If you know me, you know that I love watches; especially round dialed and mechanical. So when smartwatches became a thing a couple of years ago, I was a little hesitant to go all in. but companies (such as Huawei) make it a lot easier to adapt. The Huawei Watch, the company’s flagship wearable is one special piece of tech. featuring some really high quality materials for a fairly decent yet luxurious price tag. But is it the best Android Wear device all around? Well, let’s find out.
When I say decent yet luxurious price tag, I mean the Huawei Watch starts at a relatively decent price tag of $349. This will get you the model you are looking at—a stainless steel casing with a Sapphire Crystal display and a nice leather band. But if you want to go for something a little bit more luxurious out of the gate, then you can buy the Huawei Watch with things like stainless steel or even rose gold plating and that could go up to a $900 mark.
Speaking of the build, the Huawei Watch may be the best built Android Wear device on the market. it’s made out of 316L stainless steel, has a Sapphire Crystal display in the front, and also the leather bands are easily swappable thanks to these quick release pins on the back. On the front of the Huawei Watch, it’s a beautiful 400x400 AMOLED display with 286ppi. It’s one of the highest in the Android ecosystem. Well, it’s the highest within the Android Wear ecosystem. The only two watches that beat it in PPI is the Apple Watch 42mm and the Gear S2. The display is quite beautiful with a really sharp resolution. The AMOLED makes it really pop, especially with this mood watch face which is actually my favorite. Also, the Always On feature looks really sharp as well, unlike some other LCD counterparts on the Android Wear ecosystem.
It’s powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, half GB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage. And all of that is powered by a 300mAh battery. The dimensions of the watch are also pretty nice. It has a 42mm diameter and an 11.3mm thickness. While it sounds fairly thick on paper, on the wrist it fits really nicely especially on shirts. And it’s barely noticeable after the first few hours. And if you wear a watch on a daily basis, this will fit into your day without any trouble.
Software-wise, it’s running Android Wear 5.1.1 and the story is basically the same as any other Android Wear device. It’s a fairly smooth operating system throughout and has an excellent notification delivery system. But still to this day, I haven’t become comfortable on acting on every single notification from my watch. But one thing that I’ve noticed is Google Now is really flipping accurate these days. So you could talk to your watch and look really weird in the process doing it. But hey, it really does work.
The biggest deciding factor for me when it comes to Wearables is the battery life and charging solution. For the case of the Huawei Watch, it’s sort of a mix bat. The battery life is fantastic. Thanks to that beautiful AMOLED display, the Watch can easily make two days on a single charge. I usually have about 60% of juice left after a full day’s worth of usage but the charging solution is a little strange. Huawei is using a little (well, let’s just call it what it is) Apple-inspired puck-style charger. It has these gold contact points. Unfortunately, the Huawei Watch does not have conductive wireless charging. It only charges one way and yes, I have missed it one night and woke up furious that I had 10% of battery life remaining. So the moral of the story is, just double check that you’re charging your watch
So the Huawei Watch. Is it the best Android Wear device all around? I’m not sure if that’s really a question to be asked. The purpose of Android Wear is to provide an almost exact experience regardless of hardware and the variety of hardware would allow the user to choose the style that fits them the best. So yeah, it is the best Android Wear all around. But so are all the others being announced right now. The Huawei Watch may be one of the prettiest ones around and that’s enough for me to buy one.