I've Tried Huawei's Watch GT 6 Pro, and It's a Great Apple Watch Alternative

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Due to ongoing restrictions, Huawei doesn't officially sell its products in the US. That's too bad, as the company is bringing a great Apple Watch Series 11 alternative to the rest of the world, where it can sell its devices. The company's latest Watch GT 6 Pro is a solid all-around smartwatch promising deep health and sports tracking along with strong battery life. Those features are all wrapped up in a premium-feeling design.

I've been using the watch around my home of Edinburgh, Scotland, for the past few days, and I must say, I like it. I'm typically not much of a smartwatch user, but I've enjoyed having it on my wrist this week, and I'm likely going to keep on using it and see how I get on.

The Watch GT 6 Pro is on sale in the UK for £329, with the base model coming in at a more affordable £229. Then there's the Huawei Watch Ultimate 2, which features most of the same tracking features, along with extra diving tech -- including the ability to be worn at 150-meter depths and send messages to other Watch Ultimate 2 models using sonar. The Ultimate 2 will cost a lot more, but exact pricing wasn't available at the time of writing. For reference, that £329 price converts to $449.

image of a Huawei watch being worn on a wrist

There are a few reasons why I've enjoyed using the GT 6 Pro so far so let's take a closer look.

Comfortable design

First and foremost, it's actually comfortable to wear. The rubber strap that came with it is very soft, allowing it to form naturally to my wrist, and its 46mm circular display isn't so big as to feel unwieldy. I've often not worn a watch simply because I don't like the feel of it, but I've found this to be quite physically inconspicuous.

Except in bed, that is. I still despise wearing anything on my wrists when I'm trying to sleep -- I even put my wedding ring on my bedside table in bed as I find it off-putting. It's a problem for both me and the watch as it means I have to forgo any kind of sleep analysis. Sleep tracking, like on most smartwatches, is a major part of its function. Maybe one day I'll find a wearable I can wear in bed.

Health and fitness tracking

Speaking of tracking, the watch can track a wide variety of data points to help you achieve your fitness goals or simply maintain a healthy lifestyle. Alongside the usual heart rate and step counters, it'll track Sp02, skin temperature and a CE-certified pulse-wave arrhythmia analysis function.

Huawei boasts that the GT 6 Pro has new cycling tracking metrics, including real-time gradient tracking and a virtual power metric, which the company says is the first time such a feature has been seen on a smartwatch. It also boasts deeper ski tracking (including automatic ski lift detection) and deeper golf metrics for those of you who like spending your time hitting balls with clubs on stretches of turf.

Huawei reckons it has significantly improved GPS accuracy for better tracking of your running routes, while its new wheelchair mode counts wheel rotations instead of steps and different algorithms are used to track calories burned.

I haven't used the health tracking features yet, so I can't comment on how well they perform against the Apple Watch or any other device. In fact, the smart feature I've enjoyed using the most is simply being able to view incoming notifications on my iPhone. It's a simple task, sure, but it's the main reason I enjoy wearing a smartwatch over a regular analog watch.

Speaking of which, the watch will work with iOS or Android. I paired it easily with my iPhone 16 Pro using a beta version of Huawei's Health app, which offers a dashboard for all your collected metrics and workouts as you do them. Which I didn't.

Battery life

Huawei reckons the GT 6 Pro will get up to 21 days of battery in "lite" mode or around 12 days of typical use. That's a wild claim and one that far outstrips even the Apple Watch Series 11, which will likely conk out after around a day and a half of regular use.

I actually believe the claim, though -- I've used Huawei's first-generation Watch Ultimate for some time (more as a smart timepiece than as a fitness tracker), and its battery easily lasts over a week between charges. Still, 12 days is a big claim, and I'll look forward to putting it to the test when I spend more time with the watch.

Watch this: Apple Watch Series 11 Review: Is It Worth the Upgrade?

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