I’m pretty confident you’ve heard at least one person say that the past couple of years have taught them to take better care of their health. I don’t want to be a cliché, but I’ve found myself thinking that way, too. There were many months deep in the confusion brought about by the pandemic where I didn’t really do anything, but in that same cycle, I found myself looking for ways to take better care of myself. And I find that with the latter, tools and extra motivation help me achieve my goals, or at least get me off my butt to do something.
And that’s where I find wearables like the Huawei Watch Fit (New) come in and help be like a coach on my wrist. What started out as a product test turned into a source of motivation to stay active this past month.
You might be wondering if it could help you out. Here are the three reasons you might have to pick up this fitness tracker from Huawei.
You want to take your workouts further
Consulting experts, especially when it comes to your health, is essential. But, sometimes, when you’re starting out, that’s daunting or at least something you can’t afford at the moment. It’s good to have a device on hand to help you assess where you are right now and keep track of your progress.
Huawei positions the Watch Fit (New) as a way to encourage you to live a healthier, more active lifestyle. This smartwatch gets Huawei’s animated personal trainer and offers 12 animated fitness and 44 standardized fitness exercises. It’s a diverse set of workouts, including “Exercise at work,” “Burn fat fast,” “Full-body stretch,” “Reenergize,” “Ab toning,” and more. I like that when the watch reminds me to get up and move around, the Reenergize routine is integrated into that. So, if you’re at a loss of what movements or exercise routines to try out, these exercises come in handy.
Aside from that, you have access to 97 different workout modes. I’m confident you’ll find the sport or workout you need right within the watch. With 5ATM water resistance, you can even take it with you for a pool or open water workout.
It keeps track of data like exercise duration, heart rate, heart rate zone, calories burned, and more. You can see these at a glance while you work out, but then you can get more information via the Huawei Health app.
I’m more of a yoga/walking kind of person. But the Huawei Watch Fit (New) turned me into someone who enjoys skipping rope/jump ropes as a workout now. It monitors my jumps, heart rate, calorie consumption, and more. It lets me set goals of how many jumps I did, and the watch vibrates when I’ve hit 50% and 100% of my goal.
The heart rate sensor and its exercise detection algorithm can recognize movements and intensity for certain activities. If you forget to start a workout and keep the high-intensity activity level for 10 minutes, you will get a prompt from the watch asking if you’re running, walking, or using the elliptical or rowing machines. There’s also real-time GPS tracking for when you’re running, cycling, walking, or swimming in the pool or in open water.
For runners, Huawei is offering tech-enhanced running courses. There are 13 built-in running courses here that cover runners of all abilities. It breaks down the running instructions and analyzes your step count, giving you real-time running guidance and training advice to improve your efficiency.
Beyond workouts, the Huawei Watch Fit (New) lets you set daily step goals to make sure you at least get moving and out of your seat for a few hours a day. Heart rate monitoring is improved with Huawei’s fourth-generation TruSeen 4.0 tech. It’s designed to track your heart rate continuously, quickly, and accurately. It can even alert you if your resting heart rate is too high or low.
This smartwatch can also monitor your blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) around the clock, which is a good indicator of your fitness level. If you enjoy extreme sports at high altitudes, this data can help spot any issues. But as with any smartwatch, the Huawei Watch Fit (New) is designed to be a reference and not a replacement or basis for medical diagnosis.
If you want to figure out if you’re getting a good night’s rest, this watch can help you monitor your sleep habits. With Huawei TruSleep 2.0, it can detect your stages of sleep, real-time heart rate, and breathing rate and offer a comprehensive analysis of your sleep quality. It can tell you when you fell asleep and woke up, the proportion of light to deep sleep, and even rapid eye movement.
It can even let you know if you suffer from any of these six sleep issues: insomnia, shallow sleep, night-time awakenings, early morning awakenings, excessive dreams, and irregular sleep patterns. And it’ll offer personalized advice on how you can improve your sleep quality.
Stress management is also available through the Huawei Watch Fit (New). It can monitor and assess stress conditions and help you manage your stress by checking on heart rate variability. The downside is it is limited to Huawei devices and Android. iOS users don’t have access to this feature.
This watch also offers breathing exercises within the phone, which I wished offered vibrations while going through the sessions because it allows me to close my eyes and concentrate on the breaths.
With this focus on holistic health, Huawei offers health challenges to its users, which you can participate in with other Huawei users. I’ve picked the healthy living one, and it’s encouraged me to drink more water, make sure I take time to breathe, sleep well, and move around. It is just a good reminder to be more present and do things that are good for my body. Unfortunately, if you haven’t connected the Huawei Watch Fit (New) to a Huawei device (I had mine connected to a Huawei MatePad Pro 12.6), you miss out on this feature, too.
As expected, this smartwatch works the best with Huawei devices. Like when I do the breathing exercises for the healthy living challenge, I get the prompt for the breaths right on the tablet, and I can see the watch measuring my heart rate as I do.
I’ve connected this watch easily with a OnePlus 9 phone on hand, but it was missing a feature I look for in smartwatches: menstrual cycle tracking. Or at least, I couldn’t set it up from that phone. Huawei did warn that the feature might not be available on Android and iOS. I was able to set it up on the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.6. And that allowed me to keep track of my cycle from the watch and the Huawei Health app. I like that Huawei’s implementation lets me update on the watch itself when my period comes, so I can input the start and end of a cycle even if I don’t have the connected device with me.
LiTT Tip #1: As someone who dislikes blaring alarms, I’ve relied heavily on smartwatches waking me up in the morning. The Huawei Watch Fit (New) offers both event alarms and the smart alarm feature. The latter is what you need to have enabled, so you are only woken up when you’re in your light sleep stage. To set this alarm first, head to the Huawei Health app > Devices > Huawei Watch Fit (New) > Alarm > Smart alarm. You can even set when smart wakeup can wake you from your sleep (either 5, 10, 20, or 30 minutes) before your alarm is expected to go off.
LiTT Tip #2: If you’re a bit better versed at knowing heart rate zones, the Huawei Watch Fit (New) lets you set heart rate profiles. By default, it’s set at Maximum heart rate percentage, but you can choose Heart rate reserve percentage (HRR) or Lactate threshold heart rate percentage (LTHR). HRR is used automatically when you’re doing one of the running courses. (On an Android device, I noticed LTHR isn’t available.) To adjust this head, to the Huawei Health app > Heart > Exercise heart rate settings (cogwheel icon) > Heart rate zones.
You care about style and substance
The Huawei Watch Fit (New) is quite functional, but it also features a distinctive yet stylish look. The brand selected colors that match the brushed metal frame of the watch face. I have the lovely Sakura Pink option with me, but it’s also available in Pomelo Red, Graphite Black, and Isle Blue. The rectangular shape provides a unique, recognizable look to this watch.
It sits nicely on my wrist and displays more information with this form factor. It has a sturdy, classy look that I don’t mind wearing the watch out and about. At around 34g, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable to wear, even when sleeping. Huawei claims its weight is close to a typical sports wristband, so it shouldn’t get in the way when you’re going about your activities. The one thing I’d change is a longer strap for the watch. The watch strap is on the shorter side, at least for the Sakura Pink option.
The 1.64-inch AMOLED display is quite responsive to taps and swipes. It comes equipped with a high-sensitivity sensor so it can automatically adjust the brightness to suit your environment. I’ve kept it at auto throughout my test, and I’ve never needed to change it when I was out on bright, sunny days. I sometimes get blinded by it in a dark room, though.
You get a lot of options to customize the watch face. There are 13 choices built into the watch, including one that lets you customize the data you need and another that allows you to add a photo of your choice as its background. And then you have over 130+ paid choices on Huawei’s watch face store. There doesn’t seem to be free options in the store, but I’ve been okay using what’s on the watch itself. If you do want more, you’ll need to buy those.
The Huawei Watch Fit (New) also gets a standby watch face option, which is basically the always-on display for this smartwatch. I prefer to use the raise to wake feature, but it’s available here if you want that feature. Of course, that will eat up more battery.
Beyond health tracking and helping you keep track of time, this watch also offers smart features like music player control, remote camera control, and find your phone. You don’t have to lift up your phone to pause or play music. It acts as a shutter button that’s useful for group shots or stylish selfies. And if you misplace your phone inside your room or bag, you can have the watch sound a rather loud alarm. Unfortunately, the remote camera control is limited to Huawei devices (EMUI 8.1 or later, and it worked on the HarmonyOS-powered tablet I had).
LiTT Tip #3: If you want to enable standby watch face, swipe down from the watch face > head to Settings (cogwheel) > Display > Standby watch face. From there, you can select the design you want.
You need to go days between charges
I won’t dispute that charging devices can be a hassle, especially for fitness trackers. I don’t want to worry about charging that device daily. Huawei boasts that you can get up to 10 days of use on a single charge. But that’s achievable under certain conditions only. My typical use is a bit heavy, so I get around four to five days out of it. I have all the health tracking features enabled, so I’m sure that’s eating up more battery than intended.
It doesn’t take long to charge the Huawei Watch Fit (New). It usually takes me under 50 minutes to fully charge it. If you’re in a hurry, Huawei claims you can get a full day’s use out of a five-minute charge, and a half-hour charge gets you up to 70%.
What’s lit and what’s not?
What’s lit about it:
- Animated personal trainer gives an on-wrist guide to your workouts
- Many workout-tracking modes
- Round-the-clock health tracking
- Offers advice to get better sleep
- Health challenges you can join to develop better habits
- Period tracking is available
- Seamless integration between the Huawei Health app, Huawei devices, and the watch
- Smart alarms wake you up when you aren’t in deep sleep
- Easily recognizable and stylish form factor
- Sturdy and light build
- Nice, bright, and responsive display
- Convenient music and camera control features
- Loud ringtone for the find your phone feature
- Decent battery life
What needs the extra spark:
- Wish there was even more animated personal training courses
- Features aren’t as robust on Android or iOS
- The strap is on the shorter side (at least for the Sakura Pink option)
- Free watch faces are stylish but a bit limited
- Remote camera control is limited to Huawei devices
Final thoughts
The Huawei Watch Fit (New) offers that do-it-all experience for those looking to level up their fitness game. But it isn’t one to isolate beginners either. This smartwatch seems like a good match for either user.
If you are a Huawei user, this smartwatch easily integrates with your devices and offers you the best it has to offer. Those on Android and iOS might have to think about whether the missing features are essential to them or not.
The Huawei Watch Fit (New) retails for PHP 4,999.
Buy the Huawei Watch Fit (New) HERE. *
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