The Huawei Watch GT2e range has a fresh design, comes in trendy colours and appeals to a younger target market. It’s available in a 46mm variant featuring a unibody design that is minimalistic yet robust. 

In addition to the red and black colourways in the Watch GT2 series, the GT2e is available in mint green and icy white. The selection of watch faces paired with the various bands makes it as minimal or bold as you want to come across. 

There are more than 200 different watch faces to choose from, something to suit all tastes. In 2019, Huawei created the Watchface Market for custom and motion-watch faces and recently allowed developers to upload paid watch face designs, meaning customers could choose from a number of designs to pay for and download to personalise their watches.

The watch pairs easily over Bluetooth on either Android or an iOS smartphone using the Huawei Health app. To get the best features out of the GT2e watch, it is recommended to use with a Huawei or Android smartphone.

The watch has a dedicated chip, the Kirin A1, and features Bluetooth 5.1. This works to the advantage of the GT2e and it’s the reason it has such a good battery life, unlike other wearables on the market. It yields up to two weeks of use on a single charge. 

So if you’re doing a workout, or going for a run in the neighbourhood during lockdown, it will allocate power accordingly based on activities. 

If you’re looking to be efficient with power, especially during load-shedding, there is also a smart power-saving mode that increases battery life by up to 20%. 

The watch is great for tracking almost any type of workout from beginners to professional athletes; about 100 to be exact. This is great for people who want the best of both worlds -smart notifications and tracking physical activities.

There are many indoor and outdoor activities supported, included swimming, as it is waterproof. It has a 5ATM water-resistant rating for a depth of up to 50m and tracks the number of turns in your swim sessions.

If you’re not an pro-athlete and have an interest in various activities such as skateboarding, hip-hop or parkour, it will track those activities too. It is encouraging for those who want to try something new and monitor their progress.

As expected from a fitness tracker, the GT2e monitors calories burnt, steps taken, distance and pace, duration, average stride, and so on. It gives a proper analysis for you to track and see how you improve over time. 

As far as health is concerned, you can get notifications if your heart rate is either too high or too low, as set by your standards, and if it occurs in a 10-minute time frame, you will be alerted.

Another form of monitoring it does is SpO2, which is blood oxygen saturation levels. It is very useful during the global pandemic as people have turned to buying stand-alone devices to track their levels, which should be ideally between 95% and 100%. Anything below means you need to get an oxygen supply, making it ideal for Covid-19 patients.

When it comes to smartphone notifications, you are in complete control of these. You can choose how often you want those vibrations to occur on your wrist and which apps to push through. It also supports music control like switching between songs, shuffle, repeat, and so on. It can also act as a remote shutter control for your camera.

Overall the GT2e watch is the perfect smart companion. It gives you freedom to choose what is important to you, while tracking health and fitness.

It is available at most retailers for R3,499.

This article was paid for by Huawei.