When it comes to full-featured smartwatches, it's pretty much accepted that the Apple Watch is the king of the roost, with Google's Wear OS perhaps sitting below Samsung's Galaxy Watch range. But what do you do if you just want a smart-ish watch with fitness and notification functionality that blends in with whatever you are wearing and doesn't need charging every single night? Well, that's where smartwatches such as Huawei's Watch GT and the Honor MagicWatch 2 come into their own, sporting Lite OS, classic designs with smart functionality, and up to 2-weeks of battery life.
We've been lucky enough to spend some time with the MagicWatch 2, so join us after the break for our review of Honor's latest smartwatch.
Design
Designated the Flax Brown variant with 46mm sizing, the review unit sports a stainless steel casing with a black bezel around the display proclaiming that its a tachymeter, which it isn't. While it doesn't add functionality, the aesthetics work to give the MagicWatch 2 the appearance that it might be a diving watch, which works for my personal taste.
Completing the look is a brown strap made from genuine leather of adequate quality that somehow manages to feel a little like paper although it's comfortable enough. Anyhow, at some point you'll probably want to upgrade the strap to something a little more premium. The two crowns on side of the watch help the MagicWatch 2 maintain a certain real-watch appearance. Unlike the chunky TicWatch Pro that feels more than a little bulky, the MagicWatch 2 feels pretty light on the wrist.
Hardware
Sporting a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with 454 x 454 resolution and up to 800 nits brightness, the MagicWatch 2's watch face is easy to see in any lighting conditions. The Kirin A1 processor provides just enough grunt to move the LiteOS along smoothly enough, although I did experience some instances of lag. It features dual-frequency GPS that takes around 30 seconds to get a lock when the watch isn't connected to a phone, and while the watch doesn't have an official IP rating which is a little silly in my opinion, Honor says that it is water-resistant up to 50 meters.
Software and Performance
The MagicWatch 2 runs Huawei's LiteOS that brings some smart functionality such as receiving notifications and calls but doesn't include being able to reply to messages or access third-party apps. This can be quite frustrating when you receive a message and then have to find your smartphone to respond. While the presence of a mini touch keyboard isn't something that works on a smartwatch, the possibility of a few canned replies or emojis would have been a major addition to the experience.
If you love streaming music from Spotify, Play Music, or perhaps Apple Music, you may need to look elsewhere because you can only control the playback of music that you've manually transferred to the watch, which is an unfortunate limitation. If 2GB of music (MP3's only) is enough for your needs, you can leave the phone at home and pair up your wireless headphones with the watch to listen to your favorite tracks as you exercise. The media controls are easy enough to navigate if a little basic.
When it comes to customizing your experience you are limited to the watch faces that Huawei has made available on the Health App, except for being able to use a photo of your own when you enable the Always-on-Display. And, while new watch faces are being added regularly, there isn't a ton of options to choose from. Which brings us to another frustration in that you aren't able to use the same watch face on the AoD as your main display.
The MagicWatch 2 excels on data gathering, synchronizing to the Health app on the phone and displaying it in user-friendly graphs and tabs. Workout mode is where the MagicWatch really shines with its 15 fitness exercises, GPS tracking, and monitoring your heart rate, stress, and pace. This allows you to head off to exercise without needing to carry your smartphone around with you unless you absolutely need to be accessible at all times.
The virtual pacesetting function lets you know that your pace has dropped via a vibration which is nice and subtle. Less so is the command to “start workout” and progress reports every 10-minutes that are routed through the loudspeaker on the watch, which is annoying and unnecessary.
I found the sleep tracking capabilities to be of interest which, thanks to the presence of Huawei's TruSleep technology, monitors your slumber and dissects it into segments that help you understand why you might not have slept well. It even picks up when you've stolen a cheeky nap after lunch which is impressive although it does make you think you are getting old.
Battery
Honor claims that the 455mAh battery in the 46mm version of the MagicWatch 2 is good for two weeks of usage which has proved to be accurate in my experience. Once you turn on the Always-on-Display, battery life expectancy drops down to a week's usage, which is still pretty good. If you do happen to cut it close, the watch will switch over to just showing the time until it's recharged. At no point did I feel the same battery anxiety that I usually feel when using a Wear OS smartwatch, which is a pretty big positive.
Conclusion
A step up from a basic fitness tracker in both features and price, but a step (or two) away from more capable Wear OS devices, Honor's MagicWatch 2 is the wearable equivalent of a feature phone, so perhaps it should be called a feature watch. While getting being able to see messages and other notifications on the watch are great features to have, the ability to at least send a canned reply would have eased a lot of the frustration I experienced with the MagicWatch 2. The reliance on Huawei's Health app is unfortunate, as is the ability to only share data with Google Fit and MyFitnessPal.
Starting at £159 in the UK, the MagicWatch 2 combines fitness and sleep tracking with the ability to look like a relatively normal watch. If you want a fitness tracker with some smarts that doesn't look out of place out of the gym or the office with up to 2 weeks of usage, then Honor's MagicWatch 2 is a worthy contender.
Buy it Now: Amazon
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