Beautiful and functional: HONOR Watch GS Pro smartwatch review

In recent years, the market for wearable devices has grown so much that smartwatches can now be found in a wide variety of price ranges. They differ in both the quality of performance and functionality – they show not only the time and count the steps, but can also surprise with the capabilities of a full-fledged smartphone.

To the editor GameMAG.ru the other day there was a novelty – a smart protected watch HONOR Watch GS Pro, which we will talk about today.

COMPLETE SET AND APPEARANCE

In Russia, the new watch is available in three colors: beige melange, gray camouflage and charcoal black. Official price – 19,990 rubles… Our test unit came in gray camouflage with a blue nylon military-style strap.

The watch is delivered in a black dense square box with an iridescent relief texture reminiscent of a protective paint. Inside, they lie in a special groove with a strap already installed. The accessory compartment contains a magnetic charging dock with USB Type-C and a USB Type-C to USB Type-A charging cable. There, judging by the special icon, there should also be an instruction, but it was not in our test sample.

Finally, let’s move on to the clock. HONOR positions them as a rugged device with a hard-wearing case for extreme leisure enthusiasts. According to the manufacturer, the device passed 14 tests according to the military standard MIL-STD-810G and survived a number of extreme tests: high and low pressure altitude test, exposure to high and low temperatures, temperature shock (including in working condition and storage condition), rain (including freezing rain), humidity, fungus, salt spray for corrosion resistance testing, sand and dust, pyrotechnic shock (i.e. testing in an explosive atmosphere), flowing water, acceleration, vibration from shooting, shaking during transportation, vibration on different axes, acoustic noise, resistance to sunlight. In addition, the watch can dive to a depth of 50 meters, thanks to the declared water resistance of 5 ATM. Of course, we did not manage to swim in them, but in their hearts they felt great. Unless the nylon strap got wet and dried for several hours on the hand, but it did not irritate the skin at all.

At the first glance at the watch, only one word immediately appears – brutal, masculine! The watch is very large and looks powerful. They are made of polycarbonate, and touching them you understand that they are of high quality and strong, and the wide metal bezel around the screen makes them expensive and effective. The same can be said for the two metal chopped buttons on the right rib, which also look secure and grip with little effort.

At the top and bottom of the watch there are large strap mounts, which are one piece with the main case.

The part of the watch, adjacent to the hand, is made of black matte plastic and has a small glossy insert around the heart rate monitor module with two photodetectors, two LEDs and metal contacts for charging. The strap is made from durable nylon and has a very military look thanks to the camouflage texture.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS AND SCREEN

Model Code: KAN-B19

  • OS: Android 5.0 and above iOS 9.0 and above;
  • Size: 48mm × 48mm × 13.6mm;
  • Weight g: 45.5 (without strap);
  • Screen: 1.39-inch color AMOLED screen, resolution: 454 x 454 pixels, 326 PPI pixel density;
  • Battery: 790 mAh;
  • Built-in memory: 4 GB;
  • RAM: 32 MB;
  • Working time: 25 days of battery life;
  • Wireless networks: 2.4 GHz, BT 5.1 with BLE / BR / EDR support;
  • Sensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor, optical heart rate monitor, light sensor, barometer, capacitive sensor;
  • Monitoring: Steps, TrueSleep Sleep, Running, Heart Rate, Calories, Stress, Blood Oxygen (SpO2) Measurement;
  • Other: SMS notifications, call notifications and weather forecast changes, vibration alert, GPS, water resistance, mountain travel altimeter.

The watch received a color AMOLED touch screen with a round shape with a diagonal of 1.39 inches, a resolution of 454 x 454 pixels and a density of 326 ppi. There are no dead zones.

A light sensor is built into the screen, which can automatically adjust the brightness depending on the environment. He does his job perfectly. Waking up in the middle of the night and looking at your watch, you will not go blind, and during the day in direct sunlight you will not have to cover it with your hand to see something, since everything is perfectly readable. In addition to automatic modes, the HONOR Watch GS Pro also has 5 manual brightness levels. In addition, there is a special function of the turned on screen, which allows you to leave it active for up to 20 minutes. But the function of activating the screen, although it worked most of the time clearly on raising a hand, sometimes it still failed.

CUSTOMIZATION

One of the main advantages of smartwatches over conventional watches is the ability to customize the dials.

The GS Pro out of the box gives you a choice of one of 12 types of dials, which have both analog design options and digital ones. In addition, in the proprietary application “Health” (Huawei Health) you can download about 150 more variations – there are both paid and free watchfaces.

You can change the preset watch faces either through the settings menu on the watch or through the Health app on your phone. You can also quickly access watch face settings right from the GS Pro home screen by simply holding your finger on the screen for a few seconds.

INTERFACE AND FUNCTIONALITY

The dimensions of this watch without a strap are 48x48x13.6 mm. Weight 45 – grams without strap and 57 with nylon strap. The watch fits very nicely, it is light enough for both male and female hands. But it is worth noting that on thin female hands, they seem very large. Unless you are Abby from The Last of Us Part II.

To pair your watch, you need to register in the proprietary application “Health” (Huawei Health), which is available on Android 5.0 and iOS 9.0 and higher operating systems.

After connecting, you can not only download new watch faces through the program, but also study the information in more detail with various monitoring of sensors built into the watch, as well as transfer music to the built-in memory, manage alarms and notifications, discard favorite contacts for calls from the watch, and of course update the firmware. The application can be added to iOS as a data source for the original “Health” Apple and then you will not lose the statistics that are important to you.

As we said above, a touchscreen is installed here, and on the side you will find two functioning buttons. The upper one is responsible for switching to the main menu and returning to the main screen, and the lower one is for quick access to the desired menu – it is determined through the settings.

If you swipe down on the screen from top to bottom, then you will open the shutter with quick commands: “Do not disturb” mode, “On screen” function, phone search, alarm clock and settings. It also displays icons for Bluetooth, GPS, charging and the date with the day of the week.

Swiping up from the bottom of the screen will take you to the messages menu, which displays the last unread text messages from your phone, as well as notifications from various applications. Swiping from right to left or vice versa will allow you to quickly get to several sections: heart rate, stress, weather, music, activity.

Going to the main menu through the top button, the first thing you will see is the “Training” section, where you will find hundreds of training modes – from walking on the street and swimming to various extreme sports, martial arts and even car racing. In the “Recordings” section, you will find data on monitoring the latest workouts, in which the watch counts not only steps and time, but also distance traveled, speed and pace, ascent and descent, heart rate, workout efficiency and much more. In the third section, you can see the training status, that is, generalized information about the various activities that you have been doing for at least one week.

Next comes the pulse section, which constantly monitors your heart rate and displays a graph for the last day, as well as the maximum, minimum and current heart rate values.

In the SpO2 menu, you can check the oxygen saturation of the blood. To do this, you need to turn the watch face towards you and keep your hand motionless for a few seconds. Unfortunately, I cannot judge the accuracy of the measurement, since there was nothing to compare with. In normal mode, this device showed values ​​from 97 to 100%, and after drinking alcohol and smoking hookah, this value dropped to 93-95%, which is not very good. But the GameMAG authors are suffering for you.

The “Activity” section displays your activity for the last day: steps, distance traveled, ascent, as well as weekly graphs of achieving general activity of 30 minutes a day and any activity at least once an hour for half a day.

In the “Sleep” section, you will find information about the last dream if you slept without taking off your watch. You can view your daytime and nighttime sleep on your device, and for more information on deep sleep, shallow sleep, REM sleep, and tips, see the Huawei Health app.

The “Stress” section is designed to track the stress level throughout the day. But initially this function is disabled and it can only be activated through the application on the phone and passing the test of 12 questions – the watch will start measuring your heart rate when answering a particular question and, as a result, will give out the stress level.

The Breathing Exercises menu is designed to help you do a simple exercise with inhalation and exhalation over a short period of time. You can adjust the breathing rate and exercise time.

Next on the list are “Calls” and “Contacts”. In the first section, you can see the missed calls on the phone, and in the second, you can dial to the favorite contacts that you added in the application on the phone. Yes, from this watch you can make calls using a Bluetooth connection with your phone. This is very useful if, say, the phone is in the next room, and you urgently need to call or answer the call, or if you have dirty hands, prepare food and do not want to get your phone dirty.

The “Music” section is intended not only for managing music on your phone, but also for playing music on the watch itself. For this, the device provides an internal memory of 4 GB, but only slightly more than 2 GB is available for storing music. You can listen to music using the built-in speaker or via Bluetooth headphones. But it is worth noting that the quality of the DAC in the watch leaves much to be desired – at high volume you begin to hear small crackles.

The volume control is adjusted not only with the slider on the screen, but also with the side buttons on the watch, which temporarily get the functionality of the volume rocker.

Thanks to the “Remote Camera” menu, you don’t have to look for someone to help you take pictures of you in front of any background while traveling. You will be able to activate the shutter as well as set a timer for 2 or 5 seconds so that everyone in the frame can get ready before you take a good shot.

The built-in barometer shows a graph of atmospheric pressure changes during the day, as well as the maximum, minimum and current pressure values. But questions arose about the accuracy of the measurements, since they showed figures slightly lower than the home barometer.

To use the built-in compass, you need to draw an infinity sign with a clock in the air. The compass, according to my subjective feelings, shows the direction correctly, so it is quite possible to believe it. The sun rises and the moss grows on the trees where it needs to be.

The built-in weather application shows not only the current weather, but also the forecast for the next 6 hours and a week. In addition, you can find out information about the rising and ordering of the sun and moon, about the phases of the moon and about the ebb and flow, about which information was not available in our region.

Also at the end of the menu you will find sections of the stopwatch, timer, alarm clock, flashlight and settings, in which everything is quite standard, so we will not focus on them.

BATTERY AND AUTONOMY

This watch has a 790 mAh battery. According to the manufacturer, HONOR Watch GS Pro can live on a single charge up to 25 days. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time for a full battery test. On average, with a couple of measurements of a half-hour workout “Walking down the street” with GPS, the watch spent 5-7 percent of the charge per day. In addition, we had a constant pulse measurement turned on and the SpO2 parameter was measured several times a day. During training, the watch was also used to control the music on the phone and received incoming calls from time to time.

Calculating the average battery consumption per day, we can assume that the HONOR Watch GS Pro can live on one full charge from two to three weeks of medium-active use, and this is a very good indicator for such a device rich in functionality. Perhaps the watch will last 25 days with more moderate use.

TOTAL

HONOR Watch GS Pro is a really high quality product for its money. Do you need such a watch in everyday life in the city? More likely no than yes. Specifically, this device is primarily positioned for active people traveling in search of adventures in the wild. The watch is more likely to fit just for them. Rich functionality, good autonomy compared to the Apple Watch and a democratic price tag are included.

Author: Sergey Dyakonenko (Madnfs)

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