introduction
Much like the smartphone market, smartwatches have come to a period of relative standardization with similar designs and features in recent years. Huawei has decided to bring a breath of fresh air to the market with the Huawei Watch Buds, a full-fledged smartwatch with magnetically connected wireless earbuds inside the case. The resulting product isn’t the first of its kind on the market, but it is the first from a major technology brand and as such deserved our attention.
Straight out of a James Bond movie with deployable earphones cleverly attached below the screen, Watch Buds deliver a flagship smartwatch experience with Harmony OS 3.0, active health and sports tracking in a stainless steel casing.
The whole concept sounds great for people who either hate carrying their earphones or have a tendency to misplace them. But how does the added functionality affect the smartwatch, and are these tiny earbuds useful? Here’s what we found out.
Project
The Huawei Watch Buds are a large smartwatch and probably not suitable for those with smaller wrists. In fact, it’s the largest smartwatch we’ve had for review with its 47mm case measuring 15mm thick. Of course, space is at a premium and we have to factor in the presence of a pair of wireless earphones inside the smartwatch, which alone are 10mm thick. The combined package weighs 66.5 grams, more than the 46mm Huawei GT 3 Pro (54g) and even the chunky Apple Watch Ultra (61g).
The large 1.43-inch AMOLED display offers saturated colors and great viewing angles. Like most premium Huawei smartwatches, you get Always-On display (AOD) functionality and automatic brightness control. The case is made from stainless steel and while the watch feels heavy, the weight is well balanced.
The construction is great and the materials used for the case and band of the watch are top notch and have shown no signs of wear during the review period. There is a latch mechanism positioned below the 6 o’clock mark on the watch face which holds up the screen to reveal the earphones. The mechanism is solid and does not open with accidental touches. The only other button on the case is the crown pusher on the right side. Unlike the crown element on Huawei’s GT 3 series watches, this one doesn’t let you scroll.
Moving on to the coolest part: the compact earphones housed inside the watch. They are bullet shaped buds with a metal alloy casing that feels solid yet lightweight. Each earpiece measures 22×10×10 mm and weighs 4 grams. They’re impressively small — up to four silicone earbuds stacked on top of each other, and it’s quite a feat of engineering how Huawei has managed to fit drivers, microphones, sensors, and batteries into such a small package.
Watch Buds feature an IPX7 rating in its closed state while the earbuds are IPX4 splash resistant. This is a compromise compared to most premium smartwatches which support proper water resistance values and allow you to go for a swim without worry. Then again there aren’t many watches out there that have a compartment in them with a pair of wireless earphones.
A personal gripe in terms of the packaging is the absence of a second silicone band. Huawei should have added an extra band in the box as this watch is geared towards runners and active people and the leather band is sure to age badly with an intense workout regimen.
Characteristics
Smart watch
As a smartwatch, the Huawei Watch Buds offer the expected set of health monitoring features, including 24/7 heart rate monitoring and SpO2 monitoring via Huawei’s TruSeen 5.0 optical PPG sensor, just like on the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro series. The eight photo sensors and upgraded algorithms are said to provide more accurate health data processing. Plus, you also get precise sleep and stress tracking, as well as breathing exercises to help you unwind throughout the day. The sleep tracking option offers sleep apnea tracking, as well as detailed analyzes of sleep stages and an overall score.
Huawei Watch Buds support tracking over 80 sports modes with special running and marathon training programs to help you reach your specific goals. The watch has its own GPS module to help you track your runs and walks in real time. You also get Vo2 Max measurements, training recovery plans, and the option to sync your runs to Strava if you’re an avid runner.
A few words about the Huawei Health app: It is available on the App Gallery, Google Play Store and App Store. It offers a good design layout for health tracking records with more detailed metrics and graphs for each category. You can also manage your watch and earphone settings through the app in the device tabs. There’s a bevy of watch faces, and you can configure a few with complications of your choice, though most of them are paid. The headset tab allows you to configure the equalization
Sadly the watch lacks cellular connectivity or a built-in speaker, but the added earphones make up for the latter. NFC is present and works with Huawei Wallet although this feature is region dependent. You also get basic notification handling with predetermined quick reply options. Other miscellaneous features on the watch include a weather app, music controls, a remote camera shutter, and the ability to add many of your favorite contacts for easy dialing via earphones.
Earphones
By switching to earbuds, you’re not compromising on a traditional pair of wireless earbuds in terms of features. They support AAC, SBC and Huawei proprietary L2HD audio codecs. There is also an equalization adjustment option within the Huawei Health app for finer adjustment of audio output.
Active noise cancellation (ANC) is also built in, and each earbud features two microphones to help block out unwanted noise. The ends of the buds feature capacitive touch control areas with programmable double- and triple-tap options. They charge wirelessly in their cradle inside the watch via two wireless charging rings that help supply power to each of the 30mAh batteries inside the buds.
You can control the earphones with programmable double and triple taps. These gestures work on the earbuds themselves and on the sides of your ears — you can tap almost anywhere on your earlobes, and the earbuds automatically recognize taps through their built-in sensors.
The other interesting feature is the adaptive identification technology, which means there are no dedicated left or right earphones here: they can automatically switch between channels and work for both sides of the ears. The way this works is by calibrating the earphones based on head movement and body posture, and they worked as promised during our tests.
You can also answer calls on your paired smartphone by simply inserting the earphones into your ears without having to touch anything on the watch or phone, which is handy if your phone is across the room.
The earbuds feature wear sensing that pauses or resumes the earbuds when inserted or removed from your ears. They also feature an earpiece fit test and a find my earphones feature that plays a loud tune to help you locate them if they’re misplaced. You can also send songs to your watch for offline listening although this feature only works on some EMUI and Android phones.
A big downside to the Gems is that they only connect to your watch and paired smartphone at the time of writing this review. Huawei has promised to expand the connectivity options to other devices such as laptops and tablets in a future software update, but the option isn’t available yet.
Performance
Smart watch
We are pleased to report that the Huawei Watch Buds perform on par with the Huawei GT 3 series watches in terms of health tracking. This means you get accurate step and run stats, and that extends to heart rate, SpO2, sleep and stress tracking as well. Huawei offers some of the most detailed health and exercise tracking metrics on its wearables complete with special items for runners. Running gets the added benefit of specialty metrics like pace, stride length, cadence, and VO2 Max readings—all regular metrics on specialty watches focused on runners.
The built-in GPS tracker on the Huawei Watch Buds is accurate enough to map your walks and runs even in the dense city center and locks in your location in seconds. You also get heart rate readings and heart rate zone readings for your workouts, as well as recovery heart rate metrics right after you finish your sessions. As with all smart wearables, you should take the resulting data with a grain of salt because Watch Buds are not a medical device and only offer a mere indicator of your well-being and activity performance.
Harmony OS 3.0 feels smooth and snappy on the Watch Buds, and the built-in apps all work great. Unfortunately there’s no way to install third-party apps unless you’re on a Huawei phone and even then the selection of apps is quite limited: Petal Maps, Spotify controller and a pill reminder app. This isn’t a smartwatch that will completely replace your phone like the Samsung Galaxy Watch or Apple Watch, although you’ll have all the basic necessities to keep you satisfied: health and fitness tracking, call and notification management, as well as the set standard of smartwatch apps and tools.
The notification management here isn’t ideal as you can only see incoming messages and alerts with the option to send a pre-determined short reply which doesn’t work on all apps. Connectivity on the Watch Buds was seamless, and it worked quite well on the Android, iOS, and Huawei phones I tested. My detailed health and exercise data was readily available on the Huawei Health app with more details, and background sync worked well.
eadbuds
As subjective as the audio reviews are, the Watch Buds sound impressively good for their diminutive size. They can’t compete with earbuds with larger drivers like Huawei’s Freebuds Pro 2, although their small size belies how well these tiny buds sound. The default audio profile is balanced with no overly pronounced frequency bands.
Huawei also offers the ability to change your EQ sound profile in the Huawei Health app with Bass boost, Treble boost and Voices profiles to help you adjust your sound according to these subsets. Call quality on the earphones was good in quiet environments, although people on the other end had a hard time hearing my voice in noisier areas.
The buds also offer HD calling which tries to improve voice clarity during calls although I haven’t noticed a big difference with it enabled. The gesture controls worked flawlessly during my tests, and I was surprised how accurate they were most of the time even when tapping around the ears and not directly on the earbuds.
Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) is powerful and offers a noticeable drop in static noise around you. It’s nowhere near the level you’d get with a pair of over-ear headphones, but for a small pair of earphones, it’s good enough. As an added bonus you get an equalization adjustment option within the Huawei Health app. The volume that comes out of the earbuds is a bit lower than most of the standalone earbuds we’ve reviewed in recent months.
Battery life
Watch Buds offer a 410mAh battery, less than the GT 3 Pro (530mAh), and you share that capacity between your watch and earbuds. In my usage, I managed a week-long battery life with all health activity tracking options enabled on the watch with three workouts and constant notifications.
That’s pretty impressive for a 2-in-1 device, and comfortably beats the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch. More active use of the earphones takes a hefty tax on battery life, reducing the combined usage time to just three days, which is still more than Samsung and Apple’s offerings.
As a smartwatch, the Huawei WatchBuds have less battery life than the Huawei GT 3 Pro would give you on its own. A decent pair of earphones could easily last over 5-6 hours of use with the included charging case, while the earbuds here won’t last more than 3 hours of playtime.
Verdict
Huawei offers something that no other smartwatch from an established brand can offer you with the Watch Buds: a pair of wireless earphones inside its case. The earbuds are an engineering marvel on their own and sound good, if not quite as good as the flagship earbuds in Huawei’s FreeBuds range. Their biggest drawback is that they can only be used with the watch and associated smartphone.
In my time with the Watch Buds, I was more impressed with the sound of the tiny earbuds than the actual smartwatch. The Watch Buds are basically a Watch GT 3 Pro but with a week shorter battery life and a substantially thicker and heavier casing to accommodate the built-in earphones.
Huawei should consider pushing these earbuds into the market on their own just for their portable size and great sound as there are few alternatives from established brands. From a dedicated smartwatch standpoint, Watch Buds offer the standard range of features you’d expect, but fall short of most premium watches in terms of durability due to a lack of waterproofing.
At €499 / £449, the Huawei Watch Buds are a tough sell as you can buy a premium smartwatch and have money to spare on a great pair of earbuds too. Most users would be better off purchasing their smartwatch and wireless earbuds separately, but those looking for a new take on smart wearables should consider splurging and trying out approach 2- in-1 from Huawei.
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