Huawei Watch Fit 2 review: Huawei's best wearable yet

The Huawei Watch Fit 2 is the follow-up to the Huawei Watch Fit, a fitness tracker/smartwatch hybrid with an extremely affordable price tag.

It debuts big running smarts brought over from the Watch GT Runner, smartwatch features like a built-in music player and Bluetooth calling, and over a week of battery life.

We've been living with it to find out. Here's our comprehensive verdict.

Price and Competitors

The Huawei Watch Fit 2 comes at £130/149. As usual, there's no official US launch, pricing, or details on when or where you might be able to pick it up Stateside. But it will likely appear on Amazon in the coming months.

But it's an attractive price tag, that makes few compromises – and seriously impressed us during testing.

That price puts it squarely up against the likes of the Fitbit Charge 5 ($149/£129), which scored a solid 4 out of 5 scores in our review. But does the Huawei Watch Fit 2 deliver on design, performance, and features?

It comes in a great deal cheaper than the Huawei Watch GT 3 smartwatch and doesn't even sacrifice that many features. We strapped on the Huawei Watch Fit 2 and got sweaty in the name of in-depth reviews.

• Top picks: Best smartwatches from our in-depth reviews

Design and screen

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The first Fit was a lovely-looking device, with Active and Elegant versions – and this time out Huawei has added one more.

The Watch Fit 2 comes in Active, Elegant, and now Classic versions – with all offering different case and strap colors. But the key things that separate them are slight differences in the overall weight of front case materials and one additional sensor.

First look: Huawei Watch D review

The Active edition we tested is a few grams lighter than the Elegant and Classic editions. Those editions include aluminum front cases instead of a polymer ones. The Elegant and Classic editions also include NFC to enable Huawei's new tap-to-transfer photo feature.

Every edition features 46mm-sized cases that measure 10.8mm thick, and include a 1.74-inch, 336 x 480 resolution AMOLED touchscreen display with a single physical button on the side of the case.

That's slightly thicker and heavier than the Watch Fit, but in reality, the main difference here is the change in the look of that main body and screen.

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Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Huawei Watch Fit (original)

While the first Fit was longer and slimmer in look, the body on the Fit 2 is a lot more square in comparison. The Fit 2 has edged closer to the build of a traditional smartwatch.

We preferred the slender Watch Fit, but squaring things has enabled Huawei to fit more data on the display. If it goes any wider though, it's going to feel like a proper smartwatch.

Ultimately, it's a comfortable and easy device to live with. The silicone strap has been comfortable to wear and the only minor gripe we had is that the groove in the second clasp could do with being deeper as it did occasionally flail about during a swim.

Huawei has now made it much easier to swap traps, and does offer additional leather and Milanese-style options you can snap in to smarten things up.

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The screen is bright, colorful, and responsive and you now have an always-on display mode. 

The raise-to-wake gesture support has been generally fine day-to-day and when on the move during exercise.

Huawei has stuck to offering the same 5ATM water resistance rating here too, so you can keep it on in the shower and it can be used in shallow water for pool and ocean swims.

Fitness and health tracking

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Fitness tracking on the first Watch Fit was good, but not without its issues – particularly on the accuracy front.

The Watch Fit 2 brings tracking steps, sleep, heart rate, stress, blood oxygen levels, and menstrual cycles.

Huawei also includes its Health Living clover, reminders to remind you to drink water, smile, and keep your step counts up among other things.

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The fitness and health tracking experience are solid overall.

For step counts, it delivered similar daily data as Garmin's step tracking and it will throw up animations on screen to tell you to budge when you've been inactive for too long.

You've got an easy-to-read watch widget to display progress and you can see a breakdown of the activity those steps were generated from inside of the Huawei Health app.

Sleep tracking

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Step tracking compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Garmin Epix (right)

When it's time to sleep, There's a dedicated watch menu to show off the previous night's sleep with more data and analysis inside the companion phone app. 

It's here where you'll see sleep stage breakdowns, a sleep score along with insight on what that sleep score means and it also captures breathing rate.

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Sleep tracking compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left and center) and Oura Ring 3 (right)

We pitted it against the ever-reliable Oura Ring 3 – our benchmark device – and found that sleep data, in general, was similar, particularly for sleep duration and sleep stages.

There weren't any nights where the data felt off the mark, so it was a good showing for Fit 2 overall.

Heart rate, skin temperature, and stress

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Resting heart rate compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Oura Ring 3 (right)

Elsewhere, continuous heart rate data felt more reliable than it did on the first Fit, offering similar resting heart rate data to Garmin and Oura.

On-the-spot SpO2 readings were good too, though monitoring 24/7 does eat into the battery.

The Fit 2 also monitors skin temperature and collates that information in the app. It generally floated around the 33-degree centigrade mark, which is considered normal skin temperature.

However, this isn't measured against established baselines, nor does it seem to be incorporated into other wellness or health features – so it essentially plays lip service to body temperature tracking without being especially useful.

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You can also continuously monitor stress via heart rate variability measurements, letting you know when stress is low, high, or normal over a day to help you see what might be causing more stressful moments in your day.

The Watch Fit 2 feels like a more reliable activity tracker than the first Fit and is more fitness tracker than a health tracker. The experience on the watch is better off it, but it's all steps in the right direction.

Sports tracking and heart rate accuracy

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Sports tracking is arguably the department where Huawei has made the biggest changes with the Watch Fit 2.

It's not only added features from its GT series watches but it's taken ones that debuted on the Watch Fit and made them more useful.

You've got your pick of 97 workout modes and that includes the likes of running, cycling, swimming (indoor and outdoor), and indoor activities like rowing and the cross trainer. There's also automatic exercise recognition for a small portion of those 97 workout modes.

Runners seem to be the biggest beneficiaries of the key new features. You now can follow running training plans along with existing running courses where you can now create your running courses and sessions too.

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You can set up running interval training sessions, and customize data fields and you're getting running-focused training insights like running ability index, training load, race predictions (in the app only), and recovery recommendations from the GT Runner.

Like the GT Runner, the insights are useful if the data you're piling into them is reliable – and on the whole, we were pleased by the accuracy of heart rate and insights spun off that data.

Huawei debuted animated workouts on the first Fit and that remains, but now it's incorporated that feature into helping you get warmed up before a run and to stretch after a run. The recommended exercises are all familiar things that can help runners get ready and stretch off and they're well integrated into the workout screen.

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Outdoor run tracking compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Garmin Epix (right)

Huawei has improved outdoor tracking and has added dual-band, five-system GNSS support to let you grab extra signals from supported satellite systems to improve accuracy.

We pitted it against the largely very accurate multi-band tracking on the Garmin Epix, and while it was good on the whole, it had its sketchy routing moments.

However, so did the very reliable Garmin on occasions as illustrated in the screens below – so GPS device is infallible in built-up areas.

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GPS accuracy compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Garmin Epix (right)

It wasn't spotless and still plotted us running through the water while distance tracking seemed to be sort of the strong tracking on the Garmin Epix.

Core running metrics in general though did seem similar, particularly on shorter runs, 10k or less.

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Heart rate during exercise compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Wahoo Tickr X (right)

Heart rate accuracy during exercise was generally fine for steady-paced workouts, but it was no surprise to find it struggled to keep up with sudden spikes and drops in heart rate during high-intensity use. The max HR in the example above lagged a chest strap, but the average data for the session was spot on. It's more than acceptable for guiding your recovery and driving those training insights, but we wouldn't rely on it for heart rate zone training.

Unlike Huawei's latest GT series watches, you can't pair up an external heart rate monitor to improve accuracy here.

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The Fit 2 also manages to squeeze in space for the ability to import routes and offer basic navigation features here too. Uploading routes is done via the Huawei Health app and when you select a course, you'll follow a blue line and arrow pointing you in the right direction on a blank screen.

While basic, we found navigation support worked pretty well. The watch gives you a gentle vibrating buzz before you need to make a turn and while you don't get a screen filled with detailed maps, it's a handy enough feature to use when you're out exploring or need to get back home safely.

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Swim tracking compared: Huawei Watch Fit 2 (left) and Garmin Epix (right)

We did spend some time outside of running with the Watch Fit 2 as well, and it performed well on most fronts. we took it for some pool swimming time and it delivered similar data to Garmin's swim tracking support.

It was a similar story for indoor rowing here as well. We could access all of the workout modes and animated workouts were one of those missing in action, but what we could test offered a good tracking experience overall.

If you care about syncing your stats to apps outside of Huawei Health, then the company now enables data syncing with Strava.

Smartwatch features

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Pretty much everything you could do on the Watch Fit from a smartwatch features point of view is available on the Fit 2, plus the pretty big additions of Bluetooth calling, a built-in music player, with room for up to 5,000 songs, and access to Huawei's AppGallery.

There does also remain some inconsistency across what features are on offer if you're an Android phone or iPhone user and whether you're pairing it up to a Huawei smartphone.

So iPhone users cannot store music on the Watch Fit 2 or send quick SMS replies when using the Bluetooth calling features. There's a new feature to send photos to the watch to use as watch faces, but that can only be done when paired to a Huawei smartphone via NFC. You also need a Huawei phone to access the onboard smart assistant.

We used the Watch Fit 2 with an Android phone and we'd say the smartwatch experience is good enough on the whole. You have a nice stream of notifications that while you can't respond to them, are well optimized to that AMOLED screen.

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The music playback controls are easy to use too and while you can send music over to the watch and pair up Bluetooth headphones to listen sans smartphone, it needs to be purchased music because this doesn't work with music streaming services like Spotify or Deezer.

There are features here too like weather forecasts, the ability to set alarms, and you can add up to 10 favorite contacts that you can quickly ring from the watch. The Bluetooth calling feature worked fine and the call quality and loudness were strong enough to take calls outside.

Huawei also offers a very good collection of watch faces here too and there's more available via the Huawei Health app. Though some faces can cost as much as $5/£4, which seems needless There's a nice bunch already preloaded, which we think will satisfy most people.

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Then you do have access to Huawei's AppGallery, though it feels like it's a slightly scaled-back version. During our testing, there were six apps available and which included things like a calculator and Huawei's Petal Maps navigation app.

A small collection of apps aside, the apps do seem a little slow to download and you'll need the corresponding AppGallery phone app to get things like Petal Maps set up. Granted, it's not a big storefront, but the fact you do have some access as you do on Huawei's full-fat smartwatches is good to see here.

You're getting more smartwatch features here, some that quite frankly, we were surprised to see. If you're an Android phone or Huawei phone user, then you're going to be able to make the best use of those new features.

Battery life

With the original Huawei Watch Fit, Huawei promised 10 days of battery life in what it referred to as 'typical use' and then 7 days in heavy usage. That heavy usage involves doing things like using continuous heart rate monitoring and advanced sleep tracking or using 30 minutes of Bluetooth calling. With the Fit 2, it's touting the very same numbers and we found it performs similarly.

In more heavy usage, you are looking at a week of use between charges and we'd say that's based on regularly using the GPS, having the screen nice and bright, and having those more power-hungry health and wellness features in play. You can get longer and there's no worrying drain day-to-day based on our experience.

When you're using the GPS, we found that over an hour of running saw a battery drop-off of around 10%. Huawei doesn't talk GPS battery numbers, but that would roughly equate to about 10 hours of battery life. Dedicated sports watches at around this price will get you a few more hours, but that's not a terrible showing in our book.

The Watch Fit 2 will typically last you a week, but you have the capacity here to go longer when you sacrifice some features. You also have a handy quick-charge feature, which gets you a day of watch time from spending just five minutes on the charger.