Dont be fooled by those dainty looks, though, because it does pack all of the usual health tracking, smarts and lots of great features, but does it actually deliver weeks of battery life as promised, and are there any drawbacks? Well, ive been testing it out for a good, while now as my full time smartwatch so heres, my in depth, honor watch, gs3 review and for more on the latest and greatest tech. Please do poke subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers now here in the uk. The honor watch gs3 starts at 229 euros, so around sort of 200 pounds ish and i got ta say the design of it is what really makes it stand out against many rivals and what really makes it appealing, as you can see, theyre pretty slender compared with A lot of the competition just a nats pube over one centimeter thick saw similar sort of design to like the samsung galaxy watch and just 44 grams, as well so fairly light on the wrist. Considering youve got a mighty 1.43 inch screen there. The actual frame of the watch is constructed from stainless steel, although you do have some plastic elements down below as usual and honor is offering this small watch in three different colors. This is the classic gold model, which i think is rather stylish and im. Obviously, an expert in styles, so that obviously means a lot. You can also snaffle it in ocean blue or midnight black and that black model does come with a synthetic fluoro, elastomer band thats, always a bloody tricky word to say, whereas the other two are bundled with a snazzy and attractive leather band.
Instead and ive got to say this brown leather, i think really matches the gold frame of the smart watch very nicely. Indeed they pair it perfectly. But of course, as ever, if you do get bored of the band that youve got slapped on there, you can just pull it off and replace it with any that fits as you can see. There is a standard 22 mil band, so you should be able to find a replacement, no worries and touchwood. The honor watch gs3 seems pretty hardy as well. I was slightly concerned that that screen curves subtly up above the bezels, leaving it exposed to possible damage, but so far no scratches on there, no nicks or anything on the actual stainless steel frame either pretty tough, as you would expect, and the watch is water resistant To five atmospheres as well, so you can take it swimming snorkeling, whatever you fancy doing, just obviously replace the leather bands with a more fluoro elastomer type affair. If you want to do that now, when you want to set up and actually get the honor watch, gs3 pro working youll need to download the honor health app from the google play store its not available from the apple app store. The actual setup process. Super quick and easy only took a couple of minutes and then once the two are paired, you can control quite a lot of the watches, settings and features via the app. So, of course, in order to get a lot of the features like the weather report work, and you will have to give the app access to your location.
It can then relay that information to the smartwatch. This is also where you can download fresh watch faces and also upload music to your watch more on those in a bit and as usual, you can set alarm clocks and you can also set your health stats as well. So how many steps per day you want to be taking and also handily upgrade the old firmware if you need to as well, and the watch will also share data with the app, so you can just come into the app and check exactly how well youve slept You can check your heart rate, your spor2 levels for the previous few days, and you can also relive any frantic sweaty exercise sessions. You happen to have done. This is best used, so you can check your recovery time, although i certainly wouldnt actually go via the apps stated recovery time because im pretty sure id recovered within one hour of performing this exercise and maybe a scrawny northerner but thats pretty ridiculous. Now, no complaints at all when it comes to that smartwatch display its a 1.43 inch amoled panel as youd expect around this sort of price point, because its an amoled youve got the always on display feature. Of course, nice sharp contrast, deep blacks there and when you do turn it on youve got nice bright poppy colors its definitely great. If you get one of the more cartoony bright and poppy watch faces on the go, the bezels surrounding that screen are reasonably skinny and at 1.
43 inches it is big enough, so you can clearly see whats going on, even if your eyesight isnt particularly fantastic. Of course, some of the text on some of the menus is super teeny, but thankfully, that 466×466 pixel resolution keeps everything nice and crisp thats 326 pixels per inch. So if your eyesight is up to everythings, clearly legible and youve got a huge variety of different watch faces to choose from got ta say i actually really like the default one. This gentleman watch face which packs you know all the information you kind of want, like the heart rate, how many steps youve taken the current date and i actually think it looks pretty bloody snazzy as well. It sort of matches the premium look and feel of this smartwatch and youve also got a matching always on display as well, which looks just as slick but theres. A good number and a good variety of small watch faces pre installed on the honor watch, gs3 pro to begin with as well so youve got your analog efforts. Youve got your digital efforts. Youve got somewhere. You can actually customize the little elements that appear on the watch face itself to say exactly what you want on there. So you dont want a step count. Well, you can replace that with something else. Instead, you can even set the watch face to one of your smartphones gallery images if you want really personalize the shiz out of it, and if you find you do grow bored of the selection.
You got stacked on there to begin with just go into the honor health app and then go to the watch, face market and theres an absolute shag load in here to download to the watch again. You got a great selection in here, including lots of different analog. Digitals more cartoony in your face efforts and this collection is getting updated. All the time with fresh watch faces some of them based on various different festivals and times of year. As for the rest of the ui here on the honor watch, gs3 bull look very familiar. Indeed, to anyone, whos used an honor watch or a huawei watch. You can swipe left and right to access the various cards, most of them, health related until youve got the weather, the media app, and you can actually customize which cards pop up. If you dive into the smartwatch settings and go to watch faces and cards, this is also where you activate the always on display uh just go down to favorites, then, as you can see there, you can rearrange the cards and also delete any that you dont want And yeah its not exactly a massive selection of cards compared with some rivals, you cant get the likes of a stopwatch card on there. For instance, if you find you use a stopwatch a lot, if you swipe down youll, pull down the settings and quick toggles as well, so you can quickly activate the likes of the do not disturb got ta say it would have been good to have some sort Of theater mode or something on here as well, which just dims down the display, so you can barely see it so its not uh disturbing other people when youre in the cinema or whatever, and then lastly pull up in order to access your notifications, i had no Problems with the bluetooth syncing between the smartphone and the smartwatch, i found that those notifications popped up just as fast here on the watch as they did on the phone itself.
Unfortunately, very basic notification support as usual, with a huawei slash on a small watch like for gmail. For instance, you literally get the subject matter of the email you cant actually get any of the body of it and you certainly cant respond to it or anything like that, and i actually found the selection of apps with notification. Support was pretty limited as well, so basically, these are the only apps. I was able to receive notifications from no such luck with the likes of zoho mail. I also did occasionally find i had a doubling up of notifications, not really sure what thats all about but yeah. If you want a smartwatch with dedicated notification support, i would say: look elsewhere. If you have an android smartphone, then an android wear watch will definitely be better for you and, as always, you do have a selection of apps that you can scroll through here on the underwatch gs3 tap this top button, and this will bring up the apps list. They are mostly health related. You do have a few extra bits like media controls, youve also, if we keep on scrolling down, got the likes of again the alarm. The stopwatch the timer dont have a torch app, which is quite useful if youre trying to find the bogs in a hotel room, youve never stayed in before youre a bit disoriented or something and most of the essential smartwatch features are packed on there. But, unlike a wear, os watch or an apple watch, you cant just download fresh new apps, willy nilly theres, no third party support or anything like that, of course on.
It can add extra apps at a future moment via a firmware update but thats. Basically it as far as expandability goes, there is a built in speaker and mike here on the honor watch gs3, so you can actually take calls via your smartphone on the watch itself and that works absolutely fine. I found that even when i was out and about in a busy high street, the other person could understand me when i was yelling into my watch and i could hear them just about fine if i already pressed it up against my ear, but of course its Not an ideal way to take a phone call and you will look like a bit of a dingbat theres, also no direct voice assistant support through the smartwatch either. So you cant just lets, say: hey google and then start chatting at your watch and uh expected to do something. Itll just be like what what do you expect me to do here exactly and also it is a shame that, certainly here in the uk, you do not get any contactless payment support via the underwatch gs3 you cant use, google, pier or any other alternative means just Slapping your wrist on a wireless payment thing and off you apologies its friday morning, its been a very long week and im, not at my most eloquent, i got ta say and lets just touch briefly on those media controls here on the other watch gs3 as well.
So if you are playing music on your smartphone, you can actually control it directly through the watch. You can pause, you can play it again, not too much for delay either skipping tracks as well. If you fancy a bit of that and you can play around with the volume you dont get a sexy bit of album art or anything plush like that, but at least it does have all the main controls you could possibly want. However, you dont have to rely on music playback on your smartphone. You can actually store music here on the watch itself. Youve got four gigs of storage. All you need to do is just swap to the watch. You can upload music to the smartwatch simply by going into the music section, then music management. These are all the tracks currently stashed on the smartwatch itself. You can hit, add to and then upload any tracks across the watch. You might want to leave a good bit of time to do that, though, because it takes a good sort of half a minute or so to copy just one bloody song to the what so youll be there a while if youre copying, you know a compilation album Or something and then just connect a pair of bluetooth, earphones, headphones whatever to the watch via the settings and away you go yeah, they seem to work in absolute charm and its quite handy. If youre going to be, you know pounding the pavement doing a bit of jogging down the gym or something where you dont want to have your phone on.
You necessarily, and if you are a fitness fan, you want to keep a casual glance at your stats throughout the course of the day, its got hour, heart rate tracking and also 24 hour, sp 2 monitoring and that all seems pleasingly accurate courtesy of the clever 8 Channel ppg sensor thats stashed on the bottom of this thing, if its time to get all sweaty well just tap this bottom button here and youve got over 100 different types of exercise to choose from all of the major stuff represented swimming cycling. Hiking you can remove any from that menu that you dont want and then add in others as well, including just again just this everything everything is covered here, like all different kinds of martial arts and crazy outdoor stuff, belly, dancing, ballet even darts, which come on that Aint, a sport thats just an excuse to bugger off down the pub with the guys and theres, also various running courses and fitness courses that you can run through as well. These are kind of like an hiit kind of thing, just quick and easy short sessions that you can do, for instance, a 13 minute strength and heart and lungs effort, an advanced chest, workout and so on. Lets give those a tap and then be ready to go. I love that guy hes so enthusiastic, and then it shows you exactly what you need to do and it just tracks you through it using audio queues.
If you do like to do outdoor exercise like running hiking, things like that, you do have dual frequency: gnss gps tracking on this bad boy as well. I cant really vouch for the accuracy of the location tracking, because i dont really do much outdoor stuff myself. Im. Mostly just locked in the studio 24 hours a day uh, but certainly it does seem to pick up on your location, really fast, youre, not hanging around for like half a minute. A minute like you are with some smart watches, so lets finish off this on a watch gs3 review with a squint at the battery life and on a record you get around two weeks of use if youve got the likes of the always on display feature and The 24 hour heart rate tracking, enabled well the entire time ive been reviewing. This ive basically had all of the features enabled the heart rate track and the sp 02 measurements, the always on display been using the various apps and the exercise monitoring. Quite a lot as well and personally, i found ive got closer to four to five days of use per charge so far, but that really is maxing. This thing out, you know playing around with it constantly. Basically, if you were to use it as your full time, smartwatch youd probably be able to stretch a week out of it if you didnt go too crazy, and that again is with all of the features enabled, including that always on display.
So certainly compared with a lot of rival small watches, like the samsung galaxy watch, the apple watch and everything its far superior. So that, in a nutshell, is what i think of the honor watch gs3 an attractive, looking smartwatch at a pretty decent price. Of course, not perfect by any means, the notifications tracking could be better and yeah. Here in the uk, no support for contactless payments. You cant just download fresh apps to the watch either. So if those are the kind of features youre looking for, you might want to look at a wear os device like the samsung galaxy watch, the fossil watch instead. But, alternatively, if you just want a smart watch that can do all the basics really really well its got all the fitness features chucked in there and that looks really bloody nice as well. Well, itll do the job so thats. What i reckon anyway, be great to your thoughts down in the comments below. Please do put subscribe and dig that notifications bell for more on the latest and greatest tech and have yourselves a ruddy, wonderful rest of the week.kfg-HpsRzEQ
