Designed with exercise in mind, the GT3 Pro has the myriad standard Huawei features, but the major focus is health and well-being. The GT3 Pro boasts over 100 different types of workouts plus new waterproof diving features. Aimed, it would seem, at those who take their health and exercise seriously, the GT3 Pro isn’t function over form; it combines a serious commitment to well being with a painstakingly crafted luxury look.
Vital Stats
The GT3 Pro comes in two forms, a 46mm Titanium watch with a grey leather strap priced at $899 and a 43mm Ceramic watch with gold detailing and a ceramic strap priced at $999.
The 46mm boasts a 1.43 inch (3.63cm) amoled screen (3.63cm) at 326 ppi and a 466×466 display resolution.
The 43mm has a 1.32inch (3.35cm) amoled screen at 352ppi and a 466×466 display resolution.
Both GT3 Pros have sapphire glass screens – only a diamond is capable of marking it, so you don’t need to worry about the little scrapes and scuffs regular watches can incur. The rear of the case is also ceramic with more sapphire glass covering the LEDs and sensors and is also gently curved to more naturally fit the shape of the wearer’s wrist.
The GT3 Pro has 6 LEDs and 8 photodetector receivers on its underside. They are evenly spaced to more accurately detect the wearer’s pulse, skin temperature and oxygen saturation, and the increased accuracy of the sensors combined with the AI filter algorithms Huawei has created significantly increase the accuracy of this device.
A fun extra feature of the GT3 Pro are the dynamic watch faces. There are several to choose from, one changing from a white daytime background to a deep blue nighttime background, another displaying a white rosebud that slowly blooms as the day progresses.
Both the versions of the GT3 Pro have excellent battery life and can go from completely flat to fully charged in as little as 85 minutes. The GT3 Pro also supports wireless reverse charging, so you can, if you need to, charge your watch from your phone or wireless charging pad.
The 43mm GT3 Pro has a large 292mAh battery, and the average battery life is around 7 days of normal use.
A day of normal use is considered to be:
200 screen light ups
50 SMS
3 alarms
6 calls
90 minutes of workout tracking
24/7 heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking
The 46mm GT3 Pro has an even larger 530mAh battery and the average battery life is around 14 days of normal use
A day of normal use is considered to be:
2,800 screen light ups
50 SMS
3 alarms
6 calls
180 minutes of workout tracking
60 minutes of music playback
24/7 heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking
Both the 46mm and the 43mm run Harmony OS and both come with a charging station. The 43mm also comes with extra links for the watch band and the tool required to add and remove them.
Exercise
Since the GT3 Pro is primarily designed to be a fitness watch, a great deal of effort has clearly been put into making the user experience here a seamless one.
The newest addition to the exercise options is a freediving mode. The watch itself is water resistant to up to 5 atmospheres, in practical terms, this means you can go down to a depth of 30 meters and remain there for approximately 10 minutes (provided you can hold your breath that long!). The diving function tracks your dive depth and speed and it can also calculate your ascent speed. The GT3 Pro also allows you to collate the data recorded over multiple diving events.
After an immersion, Huawei recommends that the device be rinsed with fresh water – particularly if you have been in salt water – and then the water removal feature activated.
This feature uses sound waves to shake out any water trapped within the device.
Another aspect of the diving mode is an apnoea test and apnoea training to help you get better at holding your breath allowing you to dive for longer.
The GT3 Pro isn’t recommended for scuba diving – just freediving and shallow water activities such as snorkelling but will work without issue in both fresh and salt water.
One of the other newer features is an AI running coach. This uses your collected data from any running workouts you record to manage your recommended training intensity, customise your running plans and will also let you know when you should take a rest day.
There are also a few smart running features – if you get lost on your run, you can enable the ‘precise route back’ function and it will show you the route back with real time voice guidance. If you take your run away from the roads and into the wilderness you can switch this feature to linear navigation for directions home rather than using street names.
The GT3 Pro has over 100 workout modes, all the regular ones you’d expect to see such as basketball, group fitness class and a driving range feature which allows you to measure and adjust your golf swing’s tempo and speed. There are some more esoteric options like bobsledding, darts, curling, hula hooping, laser tag, tug of war, obstacle race, fishing, sepak takraw, dodgeball, dragon boating, bungee jumping, parkour, and parachuting just to name a few. You simply select the workout modes you use regularly and add them to your list – it’s completely customisable.
You also get vocal feedback from the watch when it’s in workout mode – it lets you know how long you have been exercising for and what your heart rate is at pre-programmed intervals. You can’t turn this feature off but you can adjust the volume up or down.
Huawei takes a step past simply tracking workouts in the form of the Healthy living shamrock. This feature is designed to help you achieve your own personalised health goals, and to assist in developing healthy habits. It’s set up to provide you with an overall health review and allows you to set reminders to move more often or drink more water or even just to take a moment to smile.
It monitors your step count, skin temperature, heart rate, Sp02, sleep patterns and also includes breathing exercises.
Other Features
Along with all the exercise and health capabilities the GT3 Pro has a few other nifty features.
You can load songs and audiobooks directly onto the watch, allowing you to continue to listen to your favourite tracks and leave your phone behind. The watch can also control music playback on the phone, including easy and convenient volume control by rotating the GT3 Pro’s crown button.
The crown button can also used for zooming the screen in or out on the app screen and for scrolling throughout all of the menu screens
The GT3 Pro can show you the current weather, your heart rate, where we are in the lunar cycle, the current phase of the moon and the approximate percentage of illumination it provides. It will also give you the times of sunrise and sunset, and tidal information. It has a barometer to measure air pressure as well as an altimeter, a compass, timer, stopwatch, and a ‘find my phone’. There is an inbuilt GPS which is used for route tracking during exercise but this will also let you run direct navigation. You need to use Huawei’s own map/gps app called petal maps on your phone to start the navigation, as unfortunately, you can’t just use the watch, but the directions appear on the watch screen.
A very handy feature of the GT3 Pro is its ability to answer phone calls on the watch itself, the watch has an inbuilt microphone and speaker so no other Bluetooth headphones or speakers are required. You can also respond to messages directly from the watch by selecting from a variety of pre-programmed responses.
My Thoughts
The GT3 Pro is an amazing piece of technology. The screen display is astoundingly good and the capabilities of this device are impressive. There has been an obvious amount of attention paid to the construction of this watch and all of its fine details, and the GT3 Pro has a sleek well crafted luxury feel worthy of its price point.
I have an allergy to base metals so I was a little apprehensive of wearing the GT3 Pro for long stretches of time, but I had no problems at all. The sapphire glass covered any metal on the underside and the clasp is stainless steel.
A feature I really enjoyed was being able to answer calls on the watch, I didn’t need any extra earbuds or speakers or have to get my phone out – particularly handy if it happened to be buried at the bottom of my bag!
I liked being able to read whole messages on the initial pop up display, rather than getting only the first few words and having to tap the message to read the rest. Though there is an upper limit to the characters displayed, really long messages still require you to get your phone out.
The large screen made it really easy to read the time and other ‘at a glance’ information it displays, and, call me old school if you like, I also really liked that the default watch face was analog.
I always enjoy the little extra details manufacturers put in their products – all the exercise capabilities were impressive, but I was super excited when I found a barometer and a compass and all the information about the phases of the moon. These extras are the super fine detail – the cherry on top if you will, which can elevate one product above the rest.
That said, all the effort in the world can’t make a product suitable for everyone everywhere and the GT3 Pro had a few places where it missed the mark for me personally.
I reviewed the 43mm ceramic version of the GT3 Pro and the first problem I had was the strap. Each link adds about 1cm to the circumference of the band, so it’s less easy than a standard holed strap to get an exact fit, and for me one link was the difference between the band being either tight enough to leave marks on my wrist or too loose for the sensors to be able to function properly. You are able to change the strap to a traditional one of course, but I think it would be hard to match the aesthetic of the watch and also the colour, an all white fabric or leather band isn’t likely to stay white for long.
I also found the removal/addition of links challenging, the process was simple enough, however the ceramic is extremely slippery and it’s very difficult to get the pins and screws into place as the ends of the band keep sliding out of your grip.
The GT3 Pro is no lightweight, it weighs in at 103g – fully half the weight of my phone, and as such it doesn’t fade from your awareness while you are wearing it. The constant weight on my wrist coupled with the tightness of the band made for a slightly uncomfortable experience, this and the sheer size of the watch also made it difficult to sleep in.
Outside of the physical issues, the only other critique I had was a fairly minor one. Email notifications only display the subject line, not the body of the email. I appreciate that there are probably significant technical difficulties displaying something which can often contain more than just text, but it feels a bit like a missed opportunity to not be able to view at least the text portion of the body of an email when the screen is large enough to reasonably display it and is capable of scrolling.
If the GT3 Pro suits your personal use case when it comes to a smartwatch, then it is absolutely worth the investment. The technology is impressive, and the aesthetic is such that you won’t need a work out watch to track your stats and a separate dress watch for when you need to look your best, the GT3 Pro will do it all.
The GT3 Pro is available from Huawei’s retail partners:
JB HiFi, Bing Lee, The Huawei Experience Store, Amazon and MobileCiti
