Huawei introduced the Watch Series 4 in early May, and it’s one of the best smartwatches the company has ever released, at least on paper. We received a unit for review earlier this month, and after testing all the new features HarmonyOS 3.0 offers, we’re ready with our full impressions.
We got the all-titanium unit for review with an aerospace-grade titanium case and similar band. If you are not very experienced with watch face size, the 48mm of this means it is on the larger size, so you may want to check how it sits on your particular wrist before ordering one.
The first thing we noticed was the different look of the elegant strap – the elements have a more rounded design than previous Huawei watches like the Ultimate or 3 Pro. Having the sapphire crystal on top is nothing new, but this one is spherical, making the device stand out.
Design and build
The screen is a 1.5-inch LTPO AMOLED, which we’ve already seen in the Watch Ultimate. However, the new domed glass design and unobtrusive bezel make the watch much more pleasing to the eye.
The titanium strap is the only one in the Watch 4 family with a classic folding clasp; all other variants, Pro or not, have a pin buckle mechanism. Huawei provided extra items in the retail box so that the Watch 4 Pro could fit everyone’s wrist.
When companies put sapphire crystal on their smartwatches, they promise complete scratch resistance. That’s exactly what we experienced during our time with the watch: After several activities, including an ultra-marathon in the mountains through shoulder-high grass and bushes, there isn’t a single scratch on the screen or body.
Since the glass is domed, it increases the surface area slightly, which also makes navigating the menus a little easier.
There’s also the rotating crown button for quick navigation through menus when fingers are somehow obstructed from contact, such as with gloves.
There’s also a second programmable button on the right side, and it’s made of conductive material for health-related functions.
Software
Huawei ships the Watch Series 4 with Harmony OS 3.0. There are a handful of new features, making the Watch 4 Pro a much more attractive device to have on your wrist. Watch faces can provide more detail, there are over 100 widgets, and there’s even basic multitasking.
The number of widgets is a bit misleading because, in reality, you are limited by the number of cards that appear with a swipe to the right. You can have up to seven different customizable “universal cards” with different combinations of data displayed; only when we add third party apps from AppGallery will the number of widgets grow.
Huawei has always placed Health at the forefront of its ecosystem. The app provides details about your sleep schedule, skin temperature, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, recently added ECG, and arterial stiffness. All of these sounded great, but were only available in the smartphone app. Thankfully, with the Watch 4 Pro and its widgets, all data can be collected in a single tab called Health Glance, including information about air quality and sunrise and sunset times.
The new watch also has a separate app, called Health Glance, which takes all measurements in a row to provide you with accurate and reliable data right now. We recommend using this feature and turning off continuous measurements to preserve battery life, which seems to get smaller with each new generation of Huawei smartwatches.
The wearable comes with an eSIM module, but we didn’t use it in our tests. It also has Wi-Fi and GPS, as well as Bluetooth, but we ran into minor issues with all three connectivity methods. The wireless connectivity is only 802.11 b/g/n and the connection often dropped unexpectedly.
Bluetooth does a great job of streaming the latest notifications, and they’re perfectly legible on the screen; some apps also support emoji replies and pre-recorded messages.
What we didn’t like was the slow communication between the smartphone and the smartwatch. There were more ghost notifications; others have appeared repeatedly despite having already been seen and removed from the phone. This experience is much smoother if you have the Huawei Watch 4 Pro connected to a Huawei smartphone.
We had a problem with GPS as well, but it was quite a niche issue that could only affect a handful of users. Suppose the Watch 4 Pro is designed to be an accessory for the sophisticated gentleman who works out once or twice at the gym or park. We put it through a much tougher test, going into the mountains where cellular coverage is also often lacking, and that’s when the GPS got confused and started plotting longer routes, guessing the wearable’s actual location.
Thankfully, this reviewer knew his way out to civilization, but we wouldn’t recommend relying on the Watch 4 Pro’s tracking capabilities when setting out on an adventure.
Battery life
Huawei stopped disclosing the battery capacity of its wearables a long time ago, saying the number isn’t as important as the actual battery life, which is tested in Huawei Labs around the world. Finally, we found out that it is 780mAh in the Pro and 530mAh in the vanilla variant. The promised battery life is 4.5 days of regular use, which includes some notifications, sleep tracking, one or two activities per week, and no AOD.
Different watch faces can drain the battery differently, and we went with a medium option in our first test. We exceeded four days of battery life in this first run.
The first charge of the 780mAh battery was expected to take 90 minutes, and Huawei recommends pairing the in-box USB charger with a Huawei adapter that supports at least a 9V/2A rate.
In reality, the charging time was around 100 minutes, which is pretty good anyway.
The second test was with the AOD on. HarmonyOS 3.0 and the new watch faces bring the most complicated displays we’ve ever seen on a Huawei wearable. Most include color and imaginative activity, which isn’t real-time; it is collected by the Huawei Health app via Bluetooth when the watch “wakes up”. There is a caveat that the AOD would cut battery life in half, but it wasn’t too bad. We got a comfortable three days of battery life on this next charge.
The watch face of the Huawei Watch 4 Pro and its similarly designed AOD
The titanium band doesn’t make it easy to charge the watch on every wireless charger, so for the next charge we again used the supplied magnetic charging plate, but plugged it into a basic USB port. In the worst case scenario, the battery takes 150 minutes to go from 0 to 100%.
The Huawei Watch 4 Pro also has an ultra-long battery life mode, which turns off mobile data, Wi-Fi and all internet-related features. In this mode, we got 20 days of regular use. On the one hand, this is an amazing feature and we tip our hats off to Huawei. In another, those 20 days, we had a wearable with a huge battery and top-notch hardware that wasn’t being used. It is recommended to use this mode only in an emergency; otherwise, you’d be using a €700 smartwatch with the functionality of a €200 one like the Watch GT 3 SE.
Verdict
The starting price of the all-titanium Huawei Watch 4 Pro is €700 in mainland Europe and £600 in the UK. At the time of publishing this review, we are already seeing slight price cuts. The Blue and Leather versions are cheaper, costing €550/£500, while the Vanilla Watch4 with the smaller battery, black stainless steel body and black fluoroelastomer strap costs €450/£400.
Huawei usually bundles its wearables with some of its other devices, often for free. A purchase of the Watch 4 Pro in Germany comes with a Scale 3 for just €9.99 (sold separately for €69). The package in France includes Freebuds 5i for free, while users in Italy can even add a 3-month subscription to Health+ for free.
Users who already own a Watch 3, Watch GT 3, or Watch Ultimate device will find upgrading less appealing – upgrades aren’t that important.
But for anyone else who needs a reliable, durable smartwatch that does it all, offers long battery life, and has great aesthetics coupled with great scratch resistance, the Watch 4 Pro is a great option.
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