The reason i wasnt expecting this is because i recently tested the huawei watch 3, which is mediocre at best, and the huawei watch 3 has a design. That is not that dissimilar from the gt3. In addition to the heart rate accuracy in this video, i tested sleep tracking oxygen, saturation, measurements, step, counting and gps accuracy of the huawei watch gt3 for those of you that are new to the channel. My name is rob and im a postdoctoral scientist specializing in biological data analysis. In my videos i try to avoid lengthy discussions of the specs so ill. Try to summarize the 12 most important facts in about 90 seconds. The packaging of the huawei watch gt3 looks very similar to the packaging weve seen for other huawei watches, with a simple dark presentation. When you open the box, you get the watch itself and additionally, a charger and some manuals. The chargers of the huawei watch gt2 pro and the huawei watch 3 also seem to work on the gt3. So if you already have one of those, you have a spare one already. The gt3 comes in two sizes, 42 millimeters and 46 millimeters, and i have the 46 millimeter version right here. The gt3 runs on harmony, os huaweis own operating system. Huawei claims that the watch has 14 days of battery life with typical usage and 8 days with heavy usage. However, these numbers are cut in half for the 42 millimeter version. The huawei watch gt3 has all the spo2 monitoring and has an accelerometer gyroscope heart rate sensor, pressure, sensor, compass, spo2 sensor and skin temperature sensor.
However, now comes the most important bit. Huawei claims that the heart rate monitoring is better than ever. The gt3 has a newly upgraded heart rate, module that includes eight photodiode sensors and two sets of light sources as part of the truescene 5.0 plus technology. Huawei also claims that they reduce the noise using both hardware and software and that the algorithm can number actually detect your heart rate. This is actually an improvement of the more expensive huawei watch 3, which has half the sensors and light sources and includes the previous truescene. 4.5 technology now the huawei watch 3 on the other end, does have a number of features that the gt3 does not have like more storage and ram and esim compatibility. However, on my channel, we care most about the real life accuracy of the health tracking features and since im in a rather unique position to test the sleep tracking. I want to start off with the sleep test to test the sleep tracking accuracy ill. Compare the gt3 against their dream: 2 eeg headband, which can actually measure your brain waves and is purpose built to track sleep stages. I perform these tests over a total of 6 nights. Here i show what percentage of each of the actual sleep stages was predicted at each sleep stage by the huawei watch. Gt3 on top are the sleep stages. According to the dream, 2 eeg headband on the left are the sleep stages according to the gt3.
Now each column here sums to 100, meaning that we can see what percentage of usually actual sleep stages was predicted as each sleep stage by the gt3. First of all, we see that about half of what was deep. Sleep was also predicted as deep sleep by the gt3. However, also about 40 of the deep sleep was predicted as light sleep by the gt3. We can also clearly see this when looking at the individual knights, the first of which is displayed here. On top, we have the sleep stages according to the dream to eeg headband, with the clock time along the horizontal axis and the sleep stages on the vertical axis. On the bottom, we have a similar plot, but now for the huawei watch, gt3 ive highlighted all deep sleep here in purple. As you can see, the gt3 detects only a portion of the actual deep sleep and it also detects a lot of extra deep sleep later in the night. We see the same for the second example right here, where it really detected an extraordinary amount of extra deep sleep. That was not really there and we see the same thing again for this third example knight right here, so its really a consistent problem over all the knights light, sleep was detected correctly, also at just under 50 percent, which is not great. It was most often confused with deep sleep which matches what we saw for the individual knights and sometimes also with ram sleep ram.
Sleeve detection is by far the worst of any sleep stage with just under 1 3 correctly detected most of what was rem. Sleep was actually detected as being light sleep by the gt3. If we look at the individual knights, we see the same thing with ram sleep marked here in red. Only a fraction of my ram sleep is detected and it also detects a lot of extra rem sleep, and this is even more obvious for this second night theres, a lot of missing ramp sleep and also a lot of extra ram sleep, and this is again confirmed In this third night, this also means we cannot really see the sleep cycles. Now you go through roughly four to six sleep cycles, each night, each one, starting with light and deep sleep to get a cold non ram mark here in blue and each one ends in ram marked in red. As you can see, i had five sleep cycles. This night, however, based on the data from the huawei watch gt3, i would not be able to see this at all, and we see the same in this next example right here. You would not be able to see your sleep cycles based on just the data from the gt3, so what about awake detection? Well, this is ok. About 2 3 of my awake moments were correctly detected. However, the remaining 1 3 was confused with any of the other 3 sleep stages. Looking at the individual knights, it seems the watch is able to detect my longer awake moments as you can see right here.
However, my shorter awake moments are sometimes missed like this one right here and we see something similar for the second night right here. One of my awake moments is detected, but this one here is missed, and we can see this even more clearly during this night right here. My two longer awake moments are detected. However, my shorter ones are missed. What about something way? More simple: can the ygt3 correctly detect when i wake up and when i fall asleep that is displayed right here on the vertical axis? We have the dates of the nights i tested the huawei watch gt3 and along the horizontal axis is a time difference between the eeg device and the huawei watch gt3 for waking up in yellow and falling asleep in blue. So a positive number means detecting me as waking up or falling asleep later than in reality, and a negative number means detecting me as waking up or falling asleep earlier. As you can see, the huawei watch gt3 mostly detects me as waking up and falling asleep at the right times. The largest difference was about 17 minutes, but overall theres not much to complain about here. Lets put all of this into perspective by comparing the wi watch. Gt3 against a number of other watches, ive tested in the past that is displayed here and the huawei watches perform pretty poorly now. This graph contains a lot of information. So let me try to explain what you see here along the horizontal axis.
We have the average accuracy over the four individual sleep stages and on the vertical axis we have the accuracy of the worst sleep stage. Now, the better a device the more to the top right. It is, and, as you can see, the best devices are different fitbits. In this case the fitbit sends inspire 2 and charge 5, which all perform about equally well, and these are joined by the whoop, strap 3.0 4.0 and the widthing sleep analyzer. Now all the huawei watches are on the bottom left right here being amongst the worst trackers in this comparison. When it comes to sleep, staging the huawei watch, gt3 performs about the same as the huawei watch fit the watch 3 and the gt2e and again all are amongst the worst sleep trackers in this plot, though this sleep tracking is not great for the gt3, there is One thing where the gt3 really impressed me: the heart rate tracking. Now companies often make claims about improved heart rate tracking and in most cases they do not deliver. However, in this case, huawei stays true to their word in the next test. Ill compare the heart rate of the gt3 against the polar h10 ecg chest strap, which can record my heart rate very accurately, lets dive into the data ill start by looking at the easiest type of exercise for a watch to track cycling indoors. Now this involves very little movement and will therefore produce less noise.
Here we see an overview of that accuracy. Each dot here is a single heart rate measurement, with on the horizontal axis, the value according to the polar h10 ecg chest strap and on the vertical axis. The value according to the why we watch gt3, the blue line, indicates perfect agreement, so any measurement along this line at roughly the same value for the polar h 10 and the y watch gt3 the more measurements there are in a certain area, the darker black, the Color and as you can see, almost all the dots are along the blue line, which indicates the gt3 performed almost perfectly. We can confirm that by looking at the individual rights, the first of which is plotted here along the horizontal axis. We have the time and my heart rate is along the vertical axis in blue green. I plotted my heart rate. According to the polar h10 ecg chest, strap and in red is my heart rate. According to the huawei watch gt3, as you can see, the two lines basically overlapped perfectly and you can mostly not see the red line of the huawei gt3 at all because of this perfect overlap, we see the same thing looking at this second spinning session, with almost Perfect overlap. There is very minor deviation here in this first section of the training. However, i wouldnt say this is an issue at all and we see the same thing for all spinning sessions like this one right here.
For all intents and purposes, theres perfect overlap between the wire watch gt3 and the polar hdg chest strap next looking at cycling outside, for which the overview is displayed here we also see a reasonably good agreement between the chest, strap and the gt3 now cycling outside is Much more difficult for watches, since it involves much more bumpiness and therefore much more noise. The watch also tends to shift a bit more on my wrist, making it harder for it to correctly detect my heart rate. However, as we can see in this plot, compared to many other watches, the gt3 performs quite well which we can confirm by looking at the individual bike rides, of which this is the first example. You can basically see almost perfect overlap between the huawei watch 83 and the chest strap only in the beginning. Do we see some minor deviation, but all in all this looks really good and we basically see the same thing for the second bike ride. The overlap is really good between both devices and im, pretty impressed with the heart rate accuracy of the gt3. There are some minor deviations like here and here, but compared to many other watches. This is pretty good and we see the same thing for almost all. Bike rides: there are some minor deviations like here and also here, but all in all, compared to most other devices, the huawei watch gt3 is doing a really good job out of the six rides.
Where i tested the huawei watch gt3, there was just a single bike ride where i really struggled, namely this bike ride right here. As you can see, the gt3 was not able to accurately attack my heart rate during this ride. However, i suspect i did not optimally position the watch on my wrist for this ride, given that all the other rides were so much better. Finally, lets take a look at weight lifting now. This is the type of exercise that watches struggle with the most because of all the tension placed on my wrist and on my arms. As you can see in this overview impressively most points are still along the blue line. However, in the higher heart rate range, there are some points below the blue line, indicating that the watch detected the two low heart rate looking at the individual sessions. We see that the watch is performing quite good for this session right here. Theres almost perfect overlap. Each time i do a set of my exercises, the watch was able to follow along correctly and track. The increases in my heart rate, almost no other watches so far have been able to do this. Only the apple watch, and also the garmin value 2 to some degree, have been good enough. Now it does appear that with some types of exercises, the watch still struggles, as you can see in the beginning of this weightlifting session right here. This was when i was doing flies and exercise for my chest area.
However, later i was doing dips and the watch performed really good again during these exercises, where i was exercising my back muscles and my biceps, the watch performed quite good again. However, here during this training session in the beginning, i was doing flies again and i struggled but later when i was doing other exercises, it was almost spot on again, so it seems to watch struggle during flies, but during all other exercises it was doing really good. So the improved sensors of the huawei watch gt3 are quite amazing at attacking my heart rate, however, rd sensors as good as detecting my spo2 or oxygen saturation before answering that question. If this video has been helpful, a sub to the channel would be breathtaking. The way i tested the oxygen saturation measurements is twofold. First, over the last week, i measured my oxygen saturation more than 25 times at ground level in the morning and in the evening. At the same time, i also recorded my oxygen saturation with a dedicated finger pulse exhibitor at ground level. My oxygen saturation should be within my normal range, which is generally between 97 and 100 percent. The huawei gt3 should not detect any low values during these tests. For the second test i tested, if the gt3 was correctly able to detect a decrease in my oxygen saturation in a low oxygen environment. However, lets first look at those measurements at ground level which are displayed here on the left are roughly 25 measurements taken with the huawei watch gt3 and on the right match measurements taken with the fingerprint exhibitor.
As you can see, the huawei watch quite often detects it too low spo2. The median value is around 95, which is pretty low, which also means there are plenty of values below 95, which is very unlikely to happen at ground level. For me so so far, this is not looking great next lets see if the watch can correctly detect a truly lowered oxygen saturation. Specifically, i tested it during two flights because in flight, the pressure in the airplane cabin is decreased effectively, making it a low oxygen environment. Here i plotted my oxygen saturation values, measured with the finger pills oximeter during the first flight in the beginning, right here before taking off my spo2 values are at normal levels, then, as the plane climbs, those values are decreased to around 92 percent and then, as we Descend again, the values get back to normal, so how did the huawei gt3 perform during the flight? Well, that is depicted here in green. Each dot is a single measurement taken with a gt3, so the watch indeed detects relatively low spo2 values. However, it always seems to detect these even before taking off and also after landing, which again confirms it tends to detect low spo2 values on me, no matter what now, the ground level values we previously looked at are displayed on the left here, and indeed, as you Can see the spo2 sensor basically always detects the same range of values, no matter if i actually have a low sp2 value or not, it will detect a relatively low value.
Now we can look at that for a second flight which is displayed right here now. I am missing some data, but we can still see where the values are decreasing, where they are low and where they are increasing again, if we now plot the values according to the gt3 in here again, we see it does not have significantly lowered values whilst being In the air, but even after landing, it still detects super low spo2 values which again we can confirm by adding those values at baseline on the left right here. We indeed see that in flight, the values are not lower than those measured at baseline, so the heart rate tracking is pretty amazing on the gt3, but so far the other features are less good. What about gps tracking? I tested that, while cycling to and from work – and i wanted to test two things one. How long does it take for the watch to require a signal and two how well the gps signals overlap when cycling the same route, multiple times that is displayed here for three times i cycle to work now i started the activity the moment i was ready to Leave and i did not provide the watch with any extra time to acquire the signal. The green markers indicate those moments where it connected the gps signal and, as you can see, there was quite some delay in it getting a signal, sometimes so here, for instance, it required a signal almost instantly, but here was already about 1 4 of the way to Work before it acquired the signal, however, it seems that once the signal is acquired, the paths appear to overlap quite well, as you can see here, for instance, and if we follow along the route, the paths are quite close to each other, so thats pretty good.
We can look at the same thing for me, cycling back from work and again we see theres a big difference in how long it took to acquire the signal here. For instance, it was almost instantly, but here was almost halfway home before it got the signal again. Looking at the quality of the signal, this is supposed to be pretty good. The lines mostly overlap or are pretty close to each other, and in this case, for instance, i really did take a different route. So, all in all, it seems that the signal acquisition takes some time, but the quality of the signal is quite good. In terms of gps accuracy, the watch appears to be pretty decent. However, it does take some time to get a signal now. The watch also features a step counter to see if discounts my steps accurately, i went out and took exactly 4 000 steps in segments of 1000 steps to get an accurate step count. I manually counted my steps using this telecounter lets. Take a look at those results. As i mentioned for the step counting test, i went out and i took four times exactly 1 000 steps, the gt3 on my left arm and i alternated holding the tele counter in my left and right hand for each set of 1000 steps, which is what the Right and left label refer to here now these are the actual steps counted by the gt3 and, as you can see, they were pretty close to the actual 1000 steps i took for each of the four segments.
However, the ygt3 did tend to overcount. Some steps, though, not drastically just to put it into perspective. Here are the steps counted by the tick watch, pro 3 ultra and the scan watch horizon, which are both wore at the same time as you can see, the scan watch arrives and performed about equally well to the gt3. However, the ticwatch pro 3 ultra overcounted, much more so in that perspective, the water watch gt3, is pretty decent overall. The step counting of the huawei watch t3 is pretty good and it counts the correct number of steps while walking. However, decent step counting is not a new development, and many watches have this. What is new is that huawei promised better heart rate tracking and they delivered the sleep tracking, on the other hand, is not very good, though. You can use the watch to track when you go to bed and when you wake up. The gps sensor appears to be accurate when active, though it does take some time to get a signal. The oxygen saturation sensor is not very good and i would not rely on it at all. However, all in all the huawei watch gt3 is amongst the top three watches ive tested so far when it comes to heart rate tracking. It performs about the same as the garmin venue 2, though the best heart rate tracker is still the apple watch. If youre in the market for good heart rate, tracking and youre, not a fan of the apple ecosystem check out this video right here on the garmin venue – 2.
If you are considering getting an apple watch, that video is right here now. I hope this video provided you with some value.0IAaYsSTMk0
