I’ve been using my Samsung Gear S3 for a couple of years, and it stopped working for some reason. It does boot up, but it shuts down just as fast.
Wanting to replace it with something equivalent, not spend too much, but also get better battery life in the process I picked up the Honor magic watch 2. But just how good is it? let’s find out.
This is the Honor magic watch 2, I have the charcoal black version and is the 46mm variant as I like big watches, a 42 mm variant is also available. Price is marked as Rs 14,999 but I purchased it for around 8k during the Amazon great Indian sale and an additional discount via HDFC.
Let’s open up the box and see what we get within. Wow, first off, we are greeted by the watch, looks so cool. We also have a minimalist Honor branding.
Under the flap we have a section that contains the charger, and the USB cable.
So glad the charger uses a removable USB-c charging cable. Also in the box is a manual and warranty card.
Now to get to the watch, wow this looks so awesome. We have the tachometer markings on the outer bezel, similar to my gear s3, but the Honor watch has it under the glass and is not rotatable.
Two buttons are present on the side, one with a red ring and the other a plain button.
A speaker grill is present under the buttons and on the other side
we have a microphone hole.
The back houses an assortment of sensors for heart rate and spo2 monitoring.
The strap is made of silicone and feels similar to the ones provided with most smartwatches.
Now to turn it on and set it up. As I have an Honor band from earlier, I used the same Huawei health app to pair the watch.
Bluetooth pairing, quite simple and it went through without a hitch.
One point to note is that, if you have any other Honor smart band or watch, it can use only one device at a time, the other device gets disconnected from the app.
Once ready, this is how the watch looks. Big clear display, and the watch face looks quite nice. We can change the watch face from the app, just tap and it is installed onto the watch.
There, and this one is animated, really cool. Changing watch faces is as easy as that. These are the default ones, we also have access to a whole collection of watch faces, which are free. Hope it stays free.
Wow, I can just keep on scrolling and new ones keep popping up. This should keep most of us happy.
Huawei’s Kirin A1 chip provides the processing muscle and with its custom Liteos the watch is well optimised. Honor is a part of Huawei, and that’s why it has access to all of Huawei’s tech. At 41 grams without the bands, it’s surprisingly light, with a stainless steel casing which houses the main watch, and the other parts being plastic.
The magnetic charging dock would snap on when the watch is brought close to it, but I did notice, it takes getting used to as you need to orient the watch at the correct angle to get it to charge.
It can also attach the other way, but the pins don’t align. Maybe give it a few days and it would become second nature.
The straps are 22mm and can be customized with any 22mm straps.
These are silicone and fit comfortably and should fit most users as it has several holes present.
I like that it fits like an ordinary watch strap and doesn’t need to be tucked in anywhere. The two loops provided move around to set it to a comfortable fit.
The display is a 1.39 inch AMOLED and it looks bright and colourful. With a screen resolution of 454×454 pixels it’s quite sharp.
The default brightness setting was at auto, but it was not getting bright enough, now I have manually set it to level 5. Yes, that would bring down it’s battery life, but it should still last at the very least 7 days, which I will know in 7 days. Not sure where the ambient light sensor is, if it even has one?
The watch faces look really awesome, and we have choices of minimalist or full blown faces with multiple complications such as footsteps, heart rate, weather, battery level and more.
We also have an always on display mode where we have a selection between analog and digital faces which show up when the display goes to sleep, this does consume battery though.
The battery is 455 mAh which is big, and Honor claims 14 days of battery life, we will know in a few days if this is true.
As I had said earlier, the watch uses Huawei’s Liteos, which means you don’t have access to any apps. Smart Watches using Wear OS have access to the smartwatch version of the app available on the phone, but the Honor magic watch 2 doesn’t.
Navigating through the interface is quite simple, pull down from the top to access the quick settings.
The button on top with the red accent lists all the inbuilt options such as workouts, workout records, heart rate, SPO2 measurement, sleep monitoring , breathing exercises , call logs, contacts , music controls, barometer, compass , weather , stop watch, timer , alarms , flashlight, find phone and settings.
Enter the option by tapping on the name, and to exit swipe to the right.
The bottom button can be customized to launch any of the options available, by default it’s on workouts.
From the home screen swiping left or right takes you to the same options available. Such as heart rate, stress, weather and music. The direction you swipe from reverses the order.
Swipe up from the bottom displays the notifications, you can read them from here, but you cannot reply. Once the notification is tapped on, it auto dismisses it as the watch can hold only a limited number. If you have too many, you will not see newer notifications until older ones are dismissed.
Raise to wake works well, and it responds moderately quick.
This watch is more geared to fitness enthusiasts and is visible with the long list of fitness tracking options.
Each workout option has more options within, so you can track the exact activity you need.
We can set personal goals in each one , such as the distance you want to walk or cycle, the number of calories you want to burn or how long you would like to exercise.
A voice guides you during the workout, providing you audible notifications of milestones achieved.
It also provides animated trophies for achievements met, which gives a boost to our morale.
The GPS manages to get a lock quick enough, and the data is stored along with your workout data, showing you your workout route, inclines you climbed or descended, your speed and more.
If you don’t have your phone with you, the data is stored on the watch and is synced with the phone as soon as you are in range. The watch can show you workout records, but it can be viewed in more detail on the app.
We have an option for continuous Heart Rate monitoring, which displays the heart rate changes during the day.
A stress monitoring mode is available which needs to be activated via the app, and it monitors your stress levels throughout the day. It’s optional and needs to be manually turned on via the app as it does consume battery.
Sleep tracking is also available which is fairly accurate.
With 5 ATM water resistance we can wear it while swimming, and this can also be tracked.
The watch also has the option to store music and pair with wireless earbuds so that you don’t need to carry your phone with you, and still have access to your music. We have 2 Gb of space out of the total 4Gb allocated for music. But the process to transfer music is slow as it uses Bluetooth.
The speaker on the Honor magic watch 2 can play music too if you don’t want to pair wireless earbuds. Not the loudest, but good enough while working out. We can also pick up calls via the watch, and using the integrated microphone speak to the person on the call. You need to have your phone close paired via Bluetooth, to take calls.
Call quality is good (watch video for sample), and the voice on both sides could be heard clearly. That’s good if indoors but if the environment is noisy, the speaker can’t operate loud enough to be audible.
If you don’t want to transfer music to the watch, and you have your phone with you, using the music controls on the watch we can control the playback on your phone.
The Huawei health app shows you info which are readable at a glance on the dashboard. You can tap on any of the information if you need to view more details. You can also initiate workouts using the exercise tab, select your workout and tap play to start.
We also have the option to link the data with Google fit and once you provide the permissions, the data is synced between Huawei health and google fit.
UI wise the watch looks really nice, and everything is generally fluid. There are a few hiccups occasionally while using the watch, but older wear os watches were also as bad. Considering this watch released a year back, I cannot compare it with the higher priced wear os watches available today.
Yeah sure, the fitbit’s, galaxy watches and apple watch rule the roost as premium smartwatches, but this one doesn’t disappoint at all, and I would consider it a mid-segment smartwatch. The watch is well built, tracking is really good, watch faces are crisp and clear, brightness outdoors is good, and the display is readable in bright sunlight.
It looks more like a regular watch, which I like and is comfortable to wear too.
All functionality works really well, but one con is that the watch takes a second longer while changing watch faces, once it’s loaded it scrolls smoothly, but that one niggle spoils the experience. This might be a problem with the current software and could be fixed in an update, as of now this is present with the latest firmware. But other than that, the watch works really great, and has all the features I need in a smart watch. Battery life of 14 days is reachable if you use the watch conservatively, I kept the brightness high, continuous heart rate monitoring and stress test on, and a lot of other options on too. But I still managed to get 9 days of battery life which could be thanks to the Custom Kirin A1 chip they use. My Gear s3 manages only max 2 days if used conservatively, which is also the case with the new galaxy watch 4.
If you need third party app support, ability to reply to notifications via the watch then the Honor magic watch 2 is not for you.
If you need a good fitness centric smartwatch, with the ability to track a whole plethora of activities, and have access to beautiful watch faces, something that is a step up from the fitness bands then the Honor Magic watch 2 is a good choice. Considering how low the prices are during the sale it’s a great option to pick up if they can iron that watchface issue.
