Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro review: Small improvements make a great smartwatch even better

Earlier this year, we reviewed the Huawei Watch GT 3, another solid smartwatch from the company. In fact, it earned a Top Pick of 2022 here at Techaeris. As is typically the case, Huawei has released a Pro version of the GT 3 as well.

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

Our Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro review looks at the latest iteration which has a few improvements over the Watch GT 3 with its Titanium casing, slightly larger size, and more RAM/storage space. Read on for our full review.

Specifications

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro has the following features and specifications:

Display	1.43 inches Corning Gorilla Glass 3 AMOLED Colour Touch Screen, 466 x 366 pixels, 326 PPI
Memory	32GB ROM, 2GB RAM
Connectivity	• 2.4GHz Wi-Fi (used for acceleration BT transmission) • Bluetooth 5.2 with BR + BLE + EDR
GPS	GPS + BDS + GLONASS + Galileo + QZSS
Sensors	Accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, optical heart rate, barometer, SpO2, Temperature
NFC	Supported
Battery	455 mAh built-in lithium-polymer battery
Battery Usage	14 days for typical use, 8 days for heavy usage
Charging	Wireless charging via magnetic charging cradle, approx 2h to recharge fully
Buttons	Power button + function button, upper button supports the rotatable crown
Speaker	Yes
Microphone	Yes
Water resistance	IP68, 5 ATM, Dive to 30 meters
Watch Case	Titanium front and ceramic back
Case Size	46.6mm
Watch Case Colour	Titanium
Watch Strap	Black Fluoroelastomer Strap, Brown Leather Strap
Wrist Size	140-210 mm
Operating System	HarmonyOS 2
System requirements	HarmonyOS 2 or later, Android 6.0 or later, iOS 9.0 or later
Environment	• Temperature: -20°C～+45°C • Humidity: 5%～95% (non-condensation)
Dimensions	46.6 x 46.6 x 10.9 mm
Weight	approx 42.6g (without strap)

What’s in the box

• Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro
• Charging cradle
• User Guide/Safety Information/Warranty Information

Design

Before we get too deep into this review, I’m just going to briefly list the differences between the GT 3 Pro and its non-Pro counterpart:

Feature	Watch GT 3 Pro	Watch GT 3
Case size	46.6mm, 43mm	46mm, 43mm
Front case	Titanium	Stainless steel
Rear case	Ceramic	Plastic
Screen material	Sapphire glass	Gorilla Glass
Strap	Leather, Fluoroelastomer	Stainless Steel, Milanese Leather, Fluoroelastomer
Memory	32GB ROM, 2GB RAM	4GB ROM, 32MB RAM
Water rating	Dive (up to 30m)	5ATM, Swim
Lactic acid measurement	Y	N
Free diving mode	Y	N
Women’s cycle management 2.0	Y	N
Weight (without strap)	approx 54g	approx 42.6g

As you can see, there are some pretty significant upgrades here, from the Titanium case to the Sapphire glass screen and more RAM and storage space. Overall, the 46mm Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro fitness smartwatch is a very nice watch with its matte titanium casing and matching strap. The size, thickness, and weight of the watch are quite nice, and it’s definitely comfortable to wear all the time.

An inverted triangle indicator is at the top of the dial with silver lines printed on it at the hour positions. Numbers are printed spaced every five minutes apart with small tick marks in between. On the side are two buttons: power and function. The top is a round button while the bottom has a flat push button style. While both can be pushed, the top can be rotated to scroll vertically within various screens. Between the buttons, just below the casing, is where the speaker resides with the microphone on the opposite side. Like the GT 3, Huawei has increased the number of sensors from four centered ones to a ring array of eight, allowing for better health tracking. The sensors allow the watch to take your heart rate, body temperature, oxygen saturation (SpO2) levels, measure stress, and more.

Our review unit was the Titanium Edition with a Fluoroelastomer strap. In the past, I’ve had minor irritation issues with these types of straps but after having used the watch for over a month with this strap, my skin has been just fine. The strap is attached to the watch via the standard quick-release clips so it can easily be changed. Both sides of the strap have closely spaced rectangular holes cut out of it. Not only a design element, but this also allows you to fasten the watch at pretty much the perfect tightness for many wrist sizes. The strap also has two free loops. The loop closest to the watch itself has a nub that fits into the holes on the opposite strap to help hold it in place alongside the classic buckle.

Like previous iterations of the Huawei Watch, the Watch GT 3 Pro smartwatch is a solid-looking smartwatch, even though I would have preferred the leather strap over the Fluorelastomer one.

Display

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro has a 1.43-inch AMOLED 466 x 466 HD Sapphire Glass AMOLED touchscreen display. As a result, the watch has 326 PPI. The Sapphire Glass display is nicer than the Gorilla Glass screen of the GT 3, but you’d only notice if you had them side by side. The resolution on the larger version is just fine and I had no issues with clarity or crispness in the display. As for the colours, the AMOLED screen is rich and vivid as one would expect. The touchscreen is responsive and I didn’t have any issues swiping left, right, up, down, or tapping the watch face to launch a workout.

The Sapphire Glass on the display is also very durable. After a couple of months of daily (and most nightly) wear, I can’t see a single micro-scratch on it. As careful as once can try to be when wearing a watch, there will still be times you’ll bang it against something and, so far, the Watch GT 3 Pro has stood up admirably to daily wearing.

Setup\Ease of Use

When starting up the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro for the first time, you’ll be prompted to select a language. Next, you’ll be directed to download the Huawei Health app for your device and pair the watch to it. With the Watch GT 3, I had to download the Huawei AppGallery, install it, also install HMS Core, then grab Huawei Health from the AppGallery. With the Watch GT 3 Pro, however, I skipped the AppGallery install and was able to install the Huawei Health app directly from the browser, logged in with my Huawei Cloud ID and was good to go. The reason I tried this route was that Android 13 and HMS Core didn’t play nice at the time, but it’s nice to see the Health app can be installed and works just fine without needing HMS Core or AppGallery installed. As for updates, the Health app will let you know when there is one and you’ll need to give permission for Health to download/update on your Android device as an unknown source.

To pair the smartwatch, open the app, accept the permissions, click on the devices tab, and add the smartwatch. Once paired, your fitness and health data, contacts, and location information sync between the Watch GT 3 Pro and the Huawei Health app on your device.

You can then enable notification access to receive notifications on the smartwatch as they appear on your phone. However, Android 13 restricts notification access with sideloaded apps. Fortunately, there is a workaround for this. Simply go into Settings > Apps > Huawei Health > click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner and tap “Allow restricted access” on your smartphone. Once that was done, I was able to enable notification access once again. 

Once you’re paired, that’s about it. Pressing and holding the top button allows you to power the watch on, off, or restart it. Pressing the same button launches the app picker, giving you quick access to the 25 or so pre-installed apps. When in an app, the settings, or notification screen, pressing the button returns you to the home screen.

Pressing the bottom button gives you quick access to initiate a workout. Workouts include assisted running courses (run/walk, fat burning, aerobic, and more), outdoor run, indoor run, outdoor/indoor walk, outdoor/indoor cycle, pool swim, open water swim, mounting hike, hike, trail run, skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, triathlon, elliptical, rower, and other. As you can see, it is a pretty detailed and robust list with over 100 workout modes available. Each workout has a settings option that will let you toggle notifications for distance, heart rate, and guided training effect. Once you start a workout, the watch will guide you through different workout stages.

Like the Watch GT 3, there is a Quick Replies option in the SMS app, and I was able to easily reply to messages with the pre-selected list and even customize a couple of other replies I often send.

The watch obviously defaults to the watch face screen. Swiping left or right will cycle through the various screens. When swiping left, these include heart rate, SPO2, stress, sleep, and daily activity tracker. These screens are for displaying data only and cannot be drilled down into. On the other hand, if you press the top button and select heart rate, you can also swipe up to get a slightly more detailed look at your current day’s heart rate zone stats. On this same screen, sleep will display the breakdown between sleep and naps, and the activity record has a few further detail screens, and so forth. Swiping right displays the weather, down your settings, and up your current notifications.

Software

HarmonyOS

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro runs on the company’s Android-based HarmonyOS 2. While it runs well, there’s virtually no customization on the watch. As mentioned above, the watch has a watch face screen and screens for heart rate, stress, weather, music, and daily activity record. You can modify the order these are in or add a different tile like sleep or SPO2, and change the order. Given that the watch also includes a barometer, compass, workout, alarm, timer, and other functionality, you’d think you could set these as swipeable home screens as well. Unfortunately, you can’t. Personally, I’d love to add a couple more home screens to the watch. Sure, you can still access the timer or barometer by pressing the top button and scrolling down, but that takes extra steps.

You can customize the watch face itself — but even there, it’s only limited customization. There are default watch faces, some of which are lightly customizable. Some let you display different stats, while a couple only let you select the primary and secondary time zone. It would be nice to customize at least the colour hints on each watch face at a minimum. The good news is that there are downloadable watch faces available as well.

Huawei Health

The Huawei Health app is what you’ll have to install for long-term tracking. The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro smartwatch is not compatible with Strava or other fitness apps, so you have to use Huawei Health to track your workouts and other health statistics.

By default, the main dashboard shows your daily activity across the top and tiles for heart rate, SpO2, stress, sleep, weight, and exercise records. This can be edited to remove or add tiles you desire. Across the bottom are tabs for Health, Exercise (which lets you start a workout or view the training plans), Devices (for pairing devices, adding or managing music on the watch, firmware updates, and notification settings), and Me, which lets you adjust your profile and other settings.

Like previous versions of Huawei’s fitness smartwatches, the tracking for heart rate, SpO2, stress, sleep, and workout activity is some of the best I’ve seen. Each tracking feature displays your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly stats. Selecting the heart rate settings cog allows you to set a heart rate warning as well as heart rate zones. These zones include warm-up, fat-burning, aerobic, anaerobic, and extreme. It even breaks down exercise intensity zone levels and affects your body, which is very beneficial.

Each of the other activities also has an info screen that displays some handy information and tips to improve sleep quality and reduce stress levels. Overall, it really is robust in its tracking and reporting.

Performance

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro has 32GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, a huge increase over the 4GB/32MB on Watch GT 3. While the Watch GT 3 was just fine with its RAM and storage, the Watch GT 3 Pro does feel a bit snappier with significant more RAM. Don’t get me wrong, the Watch GT 3 runs just fine with 32MB of RAM. While some will find the extra storage for media nice, I never really used that feature as I just stream my music from Spotify. At any rate, the watch does function quite well with quick touch and swipe response. The apps load up quickly, and I never saw any stuttering or other issues while using the watch.

Initiating a workout is straightforward; however, the GPS does seem to take a bit (upwards of 30 seconds to a minute) to lock. Once locked, the workouts seem to be pretty accurate, and the voice coaching/updates are helpful for training plans. As far as fitness functions like step, sleep, and heart rate tracking, the watch performs very well. Daily step counts were in line with other smartwatches I’ve used, and the sleep and heart rate tracking seemed pretty accurate as well.

Sound Quality

Like the Huawei Watch GT 3, the Watch GT 3 Pro has music storage capabilities (and can be used to control third-party music apps like Spotify) and can also be used to answer a phone call. The sound quality is still impressive for such a small speaker. It gets quite loud and remains clear, and even better than some smartphones I’ve used in the past. Depending on what you’re doing, if you don’t want to run with headphones or take your phone, using the Watch GT 3 Pro to listen to music while you walk or run is totally acceptable. Calls are great as well, which I’ll discuss below.

Reception

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro smartwatch connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth. It is easy to connect, and it stays connected as long as you’re within a 30-foot range of your phone. As mentioned above, GPS does take a short while to connect. However, once it does, it stays connected for the duration of the workout and is accurate.

Microphone/Call Quality

With the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro, you can make and answer calls on the watch. Again, during a test call, I asked how it sounded and was told “just fine.” When I explained I was using the watch via speakerphone-type mode, they were surprised and mentioned it didn’t sound that different than through a smartphone.

In addition to being able to answer calls, you can also place them from the watch itself, as long as you have given the Health app permission to access your device’s contact list. Of course, you’ll have to be in range of your phone, but it works pretty well when you don’t have your phone beside you or in your pocket when someone calls or you want to make one.

Battery Life

Huawei claims up to 2 weeks of battery life under average use for the Watch GT 3 Pro. I consistently hit the 12 to 14-day mark between charges during testing. However, when using GPS to track my workouts, I ended up getting 8-10 days with a daily GPS workout activity. I estimate an hour of GPS workout activity takes up about 2% of battery life. When depleted, the watch takes just under two hours to charge using the included charging cradle.

For a fitness watch, this one definitely has great battery life depending on what you’re using it for.

Price/Value

While the Huawei Watch GT 3 starts at CA$328.99 on Amazon, the Watch GT 3 Pro has an MSRP of $548.99 — quite an increase for a Titanium shell and slightly better RAM/storage space. If you want to spend even more, the 43mm Watch GT 3 Pro Ceramic Edition will set you back $798.99. While I like the look and feel of the more Titanium version, it’s hard to recommend when the Watch GT 3 works just fine, and the Stainless Steel edition looks just as great.

Photo Gallery

Wrap-up

As expected from my time with the Watch GT 3, the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro didn’t disappoint at all. With excellent build quality, more RAM, great battery life, 100 assisted workouts, GPS, onboard music storage, and call capabilities, it’s definitely a watch that fitness enthusiasts will want to consider. That being said, it is pricier and for those on a budget, the Watch GT 3 suffices just fine.

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Last Updated on April 25, 2023.