The Honor watch GS 3 comes with the fitness features you'll find in high-end smartwatches, without sacrificing battery, processing power, and screen quality. A decent mid-budget smartwatch for someone with versatile needs, looking for value for money. Pity it's not readily available here.
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Design
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Features
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Battery
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Tracking
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Value
Honor was a strange beneficiary of the ongoing trade wars between China and the US. Hampered by an inability to source chips on a mass scale, Chinese tech giant Huawei was forced to sell off one of its fastest-growing brands in 2020. Since then, Honor has accelerated its expansion into the global market, and in 2023 the company has put more focus on South Africa. The Honor Watch series is the company’s foray into smartwatches intended to compete with other Chinese giants. The Honor Watch GS 3 is another such release in the series. Let’s take a look into what makes this watch unique.
A Modest Look
The Watch GS 3 comes in a circular black low-carbon steel case, with two buttons, and two removable 22mm silicone rubber straps. The simple design, monotone colour, and rubber straps make the Midnight Black look sleek but unremarkable; it’s not exactly a design that jumps out at you from across the room. Other GS 3 designs include Classic Gold and Ocean Blue, which not only have a more vibrant colour but also include Nappa leather straps instead of black rubber, giving it a classic look that better complements casual to formal dress.
The Honor GS 3’s crown jewel is its 1.43 AMOLED display with a 326 ppi resolution, with a stylish curved bezel. It displays vibrant colours and deep blacks, allowing small text to remain highly legible even in bright conditions. The toughened glass doesn’t easily scratch even after a few bumps and falls.
You can customise the lower button to instantly open any function you set it to, though the Watch does not support third-party apps, meaning your music is limited to what you can fit into the 4GB storage or your stream from your phone. The 451mAh battery boasts a total of fourteen days of regular use on a full charge, reduced to 30 hours with GPS used consistently. A mere five-minute charge will give you a full day’s functionality and the GS 3 reaches 100% in an hour.
Health is Wealth
A central theme to the Watch GS 3 is an emphasis on health and wellness. One of its best features has it detecting when you’ve already begun exercising and automatically start tracking your progress. And while the Midnight Black’s rubber strap lacks ideal style and comfort, it’s great for someone who plans to primarily use this wearable tracker while active.
From the home screen, you can access six modes by swiping: the heart rate, stress, and weather monitors, a music player, and a summary of your daily activity. Pressing the lower of the two buttons (which is also customizable to any function) will take you to the Workout menu, which includes over 100 exercise modes.
If you don’t like your current home screen display, the Honor Watch GS 3 comes with around thirteen built-in watch faces, and you can download hundreds more via the Honor Health app. A quick installation of the Health app on your phone gets you real-time updates on your health like heart rate, distance travelled, and a calories burned estimate. Take this last estimate with a grain of salt though, as it only operates on distance travelled.
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So if you’ve spent all day lounging at your cubicle but have been doing bicep curls non-stop, all that activity will be lost on the sensors, making ‘calories burned’ relevant mostly to outdoor runners, hikers, or cyclists. In the long term, the app tracks your sleep, stress levels, blood oxygen (even warning you when it’s low), VO2Max, and overall fitness age. If you find all this information a tad overwhelming, you can access pre-made workouts geared toward your personal fitness status and goals.
Better tracking tech
Two elements of innovation allow the GS Watch 3 to track data with increased accuracy: an eight-channel heart rate sensor, supported by an AI-enabled algorithm, determines your heart rate with (a claimed) 97% accuracy and its dual-frequency GNSS makes tracking your movements more accurate by having a second sensor that activates when Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity is lost for whatever reason. As far as software and processing are concerned, there is a slight lack of fluidity in response that is expected from higher-end processors, though this is barely noticeable during daily use, and is standard for a mid-budget smartwatch. And if you like to swim, the Watch GS 3 boasts a rating of 5ATM – it can survive beneath as much as 50m of water.
Beyond health and wellness, the watch comes with a slew of features for everyday life such as a compass, torch, and barometer. Sliding up opens the notifications tab, though unfortunately, this is only for WhatsApp, Skype, Gmail, Twitter, and Honor Health. The AMOLED screen, and clear speaker and mic make answering calls and messages on the go a breeze.
Honor Watch GS 3 Verdict
The Honor Watch GS 3 is not currently available for sale in much of Africa. Egypt is the only African country you can purchase it, where it’s currently retailing for around R3500. That’s a pity. It comes with many of the fitness features that you can find on high-end watches, without sacrificing much on things like battery, processing power, and screen quality. A great mid-budget smartwatch for someone with versatile needs, its plethora of features it does offer makes it great value for money.