Chinese tech giant Huawei may have its fair share of problems over in the US, but the Australian market seems to be going just fine for them. In response to the popularity of devices like the P40 and Watch GT 2, the company has doubled down on their Australia presence and just opened their second ever Sydney store, with swift plans for a third in the near future.
The new Huawei Experience Store has landed at Sydney’s World Square, smaller than its Chatswood predecessor but sizable enough to properly showcase the brand’s established ecosystem of devices. With Hurstville in sights for a third store, Huawei is also planning a number of new devices to arrive over the next few months, starting with the recently launched Watch Fit.
Distinguished from the Huawei Watch GT 2 series with its obvious lean towards the fitness tracking side of smart watches, the Watch Fit is an intelligent wearable that not only monitors workouts, heart rate, sleep, stress levels, and even blood oxygen saturation, but sports a built-in animated personal trainer to help make exercise more engaging and personalised for users.
Through a variety of animated fitness courses, workout modes and scientific health tracking features compatible with the Huawei Health app, the new watch is looking to compete directly with similar offerings from Samsung and Apple. And it’s doing so at a very reasonable price point too, slimming the tag down to A$249.
Available in Mint Green, Sakura Pink and Graphite Black, the watch features a rounded rectangular body with a large 1.64-inch AMOLED display and a promised 10 days of battery life.
No doubt the most curious inclusion is that aforementioned personal trainer, who covers 12 workout courses and 44 posture demonstrations to guide users and keep them motivated. The individually animated fitness courses provide users with one-on-one personal training without the need for a smartphone or any other connected device, doubling as a necessary wellness initiative seeing as more and more people are looking for ways to limit the amount of times they need to look at their phone (digital detox and all).
The training includes small touches that should have maximum effect, like ‘stand up reminders’ to nudge wearers into staying active when sitting for prolonged periods. And given lockdown has resulted in more sedentary lifestyles, this feature should be greatly appreciated.
The watch has been programmed with a comprehensive library of fitness features, including 96 workout modes spanning 11 professional workout modes – running, walking, cycling, swimming etc – and 85 workout modes – fitness training, dancing, ball games, extreme sports etc.
Monitoring is obviously a big part of any fitness-geared watch. Huawei has used a proprietary TruSeen 4.0 heart rate monitoring technology to provide users infographics showing how their heart rate changed over the last 24 hours, watching out for any abnormalities and notifying users when the reading is too high or too low.
Similarly, the TruSleep 2.0 technology delivers nuanced sleep stage monitoring, recognising when a user has fallen asleep and woken up to form a comprehensive analysis which shows different stages like light sleep, deep sleep, REM and wakefulness. Huawei is claiming that through AI the watch can accurately identify six typical sleeping problems, allowing users to identify issues and work towards improvements.
SpO2 monitoring, stress level monitoring and menstrual cycle management are also included with the watch, providing a holistic view of a users’ health so they never miss a beat.
The Huawei Watch Fit is available now. More information can be found here.
