As the reigning leader in the global wearables market, Huawei has been refining its premium smartwatches with a focus on more accurate health and activity tracking. Watch GT 6 Pro arrives as the successor to last year’s GT 5 Pro with a familiar look and updates on several fronts.
On the hardware side, there’s a slightly larger and much brighter OLED screen, improved positioning accuracy, and a larger battery. Huawei is also offering an updated TruSense system alongside improved algorithms for more accurate health readings.
As for sports tracking, there’s an all-new virtual power meter for cyclists, and vector maps for golfers, alongside its top-notch run tracking.
Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro specifications
- Display: 1.47” AMOLED touchscreen, 466 x 466 px resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, 3,000 nits HBM brightness, Always-On Display (AOD)
- Straps: Detachable proprietary straps, 140-210mm adjustable length
- Features: 5ATM rating (50m depth), IP69 rated, Dive proof (up to 40 meters) Real-time heart rate monitor, 24/7 Blood Oxygen level monitor, Sleep tracking, Stress monitoring, Sports tracking, Step Counter, Meditation, Notifications, Idle Alert, Phone Finder, Weather Forecast, Music and Camera Control, Alarm, Stopwatch, linear Vibration Motor, Flashlight.
- Sports Modes: Outdoor Run, Indoor Run, Outdoor Walk, Cycling, Hiking, Pool Swimming, Jump rope, Freestyle (150+ more in Huawei Health app)
- Sensors: Optical heart rate sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Magnetometer, Barometer, Skin temperature sensor, Ambient light sensor, ECG sensor, Depth sensor
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 6.0, Compatible with Android 9.0 and iOS 13+, dual-band L1+L5 GNSS, NFC, microphone and speakers
- Battery: 867mAh
- Colors: Black, Brown, Silver
- Dimensions:45.6 mm × 45.6 mm × 11.25 mm
- Weight (without strap):54.7 grams
So is the Watch GT 6 Pro as good as it Huawei claims or should you look elsewhere if you’re after a premium smartwatch? We’ve been using the Watch GT 6 Pro for over two weeks and these are our findings.
The short version is this: it’s one of the best entries in the segment as long as you can cope with some irritable quirks like region-locked NFC payments, no cellular connectivity and а limited selection of third-party apps. Read on for the details.
Table of Contents:
Design
Huawei has offered some of the best-built smartwatches, and the GT 6 Pro is no exception. The first thing you notice is the cold and TC4 titanium alloy casing, which feels like it belongs inside the engine of a premium sports car.
Watch GT 6 Pro comes with a nice premium box which contains the watch, watch strap and a proprietary magnetic puck charger attached to a USB-A cable.
There are a few options for the watch strap this year, with our review unit sporting the brown composite woven strap, which mixes fluororubber with a patterned woven motif on the outside. The straps are 22mm in size, but they feature an additional proprietary metal pin system, so they cannot be swapped out for any standard option.
Watch GT 6 Pro features a 46mm casing and gets a circular 1.47” OLED touchscreen with sapphire glass. The screen is 5.5% larger than the 1.43” panel on the GT 5 Pro. Huawei achieved this by shrinking the bezels around the display so you get the same-sized watch as the GT 5 Pro but with a larger display area.
Watch GT 6 Pro (left) vs Watch GT 5 Pro (right)
You also get a slightly raised timing bezel, which surrounds the screen for a sleeker look.
The one major upgrade on the GT 6 Pro’s screen is brightness output. Huawei claims 3,000 nits peak brightness, which seems like an absurdly high number, and it is, but we can confirm that the GT6 Pro’s screen is noticeably brighter than the GT 5 Pro’s claimed 1,200 nits peak. With the auto-brightness option turned on, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a scenario where the screen is illegible.
Apart from the touchscreen, Watch GT 6 Pro features a crown button on the top and a second programmable button on the bottom, both located on the right side.
At 55 grams without the strap and over 11 mm thick, the Watch GT 6 Pro is not a compact, low-profile watch. This reviewer has been dailying a Watch Fit 3 for over 15 months and had a short period of adjustment during the first few days with the GT 6 Pro on his wrist. That being said, once you get used to the extra bulk, it gets out of the way.
GT 6 Pro comes with an IP69 ingress protection rating and is also 40m dive proof, complying with the EN13319 standard for diving accessories. This means snorkeling and freediving are a go, though it’s not capable of going scuba diving like the Watch Ultimate 2.
Software and features
Watch GT 6 Pro ships with Harmony OS 6.0, which looks and feels familiar to prior iterations. You get the same basic-looking user interface with a swipe-based card interface alongside a quick settings panel and notification area.
The touchscreen interface is joined by a rotating crown button and a second programmable button, both located on the right side of the casing. A single press on the crown takes you to the app drawer. The second button launches the workout app by default, though you can set it to any app or sports mode from the settings.
Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro UI
You can also double-tap the crown for a view of your most recently used apps, which is quite handy and makes jumping between them quite smooth and fast. A double press on the quick launch button is reserved for the Huawei Wallet app, which is sadly not supported in Europe for now.
Pressing both buttons simultaneously takes screenshots on the watch with the images saved inside the Huawei Health app and automatically synced to your phone’s gallery.
Recent apps view and app drawer
You also get an app drawer, which can be organized in a hex grid or list view. Harmony OS 6 is a versatile UI, allowing you to tailor the watch to your specific needs. You can set up card-based shortcuts for your most used apps, sports and health tracking features. There is a huge selection of watch faces with over 100,000 options, though some of the nicer ones are paid.
Like with other Huawei watches with an OLED screen, you get Always-On Display (AOD) functionality, which usually just dims the selected watch face while still giving you most of its watch face complication details. Huawei’s first-party watch faces are smarter and actually switch to a black background to preserve battery while still offering access to the complication details.
AOD on Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro
As for third-party apps, the selection outside of China is quite limited. We found a few simple games, a compass navigation app, as well as third-party calculator and calendar apps, but the overall selection and quality of said apps is a long way from what you get on Google’s WearOS or Apple’s watchOS.
Watch GT 6 Pro provides quality-feeling haptics with soft and strong vibration options. You also get an onboard microphone and speaker, allowing you to make and take calls, as long as your paired smartphone is nearby.
Call quality on the Watch GT 6 Pro is good enough with people reporting clear reception on my end and the onboard speaker delivering a loud enough output even in noisy streets. It’s great for those times when your hands are busy and you don’t want to reach for your phone.
If you’re using an Android and HarmonyOS phone, you’ll be able to type out replies on popular messaging apps directly on the watch using a full QWERTY keyboard, though the experience is cramped to say the least.
The lack of cellular connectivity is something that has plagued previous entries in the Huawei Watch GT series and it seems that Huawei is set on gatekeeping it for the flagship number series watches – a weird choice given the GT 6 Pro’s premium price point.
Another letdown, at least here in Europe, is the lack of a functioning mobile payment system. Although the GT 6 Pro features NFC hardware, it does not support adding payment or transit cards in our region.
Huawei’s Health app is your one-stop shop for managing all things related to the Watch GT 6 Pro, and it’s one of the better smartwatch companion apps with plenty of features and detailed health and activity data entries. It also works across iOS and Android as well as Huawei’s HarmonyOS
Health and activity tracking
Health tracking
Huawei has consistently delivered accurate health and activity tracking on its watches, and the GT 6 Pro brings the standard array of features alongside some new options and a revamped TruSense sensor and algorithm suite with claims for more accurate data. You also get a skin temperature sensor.
Watch GT 6 Pro supports heart rate and blood oxygen (SpO2) tracking alongside sleep and stress measurements, and a new emotional well-being option. The latter takes into account your stress levels and is more on the gimmicky side.
You also get ECG readings on the GT 6 Pro, which are a hassle to take but deliver useful results that can help detect early-stage atrial fibrillation (AFib), aka irregular heart rhythm. You can easily export the ECG reports in the Huawei Health app and send them to your physician.
Watch GT 6 Pro sample ECG reading
You also get arterial stiffness measurements and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, which monitor the regularity of the intervals between each heartbeat. HRV data is displayed for sleep tracking, where it can provide early warnings for sleep apnea, and also during workouts, where it helps gauge how hard you’re pushing your body and how much you need to rest.
When comparing standing heart rate and SpO2 readings from the Watch GT 6 Pro and the Watch Fit 3, we found similar readings across both devices. You also get Health Insights, which summarize your overall wellbeing by combining data from sleep, resting heart rate and workout sessions alongside additional metrics like heart rate and emotional wellbeing for a one-stop general health assessment.
As for the accuracy of the health tracking, we found the GT 6 Pro in line with flagship offerings from Huawei and competitors. And while heart rate, SpO2 and ECG info right on your wrist is convenient, these are just general health insights and not medical-grade reports.
Sleep tracking on the GT 6 Pro was consistently accurate in terms of go to sleep and wake up times and it even managed to catch specific instances of waking up during the night, which the Huawei Watch Fit 3 did not.
Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro sleep data and insights
Watch GT 6 Pro provides the usual sleep stages (light, deep, REM), movement patterns, heart rate, SpO2 and average respiratory rate.
Activity tracking
Watch GT 6 Pro supports over 100 activity tracking options, which cover even some niche hobbies. Huawei claims improved heart rate accuracy for runs and cycling and also improved golf experience with vector maps.
Runs get the usual mix of information, including distance, pace, cadence, heart rate, and calories burned, alongside more specific metrics like ground contact time, vertical oscillation, balance, VO2Max, HRV, intensity, and training stress.
In our testing, the Watch GT 6 Pro excels at heart rate and distance tracking, bringing much more accurate readings than the Huawei Watch Fit 3, which uses older sensors. During runs and hikes, the GT 6 Pro managed to keep a more accurate estimate of total distance covered, which goes hand in hand with the more accurate day-to-day step counting.
You also get automatic workout detection for activities like running and cycling, which is great if you tend to forget hitting the start button before your workout. In our experience, the auto-detect feature was slow to react and would sometimes alert me after 20-30 minutes of walking.
Watch GT 6 Pro also supports offline maps via Huawei Petal Maps with the ability to download regional maps for specific countries with topography details. This is quite useful for avid hikers and the map data is nicely displayed. You can also record routes and import them as a GPX file on the watch to help guide you on runs and hikes.
The other big hardware upgrade is the new antenna design and positioning algorithms, which promise 20% better positioning accuracy with dual-band support for all of the major satellite positioning systems.
During our testing phase, GPS localization took up to 20 seconds on some occasions but once it locks, you’re good to go with no drops in signal. Watch GT 6 Pro was pinpoint accurate in its GPS tracking and even managed to keep steady data on exact street-level positioning in a busy city environment, which some competitors still struggle with. The GPS lock also impressively stayed on point even when passing through pedestrian underpasses.
Cycling is the other main focus on the GT 6 Pro, with Huawei offering a virtual power meter – a first of its kind on any smartwatch. It utilizes Huawei’s new algorithm, which was trained on thousands of cycling datasets, and displays real-time and average power while cycling, similar to a traditional cycling power meter.
Outdoor cycling session on Watch GT 6 Pro
Thanks to the updated positioning, the watch can show real-time gradient, average gradient and gradient range stats during cycling sessions.
Outdoor cycling metrics on Watch GT 6 Pro
Watch GT 6 Pro can connect to a variety of third-party sensors like heart rate straps, cadence sensors, power meters and speedometers, which is useful if you are serious about jotting down your progress or training for a marathon.
Overall, Watch GT 6 Pro is one of the more complete smartwatches in terms of activity tracking and we’re certainly impressed by the array of features on deck.
Battery life
Huawei smartwatches tend to offer some of the best battery endurance and the GT 6 Pro is no exception. It’s the first watch to feature a new high-silicon stacked custom-shaped battery cell coming in at 867mAh capacity. The cell is shaped to better fit the casing of the GT 6 Pro compared to the usual rectangular batteries on other watches.
In our tests, we achieved 13 days of usage between charges, which is an impressive feat. Our usage included the screen set to auto brightness, AOD off, 100 daily notifications, 30 minutes of exercise every two days and constant heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep and stress tracking.
Huawei claims you can reach up to 21 days between charges with light usage, which seems realistic, but you’d have to severely limit most of the features on the watch. You can expect up to 7 days with AOD on which is still impressive endurance and among the best in the smartwatch segment.
A full 0-100% charge with the GT 6 Pro’s proprietary magnetic puck charger at 10W speeds takes 108 minutes. We also tested the GT 6 Pro on a Qi wireless charger, and it did work, though you’d get slower charging times, and you’d have to take out the watch straps each time if you go that route.
Verdict
The Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro is a solid upgrade over the Watch GT 5 Pro with a larger and brighter display, improved battery endurance and useful new sports tracking features for runners, cyclists and golfers.
You get premium build quality with the titanium alloy casing and sapphire glass, alongside amazing battery endurance, which comfortably lasts for over 10 days between charges. Health tracking leaves little to be desired with all major general wellbeing measurements available and offering dependable results.
While the Harmony OS 6.0 interface is polished and offers a great selection of watch faces, we cannot overlook the limited third-party app support here in Europe and the absence of contactless payments. We’d also like to see a cellular connectivity option with future models.
With its €380/£330 price point in mind, Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro delivers a great experience for fitness enthusiasts looking for a well-built smartwatch that offers dependable health and activity tracking alongside excellent battery endurance.
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