Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro and GT 5 review: Frustratingly short of perfection

Every time Huawei unveils a new smartwatch, it raises the bar that little bit further, and with its latest Watch GT 5 product pair, that trend continues. The Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro and GT 5 smartwatches are packed with more features than ever, look great and have stunning battery life, yet they significantly undercut the competition on price.

Yet, for all that, I’ve found they aren’t perfect. They’re lacking in heart rate monitoring and GPS accuracy department, and Huawei still hasn’t made much progress in improving its mobile app. Read on to find out how much that affects our overall verdict on Huawei’s latest wearables and whether or not you should invest.

Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro | Check price at Amazon

Huawei Watch GT Pro 5 and GT 5 review: What do you get for the money?

There are two core models in the GT 5 range: the Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro and the Huawei Watch GT 5, each available in two different sizes. The most expensive is the 46mm GT 5 Pro in grey titanium with the link strap. This costs £399, while the cheapest is the 41mm GT 5 with the elastomer wristband, which costs £230. Between those two extremes, you have various straps and colourways, which can all affect the price.

My pick of the bunch is the black Huawei GT 5 Pro, which comes with an elastomer wristband and a titanium watch body, but there are various options that aren’t immediately obvious from looking at the Huawei website, so I’ve put together a quick table breakdown to help you make a more informed decision:

I was sent the standard Huawei GT 5 – designed with the female customer in mind, with a circular housing, floating strap lugs, a chrome finish and pale blue strap – and the titanium-bodied grey Huawei GT 5 Pro, which was supplied with a titanium-link wristband.

Both are very nicely made pieces, with a pair of buttons on the right edge: a clickable, rotating digital crown in the top right ‘corner’ for scrolling and selecting, and a shortcut button in the bottom right corner that serves a multitude of other functions.

Both have OLED displays – a 1.43in 466 x 466 screen on the 46mm models and a 1.32in 466 x 466 screen on the 41mm and 42mm models – and these are bright, sharp and readable in all conditions. Waterproofing stretches to 5ATM (50M) and IP69K across both models, while the Pro model is compliant with the EN13319 standard for diving accessories (to 40m).

Battery life is impressive, stretching to a maximum of 14 days for the 46mm GT 5 Pro watch, and up to 7 days for the 41/42mm models. And you’re getting dual-band GNSS radios (global navigation satellite system), too, for more accurate positioning in tricky environments such as city centres.

Huawei’s latest optical heart rate sensor array is also in place here, something the brand refers to as its TruSense System. Essentially, what this boils down to is a claimed improvement in accuracy for heart rate and related sensing.

There are also now offline maps – useful for those exploratory runs in new places – and a new golf mode that, finally, has UK golf course data baked in.

Huawei Watch GT 5 | Check price at Amazon

Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro and GT 5 review: What do they do well?

• Great looking design
• Long battery life
• Packed with features

The principal attraction of the Huawei Watch GT 5 series, certainly when compared with something like the Apple Watch Series 10, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 or the Google Pixel Watch 3, is battery life.

This is not quite as good as the headline figures might suggest, however. With the always-on display option enabled, like the Apple Watch Series 10, the GT 5 Pro’s quoted battery life falls from a maximum of 14 days to 5 days and the GT 5’s goes from 7 days to 3 days. That’s quite the drop but, even then, it’s still a lot longer than rival smartwatches. For context, with the always-on display enabled, the Apple Watch Series 10 is rated at 18 hours, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 at 30 hours and the Pixel Watch 3 at 24 hours – all a long way short of the base three days of the GT 5.

Elsewhere, Huawei continues its support for both Android and iPhones, so if you’re the type who likes to switch platform from time to time, it’s good to know that you won’t have to change your watch at the same time.

And I do like how packed with health and fitness features both watches are, with the GT 5 Pro now adding ECG and arterial stiffness detection (features the GT 5 lacks). This is in addition to a full suite of health-tracking metrics – sleep with breathing disruption, stress, steps, SpO2 and skin temperature – and an impressive choice of training and recovery tools.

Both watches cater for the core sport types comprehensively, offering workout modes for indoor and outdoor running, track and trail running, indoor and outdoor cycling, pool and open water swimming and two different types of walking – hiking and mountain hiking. You also get modes for all kinds of esoteric sports and activities, from taekwondo to climbing and belly dancing.

The new golf mode is nice to have, too, and includes maps of UK golf courses for the first time. And while this can’t compete with Garmin’s dedicated Approach Golf wearables for features, it’s great for the occasional round, displaying distances to the green, the location of hazards, green slope maps and even wind direction, although the latter is only based on weather forecast data. There’s also score and performance tracking available on the watch for you to fill in manually as you go.

Finally, there’s also a comprehensive selection of training and recovery tools for runners, including ‘AI’ running plans from 3km up to marathon distances, although these tools haven’t changed much, if at all, from the last time I looked at a Huawei wearable.

Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro | Check price at Amazon

Huawei Watch GT Pro and GT 5 review: What could it do better?

• Underwhelming accuracy
• Confusing, messy mobile app

Huawei’s smartwatches have a pretty patchy record on heart rate monitoring, with some watches performing well in this regard (the GT Runner and Watch Fit 3 come to mind here) and some not so well (for example the original Huawei Watch Ultimate).

The Huawei Watch GT 5 series falls between these two camps: it’s not fantastically accurate but it isn’t a terrible disaster either. I tested both watches over the course of a couple of months and a series of 5km to 10km runs and compared them back-to-back with my Polar H10 chest belt for heart rate and Stryd Gen 3 foot pod for distance accuracy.

The GT 5 Pro proved the more impressive of the two watches here, with an overall average heart rate difference of a mere 1.64% compared with the Polar chest belt and an average distance delta of 4.92% versus the Stryd Gen 3. In the same tests, the Watch GT 5 returned differences of 6.6% and 5.15% respectively.

For context, these results make the Huawei GT 5 Pro slightly better than the Apple Watch Series 10 and the GT 5 slightly worse. Perhaps surprisingly, the Huawei Watch GT 4 performed better than both. These are disappointing results, especially when Huawei is claiming improved accuracy from the new sensor system, but they’re not disastrous by any means.

Another small complaint and one that I would expect to get used to in time is that navigation around the watch UI can be a little confusing. I’d expect, intuitively, that clicking the digital crown would act as a select/confirm button, and the side button below it as a back button, but it’s the other way around.

I could say the same about the Huawei mobile app, but alas I’ve never gotten used to its UI design and inconsistencies and Huawei haven’t improved it this time around. It’s still difficult to find your way around, it’s messy, unappealing to look at, and features that you might think should be in one place are often buried deep in obscure menus.

Race predictions, for instance, you might expect to find in the Exercise tab but they’re buried in the Me menu under the ‘My data’ sub-menu. Likewise, you might expect to find map-routing features in the Devices menu but, again, that’s in the Me section under ‘My route’.

And while you can link the app to some third-party services – Strava, Komoot and Adidas Running are supported – this option is also buried and hard to find in Me > Privacy management > Data sharing and authorisation.

Finally, don’t expect support for NFC payments like you get with the Apple Watch Series 10 and Pixel Watch 3. The Huawei Wallet app is installed on both watches, but NFC payment isn’t supported in the UK right now.

Huawei Watch GT 5 | Check price at Amazon

Huawei Watch GT Pro and GT 5 review: Should you buy one?

Huawei continues to impress with the design of its wearables, combining premium materials with aesthetics that wouldn’t look out of place on a high-end Swiss watch. Battery life is excellent, there’s cross-platform support across iOS and Android and a very generous selection of fitness- and health-tracking facilities. These watches tick all the boxes – and then some.

There are plenty of niggles, though. Huawei still hasn’t addressed the usability of its app, which remains a tangle of inconsistent design and confusing menu systems, and the accuracy of the heart rate monitor, while acceptable, isn’t as good as the best we’ve tested. While these things may be excusable in a budget wearable such as the Huawei Watch Fit 3, in a more expensive smartwatch, they’re flaws that are harder to forgive.

That’s not to say you should disregard the Huawei Watch GT 5 Pro or the GT 5. Both are smartwatches I’d be happy to own and wear. But they’re not quite the finished article.