Huawei has been making big headway with its smartwatch range, despite being effectively banned from the US and the GT2e follows the Huawei Watch GT2 launched in October 2019.
The Huawei Watch GT range is the companys fitness-focussed smartwatch range, and another member of the smartwatch club. And now it's available on the Huawei Online Store for a very reasonable R3,499, this is a seriously attractive buy.
Brands are getting better at offering an alternative to the Apple Watch for iOS users, and the stagnant Wear OS for Team Android and with advanced sport features and 14 days of battery life, the GT2e is a key contender.
Other members include the Amazfit GTS and GTR, Fitbit Versa 2 and a bunch of upcoming smartwatches such as the Xiaomi Mi Watch, Mi Watch Round, Oppo Watch and Amazfit Bip S. Its getting pretty crowded in the budget watch market.
Usually, when you just tack an E or SE onto the end of a smartwatch youve only recently released, it means youre only adding marginal improvements. And yes, that follows here that the GT2e only debuts minor changes. However, its a full physical redesign from the original GT2, with a more overt sporty look.
The GT2e comes with a stainless steel case and a slightly tweaked design points at a sporty target market. The buttons are still laid out the same at 2 and 4 oclock and the lugs have been smoothed out.
Its not too chunky, and sneaks in under 10mm keeping a nice profile to the wrist. That said, its slightly oversized, with a 47mm case size thats probably too large to be described as truly unisex.
However, despite the redesign, in terms of specs the GT 2e seems very similar to the GT 2.
Like its predecessor it has a 1.39-inch screen with a 454x454 AMOLED display. Its not super bright, but nicely detailed, with text and stats clearly readable even mid-run.
RAM has been increased to 16GB (up from just 2GB) so were looking at a big boost in performance. The battery stays the same size at 455mAh and that offers up 14 days of battery life, which stood up to our testing. Its quite impressive, given the specs of the screen and sensors on offer and we doubt Huawei will be rueing its move away from Wear OS.
All-in-all the build of the Huawei Watch GT2e gets our thumbs up although many people, particularly women, will find the case too large. Generally, its lightweight, comfortable and doesnt feel plasticky or cheap given its price.
The Huawei Watch GT2e is a pretty feature packed watch, so well go through those here and drill into how effective they are.
The watch has GPS on board, which feeds into a pretty complete sports tracking package. Well look at its effectiveness as a sports watch next, but GPS was perfectly accurate, and GLONASS satellite support meant it locked on quickly.
All-day fitness tracking is a big part of the offering here, and you can swipe across on the watch face to see your steps, active minutes and standing progress in a screen thats pretty reminiscent of the Apple Watch stats. Its not really front-and-centre on the watch, although you do get stand reminders flash up when youve been sedentary too long.
The app is a little bare for this kind of data, however and it logs step, distance, calorie and climbing data over time but not things like active minutes, which feels like an omission.
However, there are more advanced features to track health.
Theres an optical heart rate monitor on board, and that is also backed up with an SpO2 sensor for blood oxygen reading. That was present on the Huawei Watch GT2, but its only just been turned on via an over-the-air update.
