Here’s a great new Huawei product you can buy in the United States: The Huawei Watch GT smartwatch delivers premium looks and materials, fitness and wellness tracking, and two weeks of battery life in normal usage.

It costs $200 to $220 depending on model and is available now to preorder from Amazon.com and Newegg.

“Named after grand tourers, a performance and luxury car capable of high speed and long-distance driving, the Huawei Watch GT uses an innovative dual-engine and smart power-saving architecture that enables it to switch between performance and efficiency modes depending on an individual’s activity to maximize battery life,” the Huawei announcement notes. “Huawei Watch GT features two-week battery life with typical use.”

Everything in that quote needs a bit of explanation.

The “dual-engine and smart power-saving architecture” refers to Huawei’s use of the Cortex M4 embedded processor, which is designed for small, power-constrained devices like smartwatches. “Cortex-M4 brings advanced intelligence to battery-powered embedded and IoT devices,” the Arm website says of the chip.

The battery life claims will, of course, be the subject of some debate. But Huawei says that the Watch GT will deliver wildly varying battery life depending on usage. It can achieve up to 30 full days of battery life when not used for exercise tracking. And as little as 22 hours in a marathon scenario with GPS, heart rate monitoring and running mode all activated.

Aside from the battery life, I’m most intrigued by the device’s software, which is powered by LiteOS, not Google’s Wear OS (formerly called Android Wear). LiteOS is a bit of an unknown, but like the hardware on which it runs, it’s supposed to be quite efficient, and it is optimized for memory-constrained environments. According to Huawei, LiteOS is a lightweight Internet of Things (IoT) platform, and it uses this system across a wide range of products.

From what I can tell, the Watch GT isn’t a full-featured smartwatch like Apple Watch but is rather a device that focuses largely on fitness and wellness tracking, similar to a high-end Fitbit. It supports indoor and outdoor exercising, including swimming, tracks just about every fitness metric imaginable, including VO2max, plus sleep. Its watch-like looks and premium design will appeal to many, as will its affordable pricing.

If you’re interested in purchasing the Huawei Watch GT, I’d appreciate you do so via one of these affiliate links:

Huawei Watch GT Sport, graphite black with black silicone strap – $200

Huawei Watch GT Sport, stainless with saddle brown leather/silicone strap – $230

The Huawei Watch GT is compatible with both Android and iOS and will be available on February 19.

Tagged with Huawei, Huawei Watch GT