always-On AMOLED display still retains rounded dimensions with a refresh rate that can go as low as 1Hz for static scenarios while offering a crisp 326 pixels per inch. For added peace of mind, the display is protected by watch-grade sapphire glass to resist nicks and scratches. 

At the one-o’ clock position, the watch hosts a rotatable crown along with a button at the 5 o’clock position to navigate the interface in tandem with the touchscreen. The underside of the case bears a more plasticky finish and is studded with the usual array of fitness and health tracking sensors as well as a tiny slit for the built-in speaker.

The watch also features a surprisingly robust 5ATM water resistance that allows it to resist immersion in up to 50 metres of fresh water at maximum depth though it’s primarily intended for tracking laps in the pool as it is not rated for diving. It also has IP68 dust and water resistance as an afterthought.

Aesthetically speaking, the Watch GT 4 46mm has modest aesthetic differences to the prior Watch GT3 with the biggest differentiator being its octagonal-shaped case but it otherwise has a similarly sized rounded display, slightly increased weight with slightly larger dimensions by 0.1mm on all sides with most of the improvements oriented towards improved fitness, sleep and health monitoring as well as additional trackable exercises.

When worn, our Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample and its fluoroelastomer strap proved to be pleasantly comfortable with a sufficiently large strap to accommodate my wrist 

though those with more petite wrists will find the smaller Huawei Watch GT 41mm variant a more appropriate fit. The watch and its stainless steel case is fairly light at 48g compared to more conventional mechanical timepieces and the sapphire glass is resistant to fingerprints. Even after a week of daily wear, the case and the display held up well to regular use and did not exhibit any scuffs or nicks.

If black fluoroelastomer doesn’t float your boat, the clasps can be easily removed and substituted with third party 20mm straps to taste. A Huawei Watch Grey 46mm variant also exists with a stainless steel case and clasp.

Smaller Huawei Watch GT 4 41mm variants are also available with a similar variety of fabric, leather and fluoroelastomer straps. Out of the box, you get the watch itself complete with straps along with a charging cable and the usual warranty paperwork. 

Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm Review – Specifications and Enhancements

Unlike many other competing brand smartwatches, the Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm is designed to play nicely and allow for full functionality even with other Android phones and even Apple’s iPhones by simply downloading the Huawei Health app.

Under the hood, our Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm runs their own Harmony OS 3.0 firmware and integrates their updated TruSeen 5.5 algorithm that offers 30% more accurate heart rate monitoring and 15% better blood oxygen level tracking.

The watch also offers more accurate sleep quality tracking via their updated TrueSleep 3.0 algorithm with the ability to monitor sleep breathing quality or lack thereof on top of the addition of more trackable workouts including football, basketball and, oddly enough, e-sports too on top of the existing 200 fitness courses baked-in. 

The watch also has enhanced GNSS satellite tracking for more accurate outdoor runs even in dense urban areas with access to tracking telemetry from QZSS, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou satellites with the ability to track and help traceback a return route for external runs even when the watch is offline.

Of note with the Huawei Watch GT 4 is the ability to conduct pulse wave arrhythmia analysis which in plain English means that it’ll give you a heads-up if you have an irregular heart rate which is a possible indicator of a heart attack so that you can get it looked at ASAP.

The watch is also capable of conducting 24/7 heart rate, Sp02 and blood oxygen monitoring and even automatic stress tracking. If your stress level strikes through several biometric indicators, it’s able to offer breathing exercises to calm down which looks especially handy when the month-end credit card bill arrives in the mail.

Additional features include the ability to play back music off the onboard storage or streamed off a paired phone on the built-in speakers, the ability to take calls and notifications from a paired phone and a QR payment feature to allow for cashless payments though this seems to be limited at present to digitising access cards for now. According to Huawei, the watch will have support for Touch ‘n Go eWallet and MCash in the future though this was not enabled in our review sample for the duration of the review period.

Unfortunately, Huawei hasn’t furnished official specifications on how much RAM, the exact processor it uses or how much storage it possesses but the phone does sport enough onboard storage for a couple of stored MP3 music playlists totaling around 350MB or so. Here’s how our Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample stacks up on paper…

Price	Price TBA
Display	1.43-inch AMOLED, 466 x 466 pixels, 326ppi, 60Hz [46mm] (review unit) | 1.32-inch AMOLED, 466 x 466 pixels, 352ppi, 60Hz [41mm]
Processor	Unknown
Memory	Unknown / Estimate 4GB
OS	Harmony OS 4.0
Battery	524mAh, 14 days battery life, quoted [46mm] (review unit) | 323mAh, 7 days battery life, quoted [41mm]
Size/Weight	46 x 46 x 10.9mm/48g [46mm] (review unit) | 41.3 x 41.3 x 9.8mm/37g [41mm] {straps excluded}

Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm Review – Setup and Performance

Ahead of its official launch in Malaysia, we were issued a Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample and were given access to a beta version of the Huawei Health app that has identical features to the retail version when it goes live at its official launch. For the duration of the review, I tested the watch and installed the Huawei Health beta on a Samsung Galaxy Fold5.

To make things easier, users can scan in a QR code on the packaging itself to be directed to a link to the relevant Huawei Health app on the Google Play store for download. Seeing as our paired Fold5 isn’t from the same ecosystem as the Watch GT 4, there were quite a few additional hoops to jump through which involved allowing for several more permissions on the phone though these aren’t out of the norm and are primarily needed to display phone notifications and to offer more accurate positioning and health tracking.

Once Huawei Health was properly installed, The app also offered the option to install several optional apps to expand its stock app selection though this is from a limited pool of about four dozen or so apps that are a mixed bag ranging from a dice throwing simulator all the way to alternative workout apps, calorie counters and some navigation apps though many require payment to install. There’s also free turn-by-turn navigation though only if you install their own free Petal maps app on your phone which does contribute to app bloat. 

You’re also able to select different watch faces with over 10,000 watch faces to potentially choose from though not all are free and many require payment. Both apps and watch faces are a mixed bag with varying levels of quality; it would have been nice if there were more apps for the Huawei Watch GT 4 though there aren’t very many at launch. 

The smorgasbord of selectable watch faces offer a fair amount of customisation for the Watch GT 4 along with the option to add up to six viewable cards to specific watch functions to see at a glance beyond telling the time such as heart rate, a daily fitness activity ring and more.

Swiping down on the display allows access to settings, alarms and the option to find a paired phone by having it emit a loud noise. The sole mono speaker is pleasantly loud and can be dialed up to maximum without distortion with clear call quality.

Users are also able to toggle continuous heart monitoring, an automatic stress test, automatic Sp02 tracking and skin temperature measurement. You can also activate a new sleep breathing analysis mode that tracks your sleep to detect if you snore and by extension have sleep apnea which in turn indicates other potential health problems.

Perhaps the only thing the watch doesn’t track for now is blood pressure though that’s a feature reserved for the Huawei Watch D with its integrated blood pressure cuff that hasn’t quite trickled down to other devices yet in Huawei’s current line-up.

Our Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample ran smoothly without issue during the course of our review period. On paper, the watch offers up to 14 days of battery life on paper with light usage and the usual notifications on.

Assuming you turn on all the bells and whistles, it is slated to offer up to 4 days maximum assuming you turn on all health tracking functions and are some sort of Olympian track medallist attempting to break a world record with all-day training in the mix. In the week we’ve charged it, it’s still ticking along nicely at about a 45% charge with the use case of an average urbanite even after 6 days of use.

Much like other smartwatches, the watch gamifies fitness by prompting users to fill in an activity ring by showing how many calories you’ve burned, how much exercise you’ve done and how long you’ve been standing in a given day, shows your sleep score, shows your stress levels and incoming notifications.

Over the course of the review period, it managed to show all these various bits of health data with reasonably easy to understand explanations of what they mean on their own though it would have been nice if there was a way to tie all this data into an overall snapshot of your current health.

The fitness workout tracking works as advertising for running and walking though more exotic exercises need to be manually activated for the watch to track them.

Oddly enough, it now has eSports tracking. Just for a lark, I turned it on during a match of Call of Duty Mobile and it did show a modest amount of calories burned during the match though gaming on a couch doesn’t replace a full workout in terms of calories burned. 

 

For other health tracking tasks, the watch handled heart rate monitoring, steps taken and the like in an accurate fashion and a quick test of its routeback function through the local park did as advertised with an accurate return route.

For those looking to get fit, the provided workouts run across a wide range of fitness levels and some offer tangible end-goals like getting ready for a marathon. They’re certainly useful to have around and can be a viable means to supplement a physical fitness programme as the watch doesn’t really factor in ongoing health or fitness problems bar a disclaimer notice in the beginning.

Should you buy the Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm?

Huawei’s latest fashion forward wearable has a premium, swim-resistant design with excellent fitness tracking functionality and superior battery life. Best of all, it plays well with other Android phones and iPhones too. 

At the time of writing, we haven’t received details about how much the Watch GT 4 46mm would cost beyond the fact that it would be below the RM2,000 mark. At launch, last year’s Watch GT 3 retailed for RM1,099. Assuming it hovers between these two price ranges, the Huawei Watch GT 4 Pro makes for a solid smartwatch that’s worthy of consideration.

Huawei Watch GT 4 46mm review sample courtesy of Huawei Malaysia. For more details and to purchase please visit https://consumer.huawei.com/my/wearables/watch-4-series/buy/