Huawei’s Watch GT series has consistently offered a blend of premium build quality, extensive health and activity tracking, and top-tier battery endurance, and the Watch GT 7 Pro takes that same formula while overhauling the sports tracking experience.
Despite its new colors and a revised watch strap system, the Watch GT 7 Pro is mostly unchanged from its predecessor on the hardware front. With this iteration, Huawei focused on expanding the number of sports tracking features for cycling, skiing and golf.
Huawei is also touting an overhauled positioning algorithm with over 50% improvement in skiing mode. That’s all achieved while still offering multiple weeks’ worth of battery endurance and a claimed 51 hours of continuous GPS tracking for runners.
But are these changes enough to merit upgrading from last year’s model? The short answer is no. But if you’re using an older Huawei watch or one that needs to be charged daily, then the GT 7 Pro becomes an appealing package.
Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro specifications
- Display: 1.47” AMOLED touchscreen, 466 x 466 px resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, 3,000 nits HBM brightness, Always-On Display (AOD)
- Straps: Detachable 22mm watch straps, 140-210mm adjustable length
- Features: 5ATM rating (50m depth), IP69 rated, Dive-proof (up to 40 meters), Real-time heart rate monitor, 24/7 Blood Oxygen level monitor, Sleep tracking, Stress monitoring, Sports tracking, Step Counter, Meditation, Notifications, Idle Alert, Phone Finder, Weather Forecast, Music and Camera Control, Alarm, Stopwatch, Linear Vibration Motor, Flashlight.
- Sports Modes: Outdoor Run, Indoor Run, Outdoor Walk, Cycling, Hiking, Pool Swimming, Jump rope, Freestyle (150+ more in Huawei Health app)
- Sensors: Optical heart rate sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Magnetometer, Barometer, Skin temperature sensor, Ambient light sensor, ECG sensor, Depth sensor
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 6.0, Compatible with Android 9.0 and iOS 13+, dual-band L1+L5 GNSS, NFC, microphone and speakers
- Battery: 867mAh
- Colors: Yellow, Green, Black
- Dimensions: 45.6 mm × 45.6 mm × 11.25 mm
- Weight (without strap): 55.5 grams (without watch strap)
Table of Contents:
Design
As soon as you take it out of the box, the Watch GT 7 Pro does not disappoint in terms of build. The brushed titanium alloy casing is just as nice as it was on last year’s model and the one before that. Huawei has established its Watch GT lineup identity, and we have to once again give praise here as the GT 7 Pro feels great on the wrist.
This is still a 46mm watch, which is basically the standardized smartwatch size at this point, but we often feel that it’s a tad too big and would appreciate a more compact 43 or 44mm version. Huawei does offer a 41mm non-Pro Watch GT 7 but that one is specifically targeting female audiences with its aesthetic.
The new design bit with the Watch GT 7 Pro is the nanocrystal ceramic bezel surrounding the screen. It should hold up much better against scratches and offers a nice bit of contrast to the titanium casing.
We have the Pine Green colorway of the GT 7 Pro, which features a green bezel and watch strap. Huawei is also offering the GT 7 Pro in Wild Yellow and Carbon Black colors with matching watch strap options and bezel accent colors.
The new watch strap omits a buckle mechanism and instead tucks under itself for a snugger fit. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but we do appreciate the choice, especially during cycling and other outdoor activities where the strap’s buckle could unbuckle and flap around.
On the topic of watch straps, the GT 7 Pro uses 22mm-sized ones with an additional metal pin element, but you can easily use standard third-party 22 mm straps which fit just fine.
Moving on to the display, the Watch GT 7 Pro gets a circular 1.47” OLED touchscreen with sapphire glass protection. It still refreshes at 60Hz and features the same claimed peak local maximum brightness of 3,000 nits just like its predecessor.
Our luminance meter showed a maximum reading of 1,040 nits in auto mode during our indoor test. While not as impressive as the advertised 3,000 nits peak, it is still plenty bright for a smartwatch display.
And it’s a great display with accurate color reproduction and enough punch to be legible even in harsh sunlight. The screen is once again flanked by the crown button on the top right and the programmable action button below it.
GT 7 Pro retains the IP69 ingress protection and 40m dive-proof ratings of its predecessor while also complying with the EN13319 standard for diving accessories. What this means is that you can take it snorkeling and freediving, but it’s not capable of going scuba diving like the Watch Ultimate series watches.
Software and features
Harmony OS 6.1 on the Watch GT 7 Pro features a familiar look and it comes with the same card-based interface as previous Huawei wearables. We’ve certainly seen some progress in terms of functionality from earlier iterations, but Huawei’s wearables are still more limited than competing Wear OS watches.
There’s a pretty limited selection of third-party apps if you’re using the GT 7 Pro outside of China. This was the case with prior Watch GT models and continues to be a weak point for Huawei wearables.
With a built-in NFC module, the GT 7 Pro is capable of doing contactless payments, but there’s a catch. You can only use Curve Pay, which has to be set up on your phone, and then you can link that account to your watch. Once you set it up, you can leave your phone at home and go on a tap-to-pay spree with the Watch GT 7 Pro.
In terms of UI, your watch face is the starting point as usual. A swipe down takes you to the control center where you can reorder the toggles.
Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro UI
Swiping up from the home screen takes you to the notifications pane where you have the option to reply to messages directly via the watch’s QWERTY keyboard or via voice, but there’s a caveat. The reply functionality only works on Huawei and Android phones and it won’t work if you’re paired to an iPhone. This has been an ongoing limitation on Huawei wearables and remains disappointing, as competitors like Amazfit have brought the ability to reply to notifications when paired to iOS devices.
There’s the Smart assistance menu accessible with a right swipe from the home screen and it brings fast access to the health insights menu, weather app and music player. The crown button is your key to the app drawer menu, while a double tap will take you to the recent apps screen for quick jumping through your most used apps. The quick launch button below the crown defaults to the workout app, but you can reprogram it to launch a specific workout mode or any other app.
As usual with Huawei watches, you’ll need to download the Huawei Health app to set up and use the Watch GT 7 Pro. It works with Android and iOS devices and offers a detailed look at your health and activity data while also offering a generous amount of watch faces. There are over 100,000 options to choose from with corresponding Always-On Display (AOD) functionality, though, as before, the more polished options are paid.
Watch face customization options
The built-in watch faces on the GT 7 Pro come with a lot of customization options, allowing you to tailor almost everything from colors to watch face complications and their placement on the watch screen. Their AOD mode on Huawei’s native watch faces goes to a black background to help preserve battery while retaining the complications widgets for a quick glance at your vitals, which is pretty neat.
Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro watch faces
Watch GT 7 Pro has great haptics with programmable strength in the settings app. You also get a microphone and speaker, which allow you to take incoming calls on the watch. It’s a pretty capable speakerphone and is capable of picking up your voice even in noisier environments, while also delivering loud enough sound output. The built-in microphone also unlocks voice recordings directly on the watch, which is useful for jotting down ideas in a hurry.
Health and activity tracking
Health tracking
Armed with the exact same TruSense sensor and algorithm suite as its predecessor, the Watch GT 7 Pro delivers reliable health tracking across heart rate and blood oxygen (SpO2) tracking alongside sleep and stress measurements that gauge your general wellbeing. Heart rate and blood SpO2 data from the Watch GT 7 Pro were consistently in line with the readings from the GT 6 Pro.
These are by no means medical-grade readings, so you should always take them with caution. Still, they are a nice way of keeping up with trends, and when worn over longer periods of time, the watch can alert you to changes in your vitals, which could be potentially useful markers for any heart or blood oxygen saturation conditions.
You also get some more advanced metrics like electrocardiogram (ECG) readings, which require a steady hold of your hand for 30 seconds and will not always give you a valid result if you move your wrist or finger ever so slightly during the test.
The watch can also perform a pulse wave arrhythmia analysis, which checks for irregular heartbeat rhythms as well as your heart rate variability (HRV) and keeps track of your arterial stiffness.
Outside of these readings, the GT 7 Pro comes with a skin temperature sensor which is not really useful.
Sleep tracking is fairly comprehensive and delivers the usual metrics like sleep stages (light, deep, REM) alongside movement patterns, heart rate, SpO2 and average respiratory rate. The watch consistently logged accurate go-to-sleep and wake-up times, though it did miss occasional instances of waking up during the night.
Sleep tracking as seen on the Watch GT 7 Pro
Prolonged wear of the watch also gives you sleep patterns and highlights changes in your sleep quality and trends. Overall, you’re getting close to identical results with the previous generation GT 6 Pro.
Activity tracking
Some of the “big” new changes with the Watch GT 7 Pro are in its activity tracking features and more specifically for cycling, skiing/snowboarding and golf. Avid golfers will find plays-like distance, shot distance, custom green pin, auto-rotating green view and full course multi-color scorecards baked into the golf tracking mode. That seems great, though we did not get to test these features out.
Huawei has incorporated over 3,000 global ski resort maps into the ski and snowboard modes on the watch, with features like topographical contour lines and color-coded trail difficulty, as well as turn and G-Force analysis, posture recognition and separation between active and rest times. There are new indoor skiing and snowboarding modes too, which Huawei says are industry firsts. But just like the new golf tracking additions, we could not test these features in late September.
For cyclists, GT 7 Pro now supports tracking for urban, road and long-distance cycling. You get more comprehensive stats, including route elevation preview, climb planning and sharp turn alerts. Cycling tracking also gets lactate threshold data – a key metric for serious athletes. This feature was previously exclusive to outdoor running.
And more importantly, Huawei is boasting a new AI-XDR algorithm, which leverages the watch’s gyroscope and accelerometer sensors to help fill in gaps when the watch is out of GPS satellite range.
Does this mean more accurate route tracking? We actually found some noticeable improvement in positioning data, specifically in urban environments when crossing underpasses. Watch GT 7 Pro delivered consistently more accurate positioning points compared to last year’s model and a legacy Huawei Watch Fit 3 unit we had lying around.
Watch GT 7 Pro is able to map sharp cornering and subtle route adjustments
Huawei also has added a physical readiness card directly on the watch. It offers an overall evaluation of your training stress and recovery stats, gauging how well your body is prepared to handle workouts. It takes into account a mix of your sleep score, recent workouts, stress levels, heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) scores to give you a 1 to 100 score of how hard it believes you’ll be able to push your body.
I found these ratings pretty accurate to how my body felt in real-time. On post-workout days combined with not-so-stellar sleep, the watch routinely suggested I don’t push myself too hard. It’s not a groundbreaking feature, but it’s still a nice little score-based metric to have.
Battery life
Huawei watches have always impressed with their battery endurance, and the GT 7 Pro is no exception. In our time testing the GT 7 Pro, we got 15 full days(!) with day 16 starting at 2% battery.
That’s a full 3 days more than what Huawei claims on its specs page. We achieved our figure with all health and activity measurements on, auto brightness toggled on, 3 workouts per week and a minimum of 100 notifications per day alongside 1-3 short phone calls.
Toggling AOD on reduced the total usage to 10 days, which is still mighty impressive and again more than what Huawei claims you can achieve (7 days). Huawei is advertising up to 21 days of battery life on the Watch GT 7 Pro with light usage, which actually sounds feasible. If you only use the watch as a basic timepiece with a bit of notifications and alarms, you could very well get by charging the GT 7 Pro once a month.
When you do need to recharge, a full 0-100% top-up takes around 90 minutes.
Verdict
Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro is a great option for users who want top-notch health and activity tracking on a smartwatch that can be worn daily and not just confined to runs and gym sessions. Huawei has once again nailed the hardware, where the GT 7 Pro looks premium and feels the part too. It’s got a plenty bright OLED display, weeks’ worth of battery life and a solid selection of health and activity tracking metrics that should cover aspiring athletes across all kinds of fields.
And while it’s compatible with Androids, iPhones and Huawei devices, we do need to point out that Huawei’s smartwatch experience has had its limitations for a while, and the GT 7 Pro suffers from much of the same problems as its predecessors. Setting up NFC payments on the watch is still convoluted, and the third-party app selection experience is a lot more limited than what you get on a WearOS watch.
Watch GT 7 Pro is an iterative upgrade over the already excellent Watch GT 6 Pro, and we can’t say there’s much reason to upgrade if you’ve got last year’s model on your wrist. The additional sports tracking features for cycling, skiing and golf are cool, but we wouldn’t call them must-haves.
But Huawei Watch users on older versions and those coming from a different platform wanting to try out something new should consider the GT 7 Pro. It’s got the right mix of health and activity tracking alongside impressive battery endurance and enough smart features to get you by.
We may get a commission from qualifying sales.