Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro review

The Huawei Watch GT3 Pro brings titanium and ceramic case materials and some brand-new feature, for a super-charged version of the company's smartwatch.

Just like the Huawei Watch GT 2 Pro, this is aimed at people with more money to spend, purely on looks and aesthetics.

But this time, Huawei has managed to squeeze in some new features. Most notably, it has an ECG sensor to deliver serious heart health insights (although that feature hasn't got regulatory approval yet), and it's also bringing quicker charging to improve on Huawei's already impressive battery numbers.

Wareable verdict: Huawei Watch GT3 review | Huawei Watch GT Runner review

The standard Huawei Watch GT 3 costs around £200 ($240), so it's certainly a premium. Is it worth it? Here's our verdict on the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro.

• Best smartwatches from our testing lab

Design and materials

The big price tag is all about the design and materials, and it's a fantastic smartwatch to wear.

The 46mm version featured here comes with a titanium case, button, and rotating watch crown and with a grey leather strap. It's a nice weight, the strap feels great and it just feels high quality. It's certainly male-focused, given the case size, however.

Huawei gives you the option of silicone, leather or a more expensive titanium strap, but there are additional straps too including a nylon one, which also comes in a range of colors. However, you only get one in the case, so if you want to work out, you'll want silicone.

The smaller, 43mm version of the GT3 Pro swaps titanium for ceramic, and there's the option of a ceramic or white leather strap.

There are no smartwatches quite like it, so if you're looking for something that stands out in terms of design, that's what you get with the 43mm GT3 Pro.

Back to the 46mm version and you're getting the same sized 1.43-inch, 466x466 resolution AMOLED touchscreen display that features on the same sized GT3.

The 43mm, ceramic edition has a 1.39-inch screen.

Huawei has planted great screens on its smartwatches in recent years and it's no different with the Pro. It's bright, sharp, and responsive, gives you those rich blacks you want to see on an AMOLED screen and visibility is strong overall indoors and outside in bright light.

This is a display that can be kept on at all times, with Huawei offering a black-and-white screen to display time when you're not trying to tinker with its smart features.

The GT3 Pro is suitable to wear in the water, though you'll likely want to take that leather strap off first and swap in a silicone or nylon one instead.

It carries both an IP68 and a 5ATM water-resistant rating, making it safe to be submerged in water up to 50 meters in depth. It's now also been made safe to work when diving in water up to 30 meters deep.

All-in-all the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro is a superbly built smartwatch that oozes quality. If materials and feel are important enough to you to pay double the price of the standard GT 3, it certainly delivers.

HarmonyOS and smartwatch features

Under the hood, the GT 3 Pro runs on Huawei's own HarmonyOS just like the other GT series watches. And in essence, it means you're getting the exact experience of cheaper Huawei Watches, re-emphasizing that this is all about the case materials and style.

It works with Android phones, and iPhones and offers some extra integration with Huawei's phones. If you've got an Android phone or a Huawei phone, you're getting the best Huawei has to offer here.

HarmonyOS runs slick and smooth and offers the same UI touches and is a watch software that's easy to get to grips with. Huawei's OS brings an app store, but it pales in comparison to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store in the number of apps alone.

There are a few more apps since we tested the GT3, but there are still no big names here. It seems unlikely that Harmony OS will ever rival the likes of Wear OS or watchOS for apps.

App store aside, you can view notifications and send preset replies or emojis responses. You can view hourly and weekly weather forecasts, and set timers and alarms and you can handle calls when connected to your phone over Bluetooth.

Android users can make use of a music player to pile on music and there is now a Huawei Music service to sync music over from as well, though that support wasn't available to test.

If you own a Huawei phone, you can also tap into its Celia smart voice assistant to set timers and alarms and check the weather hands-free. There are certainly far more evolved smartwatch assistants out there that's for sure.

There's no LTE and while there's an icon for Huawei's Wallet contactless payment support, it doesn't currently work with the GT3 Pro as far as we can see.

For things like notifications, weather updates, watch face, and navigating that software, that's where the GT3 Pro excels. If you want more smartwatches, there are better options out there.

Health and fitness tracking

The GT3 Pro has all the same qualities as the GT3 in terms of tracking your health and fitness – bar an all-new ECG sensor.

Huawei has already added ECG to its watches in China, but now it's taking advanced heart metrics global – or at least when it gets regulatory approval

Huawei needs to have its sensor technology approved, and that's not happened yet in the EU or UK. There's zero chance of that happening in the US given that it's banned from selling its devices there.

When approved (and residing in the right location) you'll be able to use that sensor and the electrode on the side of the case for 30-second readings to deliver medical-grade analysis for detecting arterial stiffness and arteriosclerosis.

That relates to the thickening of walls in the arteries, which is linked to serious health outcomes.

Continuous heart rate monitoring compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left) and Garmin Epix (right)

So until then, you have Huawei's TruSeen 5.0 optical-based sensor technology to monitor heart rate continuously and send alerts when heart rate is abnormally high or low. That also delivers SpO2 measurements and powers stress tracking via heart rate variability.

Performance-wise, that heart rate monitor fared well when compared to Garmin's continuous tracking and a MyZone chest strap.

There's a skin temperature sensor included here too, although it's not benchmarked against personal baselines and is presented without context. It's a shining example of implementing a feature on a spec sheet without providing useful data – and it's certainly no reason to buy the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro.

Likewise, you can spot-check SpO2 data, but there's little insightful data.

Step counts compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left) and Oura Ring 3 (right)

If you care about fitness tracker staples, you're well covered here. Daily step counts largely matched up with stats from the Oura Ring 3 and Garmin's fitness tracking and you've got a nice dedicated widget to keep track of progress on the watch.

Sleep tracking compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left) and Oura Ring 3 (center and right)

For sleep tracking, you're getting a rich array of stats here along with staples like sleep duration, sleep stages, and the ability to track breathing quality.

We've been taking it to bed with the reliable sleep tracking Oura Ring 3 and have found that sleep data in general has been pretty similar, particularly duration, sleep scores, and the breakdown of sleep stages. It felt a bit more reliable and consistent compared to our sleep-tracking time with the GT3.

Huawei does also include its Healthy Living clover, which is less about automatically tracking activity and more about nudging you with reminders to do different things in your day.

You can set it up to tell you to drink water regularly during the day, smile and keep on top of step counts and sleep at the right times. If you feel you need those nudges, then they're there if you want them.

 Sports tracking

Huawei offers the same sports tracking features as the GT3 Pro plus two extra sports profiles, one of which think could feasibly make its way onto the GT3.

You're still getting 100 sports modes and now those modes have been joined by a freediving mode, which can display real-time diving metrics like depth, speed, and maximum depth and also includes an Apnea training mode using heart rate and breath-holding duration to help you practice how long you can hold your breath for.

The other new mode is a driving range profile to track swing speed, swing tempo, backswing time, and downswing time. Interestingly, Huawei included a richer golf mode for the China edition of the GT3 Pro, which includes course profiles and other richer metrics when you're going for a quick round.

Outside of those two profiles, it's much the same in terms of performance.

For runners, there are all the big running analysis and coaching, and training features that first appeared on the GT3 and were then planted into the more run-friendly design of the GT Runner.

That includes offering insights into running ability, offering training load data, recovery time recommendations, race prediction times, and adding the ability to create interval training sessions. You can also import routes and follow them on the watch as well.

GPS run tracking compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left and center) and Garmin Epix (right)

It also gets the dual-band five-system GNSS technology to improve outdoor tracking in problematic areas when you're trying to lock onto a strong signal.

GPS run tracking compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left) and Garmin Epix (right)

We put the Pro to the test on a bunch of runs including the 2022 Edinburgh Half Marathon against the very accurate Garmin Epix, which uses Garmin's latest multi-frequency positioning technology.

The Pro didn't fair too badly overall from an accuracy point of view, but on other runs, it did still have its moments plotting us through buildings. There were plenty of accurate runs overall though.

Heart rate tracking compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left) and heart rate monitor chest strap (right)

Core running metrics were good too, and you do have the ability to customize screens. Heart rate accuracy however wasn't fantastic.

On more intense sessions like that half marathon test, the maximum heart rate was noticeably high compared to a chest strap monitor. Thankfully, you do have the ability to pair it up with an external sensor to remedy that.

Indoor rowing compared: Huawei Watch GT3 Pro (left and center) and Garmin Epix (right)

Away from running, we found it a solid performer tracking pool swims, and indoor rowing sessions and if you've got it paired up with a heart rate monitor chest strap, it works well for HIIT workouts. Even if that leather strap isn't the best option to get sweaty with.

While the GT3 Pro's sports tracking isn't flawless, it's one of the better performers we've seen in the smartwatch space. it feels more reliable than Samsung's tracking and is pushing Apple for delivering a really strong tracking experience you can largely rely on.

Battery life

The battery performance you can expect from the GT3 Pro is much the same as what you'll get from the GT3 and what we experienced in our testing.

The larger 46mm, titanium Pro is capable of up to 14 days in typical use and 8 days in heavy usage. These usage scenarios are based on lab testing, so in heavy usage, for instance, this is doing things like taking calls on Bluetooth for 30 minutes a week, enabling 24/7 heart rate monitoring, and Huawei's most advanced sleep tracking features.

Opt for the 42mm GT3 Pro and you can expect 7 days in typical usage and 4 days in heavy usage.

We can only vouch for our time with the 46mm titanium Pro 3, which we say is good for a solid week with a mix of light and heavy usage.

We saw roughly 10% in terms of daily drop off and that was with continuous HR monitoring, notifications enabled and the screen not set to always-on mode. When we switched on continuous SpO2 monitoring and moved to that always-on display mode, it was much shorter than a week, with around 20% daily drop-off.

This is a smartwatch that is more than capable of getting you a solid 7 days and longer if you're not making regular use of GPS, heart rate tracking, and keeping the display on at all times.

The one change here, for the 46mm GT3 Pro version only, is the introduction of quicker charging. Huawei says it's sped things up by 30% compared to previous watches, giving you 25% battery off a 10-minute charge, and can go 0-100% in 85 minutes.

That's around about the level of quick charging Fitbit offers on its Sense and Versa 3 smartwatches and should be enough to get you through a day's play.