Huawei Watch Fit 4 Pro review: what the Apple Watch Ultra can't do

For the first time in Huawei’s history, there’s a Pro version of the Watch Fit. I’ll show what makes the Watch Fit 4 Pro a Pro so you can decide whether it suits your wrist.

Design: like an Apple Watch Ultra, only better

I’m not really the angular watch type, to me it looks like a mini TV on the wrist. But I know that many people appreciate this design. The Watch Fit 4 Pro, however, once again looks like an Apple Watch, namely like the Apple Watch Ultra. I think that’s a shame, because Huawei really knows design. With the Watch Fit, Huawei always decides to be an Apple clone.

Hardware-wise, though, Huawei even does it better:

• The Watch Fit 4 Pro is 5 mm thinner and half the weight of the Apple Watch Ultra.
• It has sapphire glass for the first time.
• It has almost ten times the battery life.
• At a €279 recommended retail price (RRP), it costs only a fraction.

Harmony OS: limitations

The watch is compatible with iOS and Android, but you can use neither iOS nor Google services on it. As with smartphones and tablets, Huawei relies on its own operating system, Harmony OS. It’s well thought out and runs smoothly. But you have to do without common apps like Spotify and WhatsApp.

Paying with the watch is new. For that you have to install a separate app that works like a prepaid card, and topping it up costs money. So I haven’t tried it and keep paying with my phone.

Display, health and sports

Display: 1.82-inch AMOLED, 347 PPI and 3,000 nits. In bright sun it’s really easy to read.

Health: The ECG on the Watch Fit 4 Pro is even certified. Huawei has a unique selling point in health, because the company runs its own research centers and cooperates with doctors who do research. The Watch D2, for example, is a certified blood pressure monitor, which doesn’t exist on the market in this form yet. Besides heart rate and sleep, the Watch Fit 4 Pro also records sleep breathing, body temperature (relevant for cycle tracking), blood oxygen, stress and ECG to detect irregularities as early as possible.

Sports:

• Countless sports can be tracked. New are water sports like rafting, sailing and kayaking with route, speed and heart rate. For this, Huawei uses its own Sunflower Positioning System for more accurate GPS tracking.
• For golf, 1,500 golf courses worldwide are stored with maps.
• When running outdoors, you can import routes and use them offline. There’s also data on running rhythm, stability and ground contact time. That’s something for professional athletes. As a hobby runner, I find the many figures almost too much, but better to have than to need.

As a regular smartwatch

There are many useful and cute watch faces. Notifications come from all kinds of apps, and you can reply to messages from many messengers by text or voice input, with T9 or a regular keyboard.

Two weaknesses:

• Voice control like Siri or Google Assistant is only available with a Huawei smartphone, which probably very few people have.
• The smartphone’s Do Not Disturb mode isn’t synced with the watch, whether Android or Apple. At night I find that extremely annoying. You can set the mode manually on the watch, but I forgot to turn it off the next morning. The schedule is a good workaround. But it means I get no notifications when I go to bed later or get up earlier, or that I get woken up when I want to sleep in.

The vibration is very good. You can set different strengths, and it’s nicely muted, the watch doesn’t rattle. For me that’s an important quality feature in smartwatches.

Verdict

The Huawei Watch Fit 4 Pro is again a very successful sports smartwatch. It brings real pro features: the bright, sharp display, extensive sports and health tracking, long battery life, high-quality design and a slim, light case. In my view it competes with any Apple Watch, as long as you don’t absolutely need payments, listening to music or voice control on the watch.

Huawei is going full throttle to bring health prevention to the wrist, closing a gap that our healthcare system neglects. After the Watch D2’s blood pressure measurement, the next highlight will surely be non-invasive blood glucose measurement, which has already launched in China.