Today at IFA, Honor launched their latest fitness-oriented watch, the Honor Watch GS Pro. The focus on this watch is (from their marketing material) urban adventurers. Specifically, young adults who lead active lives and enjoy outdoor activities.

The Huawei/Honor ecosystem of wearables is a little different than other brands; they do their own thing, and while they may get classed as smartwatches, they are essentially a feature watch. The watch does what it does and nothing else, no apps on customisations limited to just the watch face.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds, the watches are affordable, run without laggyness and offer incredible battery life.

This watch, as with most of the others since the launch or the Huawei Watch GT2, uses the new Kirin A1 chipset. So all the watches have essentially the same software and use the same chipset.

So what’s different?

Honor Watch GS Pro Features

I have only have had a basic pre-briefing on this watch, so the information is limited, but it does have a few features worth mentioning.

As expected, there is a lot of this watch which is the same if not identical to the Honor MagicWatch 2 and the two Huawei Watch GT2 devices.

One of the main difference for many users will be the way it looks. The original Huawei Watch GT2 was quick sylish, then the GT2e was a rugged sports design with plastic and metal. The Honor MagicWatch 2 was also a little smarter, so this watch is the more rugged version from Honor.

This isn’t just a design chance, though, some key differinces include:

• 25-day battery life – which is around 11 days more than the other watches. It can then be used for 48-hours with GPS on, making it useful for multi-day hiking and ultra-endurance length events.
• With the GPS mode on you can select route back to guide you back to the starting location
• This is MIL-STD-810G certified for durability
• There are 100 sports modes which is a massive increase from the MagicWatch 2 and 15 more than the GT2e
  • There is also a special skiing mode to automatically track your skiing exercise in real-time with various skiing scenarios including skiing, snowboarding and cross-country skiing.
• To make it a little more mountaineering friendly, there is also alerts for weather changes.
• The spec sheet also states professional running guidance with voice over and detailed data.
  • The MagicWatch also states Real-time VoiceOver guidance, which I am not sure if is the same or not.

What is the same?

A lot.

All the watches have the same display with 1.39-inch AMOLED running at 454 x 454 pixels, they all have 4GB of storage with 500 songs worth of storage. They all have heart rate monitoring, SPO2 tracking, sleep tracking, stress tracking and dual-band GPS. The software is also fundamentally the same.

To the best of my knowledge, they are all essentially the same watches, but with design changes, and a handful of software changes.

This is the first watch that appears to up the performance of the battery, so there is a bit of a hardware change.  

Huawei Watch GT2 Pro vs Honor Watch GS Pro

Recently, Winfuture, revealed the Huawei Watch GT2 Pro, with this being a leak there is nothing confirmed, but this again appears to be built on the same platform as the other watches. Same chipset, same display, same OS.

As the name suggests this will be an upgrade to the existing GT2 so will offer a stylish form factor over the sporty design the Honor Watch GS Pro has. Hopefully, they are priced around the same, giving users a choice of two aesthetics at similar prices.

The renders make the watch look very nice, but it is hard to tell how nice it is in real life. I personally found the Huawei Watch GT2 to be the most stylish smartwatch I have used or seen. However, up close, it didn’t have quite the same build quality or design as you get from an old fashioned quartz/mechanical, so it would be good to see them offer high-quality materials.

The stand out feature of this watch appears to be the new QI wireless charging. With it only charging every couple of weeks this may not seem that important, but at least you don’t have to remember where your charger is.

Price and Availability

As I write this it is unknown, but the watches are normally competitively priced.

The price has now been confirmed as 249-Euros

Current pricing for the other watches is:

• Honor MagicWatch 2 – £129.90
• Huawei Watch GT2e – £120.99
• Huawei Watch GT2 – £152

The Huawei Watch GT2 Pro is rumoured to cost around 280 Euros. The GT2 launched at around £269, so this makes sense, and it will quickly drop in price.

Honor Watch GS Pro vs MagicWatch 2 vs Huawei Watch GT2e bs GT2 Pro Specification Comparison Table