The Huawei GT 2e is slight variation of their popular GT 2 watch, the “e” being for electric or energy signifying a youthful appeal. In many ways the watches are similar with some minor differences: some good and some not so good.

The GT 2e is a very smart looking watch. Built with steel and glass it has an AMOLED screen which is super bright and easy to read both indoors and outdoors. Despite being 2 gm heavier than the GT 2 it is still light enough (43 gm) to wear all day and night with no fatigue, in fact after a while you barely notice that it’s there. Of course the straps remind you that you are wearing it. They are bright and colourful. The straps are rubber (fluoroelastomer) and have large holes allowing it to breathe well on the wrist and the colours are Mint Green, Lava Red, Icy White and Graphite Black — very sporty indeed.

The GT 2e comes with a whopping 85 workout modes. When life is back to normal you will be able to use it for activities like kite-flying, tug of war, skateboarding, surfing, rock-climbing and a whole host of others, including dance forms like belly-dancing, Jazz, Latin, etc. Quite the impressive list.

The GT 2e uses the Kirin A1 chip which is very energy efficient and the operating system is the Huawei wearable OS. Battery life is easily above a week and in my usage I got anywhere between 10-15% percent usage per day. This included a 1 hour walk with GPS and all other tracking on including sleep, stress and heart-rate.

Easy & intuitive

Using the watch is easy and intuitive. The gestures and buttons are quite natural and one is up and running in just a few minutes of use. Compared to the GT 2 the buttons are a little more square and inset making sure that they do not protrude, bump into anything or get caught in clothing.

The watch is paired via Bluetooth and uses 5.1, Low Energy and Enhanced Data Rates. The watch does not have a separate app instead uses the Huawei health app. There is a lot of information that one can get from the app and sufficient details to satisfy most users.

In terms of notifications, the watch provides read-only notifications. While these are useful to stay in touch with what’s happening, they are not actionable in any way. The good thing is that you can control which apps send notifications to the watch, quite configurable in that sense.

The OS does not support an app store but it does have a small collection of watch-faces. Some are quite funky and some more like classic watches. Just about enough to have something for everyone.

The watch does also have 4GB of storage for adding music or other media, the issue is that the media must be on the phone and it is transferred via the app. Not a very smooth process and in these days of streaming not overly useful. However, if you have a favourite playlist you can add it to the watch and go for a workout without the phone.

The pulse-oximeter

One very nice addition to the watch is the pulse-oximeter. The watch is capable of an SpO2 measurement and it seems accurate enough. I calibrated this with a standard pulse oximeter and got the same readings.

One downside is the watch has no speaker and even using bluetooth headset does not allow you to take calls. If you pair your headset with the watch to list to music, you will not be able to take a call on that headset.

Overall a nice watch, at an affordable price with a host of features. Sleep tracking, Heart-rate monitoring, Stress tests and the SpO2 measurement make it a good health device. Of course, add to that the variety of workout modes and it is a nice complete package.

Pros: Light-weight, Sporty, Many workout modes, SpO2 measurement

Cons: No calls, Music management clunky, Notifications read-only

Price: ₹11,990

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