The Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro is yet another winner from Huawei. It combines a downright ridiculous battery life (that it can actually back up) with some seriously impressive fitness tracking. It's not without its flaws (looking at you, Huawei Health), and its weight won't be for everyone, but otherwise? At R8,000, it's a stellar smartwatch that's worth considering if you're big into cycling, golfing, or skiing.
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Design
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Features
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Tracking
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Battery
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Value
Despite being kneecapped by Google back in 2019, Huawei managed to survive the negative press and reach heights it (or we) could never have dreamed of. On top of its smartphone business, Huawei has quickly become one of Stuff’s favourite wearables manufacturers. The Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro is the latest to affirm that notion, delivering a stellar smartwatch and fitness tracker that’ll have you forgetting to charge it.
We’ll be the first to admit that the Watch GT 7 Pro doesn’t exactly suit Stuff’s level of adventure. Being a skier first and foremost, even our resident fitness-freak couldn’t unlock its full potential. But for the stuff we could test out (so… everything else), the Watch GT 7 Pro more than held its own. It did everything we asked of it and then some, from tracking our gym sessions and heart rate to getting us back into some proper cycling.
Green with envy yet?
We’ll admit that the GT 7 Pro’s utterly green fluoroelastomer strap wasn’t our fave when it came home. We adored it all the same, and eventually, that green look grew on us. If anything, it’s a conversation starter, even if it devolves into a ‘Huawei’ pronunciation lesson. It was made all the easier to love thanks to the EasyStrap design.
The Watch GT 7 Pro won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. We’re not just talking about the slightly gaudy green strap (black and yellow options are right there), but rather the wearable as a whole. It’s a tad heavier than most (56g), which adds to the premium feel, but might detract from being a fitness companion you want to take everywhere. It’ll do it all, and do it well, but it’s worthy of note for those looking for a lighter wearable.
As a smartwatch, though, it suits the dress code. It’s showy, big, and does everything we could ask of it. It’s primarily controlled through the touchscreen, though the clickable rotating crown and flush button underneath were similarly handy. We’ve yet to test out its resilience to the odd doorknob, but it feels sturdy enough that we believe the IP69 claims. It fared just fine in the pool, anyway, and the brushed titanium alloy never looked better.
It all pales in comparison to the 1.47in AMOLED display. It’s surrounded by a fittingly green hexagonal (and sadly, non-rotating) bezel that keeps the Sapphire Glass slightly raised above the rest. It proved plenty bright for us regardless of the situation, to the point that we generally let the automatic brightness do its thing.
Like riding a bike
So the Watch GT 7 Pro looks great. Big deal. The real question is whether it lives up to the company’s high standards. Surprisingly, it did. Huawei generally focuses on health and fitness, and that’s no different here. We didn’t get to put all 110 or so sports modes to the test — but the ones we did fared well.
Huawei’s placed a pretty big focus on skiing, golfing, and cycling here. If you’re big on cycling (we aren’t), then you’ll no doubt love what Huawei has cooked up here. Even for noobs like us, we could see that what Huawei is offering is ahead of the game. It supports tracking for urban, road and long-distance cycling — with more measurements than we really knew what to do with. The stats we got in return were detailed, including route elevation, route previews, and even alerts for when you’re approaching a sharp turn.
Everything else was… fine. The Watch GT 7 Pro was certainly more adept at tracking our heart rate and gym sessions than something more affordable, but we weren’t blown away, either. It called upon the GPS when needed, but on those rare occasions when it did lose signal, the Pro managed to fill in those blanks nicely.
One area that intrigued us was the Physical Readiness score introduced with the GT 7 Series. It’s keeping track of 14 different indicators — heart rate, sleep quality, and emotional state amongst them — to get an overall assessment of your readiness to tackle the day, or a particular fitness session. The out-of-100 score may feel a little arbitrary, but we’d be lying if we said it didn’t feel like it was doing a pretty good job of it.
Left a lasting impression
HarmonyOS heads up the software side of things on the Watch GT 7 Pro. It’s immediately familiar to anyone who’s used a Huawei Watch before, and does nearly everything you ask of it. It’s no more difficult to navigate than Google OS, and is generally a little smoother than the competition thanks to the Kirin processor inside.
We’ve (mostly) moved past Huawei’s breakup with Google, but we’re reminded every once in a while of what was lost. The biggest culprit is the lack of native Spotify, which generally forced us to carry our phones during training, to our dismay. The GT 7 Pro had no problem controlling the tunes from afar, at the very least.
If everything we’ve said has made you raise your eyebrows at the R8,000 price, allow us to officially change your mind. Huawei claims that the Watch GT 7 Pro is capable of 21 days of battery life under light use; 12 with more workouts thrown in. Our review model managed to surpass the claimed 21-day figure with ease, even with sleep tracking tossed in. Give it more to do — like using the GPS during every workout — and it’ll land closer to 14 days.
When it comes time to charge the bloody thing, Huawei’s solution is one of the more elegant we’ve seen. It’s a wholly wireless affair, and requires somewhere for you to stick the USB-A port, but once you do, there’s no fiddling with a proprietary connector. It’s a simple puck, and it’ll charge the Watch GT 7 Pro in any orientation.
This feels targeted
Huawei came this close (our fingers are very nearly touching) to running a perfect race. It stumbled, hard, right at the finish line. That would be the Huawei Health app, which was required to get the GT 7 Pro up and running. Not only does it have to be loaded as an APK, but it also couldn’t resist showing us ads.
That’s real, by the way. Using the Huawei Health app on Android, even with the top-of-the-range watch on our wrist, resulted in pop-up ads to buy the Watch GT 7. It’s a shame, because the app isn’t half-bad. It’s comprehensive enough that we could easily track down sleep info and the like without struggle.
Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro verdict
Even at R8,000 (R6,000 if you look around just a tad longer), the Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro is a pretty easy recommendation. It’s perfectly capable as an ordinary smartwatch, excels at the fitness side of things, and boasts an endearing battery life that’ll have you forgetting where you put the charger.
Golfing, skiing, and cycling nuts will get the most out of it. It’s not what we’d call perfect (the weight and Huawei Health app are worthy of consideration), but we found little else to complain about. Just… maybe don’t bother upgrading if you’re still sporting the Watch GT 6 Pro, yeah?
