Gadgetory

there's been something of a trend going on in smartwatches this year there always seemed to be going round and one of the first ones that we were really intrigued with was one by Huawei now Huawei may be not a company that's really all that known in the West has been really making waves with the SmartWatch that a lot of people have been clamoring for hey it's Joshua regard from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is our full review of the Huawei watch design is the crux of the Huawei watch experience and that was pretty obvious when we unboxed it after all even that was a pretty luxurious experience the design is of a metallic body of course with a round face right here that has sapphire glass covering the screen and there are nubs on the top and bottom that curved down in order to meet the straps one button is at the two o'clock position and it's very large really not all that shy about its appearance and has a very meaty feel to it now those nubs on the top and bottom do allow for an easy change of the watch straps which are standard and they also have quick release bars so it is really easy to change them we do think that this executive design for the Huawei watch hits a lot of the right notes this in particular is a tuxedo like design that has the silver and the black in its leather strap but we do think also that because it feels quite luxurious it doesn't necessarily meet all of the different style standards if you have everything from business casual to the fanciest of clothing then of course this is going to fit right in but if you're really slumming it it might feel just a bit out of place think your typical gym clothes and whatnot now we did also get a different version of the watch in hand this time with a snapping metallic band though not quite on the level of the Moto maker for the Moto 360 there are a lot of options available aside from these two you're seeing silver black and rose gold finishes were coupled with a number of watch bands and you can get them all in a number of different colors but they will make you shell up a lot more depending on the style that you want now we were introduced to the Huawei watch a while back and we did think that it was one of the first smart watches to get the round design right it does have a very classic look and feel to it but then has to contend with the tropes of being a SmartWatch the nubs on the top and bottom curved down a little bit but seem just that little bit out of place to the rigid line that surround the actual screen itself and then the fact that the watch has to be as thick as it is just over 11 millimeters actually detracts from the overall look because this is one of the thickest watches that are out there don't get us wrong we do think that the Huawei watch is one of those examples of a seamless melding of classic design and current technology unfortunately that has just as many advantages to it as it does disadvantages now one place where there was a great choice in this watch is the AMOLED screen this 1.4 inch in diameter screen comes in at 400 by 400 resolution meaning this has one of the highest pixel densities that are available in a Android wear Smart Watch today and that means that text is going to be really crisp and easy on the eyes and pretty much everything is readable and the viewing experience is pretty great but also the AMOLED display provides a couple other benefits not only is the screen going to only turn on the pixels that it needs to show the display it also will help with battery life which we'll get into a little bit later and while the screen does make viewing quite great it again tries just a little bit too hard though without an ambient light sensor here the screen is left at the user defined brightness making the user micromanage the watch a little more than might be desired you're pretty much going to have to change the brightness to what you want it to be if it's a little bit too bright or a little bit too dim for you but thankfully there are no problems viewing the screen in daylight so even if it's a little bit powerful in the dark you're not going to have any problems when it's really bright out now it's a little tough to talk about performance on an Android wear device because there isn't much to do on one other than swipe around the different notifications and cards and then occasionally talk to it that said however the Snapdragon 400 processor is backed by half a gigabyte of RAM and this is the package that you're pretty much going to expect with most Android wear iterations today and in our daily usage there still weren't any problems getting applications to load having notifications pour in and even occasionally getting our health metrics in a way this is a benefit of Android wear the performance aspect is pretty reliable no matter what watch you get and the Huawei watch is of little difference here in hardware we are talking about a pretty standard package that you would get with any other Android wear device now the heart rate sensor is something you would find here and it is actually a little bit more accurate as Huawei claims because they added in a second one and I did check it against one of my polar heart rate monitors as well the margin of error happened to be pretty small so I would say that this one is pretty accurate there is a fairly large battery in here and with the Super AMOLED display it does get some pretty good life however the charging cable that comes with it is proprietary there no wireless solutions here it has a magnet on the back that has to latch onto the back of the watch and then connect a few pins the problem is when it does latch on to the back it might not actually make the pins connect and in that case you have to double check if it's actually charging if you mess up you're not going to get any power once you want to put this watch on wall we did say that a day and a half to about two days was going to be possible here but a day and a half was already pretty accurate we only had to really charge this watch maybe every other night but that's a marginal increase in terms of what battery life is for smart watches today and finally of course there is the microphone input one of the main ways that Android wear is Android wear now it might feel a little bit weird from time to time to actually talk to your watch but if you're already used to it you have the main issues the same goes for pretty much any other Android wear device where if you're in a very loud environment it may not be able to hear your voice so you have to get in really close or just use your fingers to swipe around and get things done that way and finally in software we have well Android wear Android wear is a pretty cut-and-dry experience and if you've ever experienced it before there's not a whole lot that's different here you have cards that go up and down on here and you swipe around and you get notifications and suggestions based upon your search history in Google now you can swipe over to the side in order to respond to some of your notifications or control them in certain ways and then you can swipe over from the watch face in order to access the built-in applications now companion applications can be pretty nice but they are really kind of far and few between compared to the overall crux of the experience and that is of course the fact that Android wear is a Notification Center certain applications do definitely shine on Android wear in particular using maps on it especially when you're driving but then there are also some disadvantages there like I've always said what you're looking at yet another screen that you have to touch from time to time in order to control it and that is not really advantageous when you're driving and while Huawei does try to inject what it can of its own go system into Android wear that really is just in the form of a lot of different watch faces and even though it adds a little bit more customization ultimately Android wear is Android wear and that is what you get the Huawei watch is available in a number of different colorways and even material choices the one that I have on my wrist right now is the base model at 349 dollars there is another version of this that has a metal band and maybe a couple of colors for the body that comes in 399 the most premium of them however have gold in the body and in the band and that can cost you up to seven hundred and ninety nine dollars see unless you're actually really looking for a classic look that classic look on this device could actually make it a little bit boring I will admit that this tuxedo color scheme is partially to blame if I had my pick the black on black with a clasping metal band would be more exciting but not buy so much not to mention it requires a bit more money to get those design aspects that are much different from the norm we give Huawei a lot of props for really putting the watch back into SmartWatch but it only really manages to do that without going truly above and beyond it's a Mitch competition in an increasingly round SmartWatch landscape the Huawei watch can boast about being the first one that pretty much got it right but it isn't alone anymore and that just might be its biggest problem now the Huawei watch was really anticipated and we were really happy to be able to test it out and bring you this review but we ended up thinking that even if the lustre in the beginning was there it may have faded away just a little bit when we finally got to spend some time with it it's not a horrible watch by pert by any means but it just doesn't offer that much more than many of the other smart watches do already so with all of that in mind you can keep it tuned to Andrew authority comm for even more SmartWatch news watch all of the content from my colleagues in Android and then download the Android authority app over there in the corner so you can get to our podcast and to our website 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