Category: News

The newest edition to the Huawei smartwatch family, the HUAWEI WATCH FIT, offers a device that really has something for everyone. Our Marketing Director Roxanne Martin, a sporadic 5km runner, cycling lover, mom of a three-year-old, working 10-hour days entrepreneur, put the watch through its paces to see how it faired in her busy lifestyle.

I’ll be totally honest: I love getting something before anyone else. It’s like getting a pass to a secret party that no-one else knows about! So, when the new HUAWEI WATCH FIT landed on my desk a month before it ‘officially’ launched in SA, I was more than excited to put it through its paces.

Unboxing is ‘Almost’ my Favourite Part

I think it’s part of the human psyche to get excited when you get to open something new, and it was no different unboxing this watch. First impressions on any product are important, so here is what stood out immediately for me:

• The watch design is sleek – it makes an immediate statement – and being rectangle with rounded edges, it gives you the advantage of having a ‘bigger’ screen without taking over your whole wrist. I appreciated how ‘understated and stylish’ it is.
• The light pink strap is a beautiful colour, while being versatile enough that it literally can be worn with anything – and yes, this is important to women.
• Taking it out the box, I was surprised just how light the watch is. In fact, it was so light that when you put it on your wrist, the only way you actually know you are wearing anything is when you look down and see it on your wrist.

I immediately started setting it up, which was as simple as downloading the Huawei Health App and syncing it to my phone, and after a simple update, the watch was synced. Having an iPhone, I was worried about the process, as Huawei is android-based, but I had no issues, and the watch was able to sync with no issues. It even gave me a comprehensive list of notifications that I could select to receive if I wanted to, which I appreciated, as you don’t want every app pinging your wrist every five seconds.

Features and More Features

I love versatility, and this watch offers a lot. In the set-up alone, I did a stress test, measured my SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) and read more about what my sleep actually meant. I wanted to charge the watch fully, as they claim the battery lasts 10 days and being a little sceptical of such claims, I wanted to test this properly. Good news is that the charging took literally no time at all, just over 30 minutes to get to a full charge.

The sleep monitoring really appealed to me, because with a three-year-old and hectic work schedule, my sleep is not great, and my present watch needs to charge at the end of the day, so no chance of sleep monitoring there! Excited to start, I dutifully went to sleep with my watch on my wrist, which thanks to its lightweight didn’t impact my sleep, as I am a light sleeper (no pun intended). After a week of sleep monitoring, I had amazing new insight into not only how many hours I was sleeping, but also how much REM sleep, light sleep and deep sleep, I was actually getting.

The app is incredibly helpful in explaining how much of each type of sleep you should be getting. My deep sleep is low and thus my sleep point score is low, which explains the fatigue I have been feeling. Also, I am now trying to deal better with my stress and anxiety, which is helping my sleep, and this is also thanks to what the watch told me, which in turn prompted me to investigate this important aspect of sleep-management. I would recommend the watch to everybody just based on this feature alone!

Your Own Personal Coach

Gym and exercise have altered a lot since we went into the Lockdown period, with many of us following online exercise programmes, as our ‘normal’ just wasn’t available. So, when I was told the watch featured a workout guide with actual visuals, I was excited – and I was not disappointed when I used it. Not only are there guided cross-fit workouts, but there are also guided running workouts as well as what feels like a million different workout types, covering literally every sport known to man!

The fitness courses are anything from three minutes to 18 minutes, and range from a simple reenergise session to neck and shoulder relaxation for us who sit hunched over our desks for too long. The visual is an animation of a man I now call Steve, who gives you a demonstration of how to do the movements, which was a game-changer for me. Sometimes we are excited to get going with exercise, but we perhaps don’t get the fundamentals right of the correct technique, which could lead to injury. Steve changes that in a big way, as the animation shows the movement clearly, and with enough time to really see how you should be doing it.

The guided workouts give you a demo followed by a countdown, and then a vibration counter to let you know how many reps to do. I did everything from a simple desk exercise to a rather hardcore ab workout. Also, having done cross-fit for six years, I was impressed that you can get in a good workout, safely and with correct technique, without the worry that you may pull something or do damage to joints. There is presently a total of 12 courses, giving you enough combos to work with to get two proper workouts in a week, which is generally my goal.

On the running side it was also great. I have been focusing on cycling on the indoor trainer during lockdown, as it’s not always ideal running alone, and so I enjoyed getting back into running by following the training programmes on the watch. This gave me a constructive guide to get going again without pushing me past where I should have been running as yet. I have gone too hard, too soon in the past, and my knees did not thank me. This watch puts the control on your wrist, and by listening, I found I got stronger a lot faster.

Things that I really liked…

When exercising, the activity screen shows you what heart rate zone you are in, which is incredibly helpful when you should be focused on long slow mileage training and keeping that heart rate down between zones two and three.

I used the GPS tracking during a four-hour bike ride out in the Cradle, it didn’t even use 20% of the battery, so when they say the battery can last up to 10 days, they are telling the truth, and that is even with activities and notifications.

What I didn’t like…

The one and only problem – and I really stress that word only – that I had with the watch was the step counter. In comparison with my other watch, there was a considerable difference in steps, with the Huawei coming in lower, but in retrospect, this could simply be down to the watch being more accurate on steps and not an actual fault. I’m giving the watch the benefit of the doubt here because it impressed me in every other way.

Would I buy it?

While this watch offers a similar ‘package’ to other smartwatches in terms of functionality, I believe that the app gives you a lot more insight into important health factors that are helpful in our busy modern lifestyles. And at a suggested retail price of R2999, the HUAWEI WATCH FIT offers a package that is hard to match, let alone beat in terms of what you get for your money. I would therefore buy this watch, as I feel it provides tremendous value for money as well as a host of features that support my lifestyle. It definitely gets my thumbs up for the Christmas List. (That’s a subtle hint for my hubby…)

Click here to check it out for yourself