Huawei Band 3 Pro review: The bigger brother to the Huawei Band 3e

Not too long ago, we reviewed the Huawei Band 3e fitness band. While it came in at a pretty good price point, it didn’t offer all that many features. Now, it’s the bigger brother’s turn to come in and offer features that are missing from the Band 3e. The Huawei Band 3 Pro comes with water/dust resistance (up to 5 ATM), GPS tracking, a touch screen, a heart rate monitor, and sleep monitor. Continue reading to see how the Huawei Band 3 Pro did in our full review.

Specifications

• Display: AMOLED, 0.95 inch (120 x 240)
• Storage: 16MB
• Memory: 384KB
• Battery
  • 100mAh
  • Charging time about 100 minutes
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2, 2.4GHz frequency
• Sensors
  • 6-axis acceleration sensor
  • Detached PPG cardiotachometer
  • Infrared wear sensor
• Band Size
  • Band body: 45 mm x 19 mm x 11 mm
  • Wristband: 16.5mm
• System Requirements
  • Android 4.4 and above
  • iOS 9.0 and above
• Color
  • Obsidian Black
  • Space Blue
  • Quicksand Gold
• Up to 50m water resistance
• GPS
• Weight: 25g

What’s in the box

• Band 3 Pro
• Charging cradle
• Charging cable
• Quick starter guide
• Safety information
• Warranty card

Design

Unlike the Band 3e where you could take out the body from the wrist band, the Band 3 Pro doesn’t offer that capability. The body and band are made to look as they are one (more on that later) with the touch screen as the centerpiece. Below the touch screen is a capacitive button that acts as a home button bringing you back to the watch face. Moving outward is the rest of the metal, high gloss UV coating body leading to the silicon rubber band. The strap comes with 17 slots and should be able to fit around just about anyone’s wrist.

When looking at the bottom of the Band 3 Pro, you’ll see the oval-shaped heart rate monitor sensor in the center and off to the side are two metal pins that are meant for the charging cradle. Speaking of the charging cradle, it does have an oddly shaped design to it but will secure the watch when charging. The cradle uses a Micro-USB port for charging the band.

If you’re looking to change from the long wrist strap to the short one at any point in time, there are two slits on each side of the band at the bottom where the heart rate sensor is that will allow you to take your fingernail and lift up causing a small piece to pop out of the band. Slide the wrist strap away and add the new one on.

Display

While the Band 3e that came with a 0.5″ PMOLED display, the Band 3 Pro offers a 0.95″ AMOLED touch screen with a resolution of 120 x 240. The screen is also 2.5D, so there is a contoured edge on the screen leading to the body of the device.

Admittedly, 120 x 240 resolution isn’t the greatest considering we’re all used to our smartphones coming with a much much higher resolution. However, for the Band 3 Pro, it’s pretty good. You notice some pixels on the display but it’s not to the point where you won’t ever want to look at the screen.

Software

The application Huawei uses for their fitness bands and other wearables they offer is the Huawei Health app. The application lets you check your steps, sleep, heart rate, and even keep track of your exercise records.

The application is pretty simple to understand. When looking at the front page, it’ll show you your steps taken for the week so far, your exercise records, sleep records, weight, and heart rate.

When tapping on the “Sleep” option, it’ll display your day, week, month, and year sleep records and show you how your sleep went during the night. Looking through “Weight” and “Heart rate” will also show day, week, month, and year records accordingly.

If you’re wanting to check out the setting of the app and adjust the watch settings to your liking, you have the option to enable Huawei TruSleep to monitor your sleep quality and breathing patterns in real time, enable continuous heart rate monitoring, turning on app notifications, set alarms, and more.

Performance

The Band 3 Pro comes with an Applo 3 microprocessor with 384kb of RAM. As terrible as that may sound, the unit is pretty seamless when transitioning to other screens. Swiping from screen to screen is fluid whether you’re swiping up or down and from left to right to go back to the previous screen. Even when tapping on the capacitive button on the screen, it brings you back to the main display pretty quickly.

If you’re looking to change the watch face, you will have to hold down on the current watch face for about 5 seconds in order for the screen to zoom out and let you scroll up or down to switch through the three built-in watch faces. It may seem like a delay but it’s smart that Huawei added that in to prevent from accidental long presses on the screen that may change the watch face without the user knowing.

There was one little hiccup I did run into when trying to scroll down through my messages to clear them all out. While thinking it would continue to scroll down, it would stop after a message and then I would have to slide from bottom up again and continue the process in order to get to the “clear” option. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be like that, but if you have a lot of messages, at least 10+, you will be scrolling a bit to clear them all out.

Battery Life

The nondetachable 100mAh lithium-ion battery may not seem like a lot but you’re able to get a week, if not more, out of it. Battery life does depend on whether the watch is connected to your mobile device or not. I was able to get 7 days while connected to my phone with messages coming in, checking my heart rate, and monitoring my sleep at night. On standby, the watch was able to get around 14 days. Huawei says you can get up to 12 days when sleep monitor and 24/7 heart rate are turned off, so if you are looking for a bit more battery life out of the fitness tracker, you can turn off those two features.

Charging the band will take about 100 minutes, or just over an hour and a half from empty. The time isn’t bad all things considered. If you’re in need of a quick charge to get you through part of the day or night, just attach the watch to the cradle and let it charge before you need to head out.

Price

For all the features the Band 3 Pro comes with, the heart rate monitor, sleep monitor, GPS, and more, you would expect it to cost somewhere around US$100-$150. Well, Huawei is offering the fitness tracker for $69.99. Currently, it’s being sold for $54.99 on Amazon at the time of writing, so the price could change at any time.

Honestly, for $55 (even for $70), you can’t pass up this fitness tracker with all the features it has.

Wrap Up

Personally, I like the Huawei Band 3 Pro and what all it can do versus the Band 3e. If you’re one for checking on your heart rate or sleep and exercising on a daily basis, then this fitness tracker will work out for you. With the price point pretty affordable, I don’t see many people passing this up if you’re not wanting to spend that much on a Fitbit or any other competitor.

Last Updated on February 3, 2021.