Huawei Mate 9 & Mate 9 Porsche Design: First look

Huawei Fit hands-on

The Huawei Fit is a new breed of fitness tracking from Huawei. The company is in it to compete for a spot in the fitness tracking game with the watch's fitness tracking, which automatically switches tracking between running, walking, and sleeping. The watch will even detect the activity you are doing among walking, running, cycling, treadmill, and swimming (to be added via firmware update). It's also worth noting the Huawei Fit is 5ATM (water resistance up to 50m).

A beautiful display box • Opening it up • The watch weighs 35g • On the wrist

Huawei says the Fit uses an innovative design in the heart rate sensor that proved to have high signal strength for more accurate readings. It also uses a skin-color- detecting algorithm to adjust to different skin tones.

The heart rate monitor on the Huawei Fit is an optical one with dual light-emitters and the reading is automatically displayed when an activity is detected. The watch goes as far as showing five individual heart rate zones to help keep an eye on your intensity, a great visual aid for athletes.

The optical heart rate monitor • Measuring heart rate • A healthy resting heart rate

At the end of a workout, the Huawei Fit will show you a summary of the distance, duration, pace, calories, heart range rate, exercise "score", new records, VO2 max, and recovery time.

The fitness tracker also features FirstBeat technology which offers a running smart-trainer. The trainer can design running plans, give guidance during a run based on your stamina and goals, and can train you in a few different running modes: 5 km, 10 km, half marathon, and marathon.

The Huawei Fit can also handle notifications, but much like the Honor Band that came last year, its capabilities are limited to only seeing the notification. As for battery life, Huawei claims the Fit can last up to days of normal usage (with regular heart rate checks throughout the day), and 30 days on standby.

The watch can fully charge within two hours.

The watch pairs up with the Huawei Wear app, and can sync all your tracked fitness data to UP by Jawbone (ironically), Google Fit, and MyFitnessPal.

Design

The Huawei watch is very simple in design. You likely won't get much attention wearing this watch, as the watch face is not designed to be elegant. It is a glass front though, and the interface is controlled with only touch. There are no buttons on the watch at all, partly because it makes it easier to waterproof. To manually reset the watch, you'll need to attach it to the magnetic charging cradle and push a reset button on the cradle.

The charging cradle • A magnet holds the watch in place • A reboot button on the back of the charger

The Fit's band is soft and matte and made of TPU, same material that many phone cases are made of.

Although if you've ever worn a Pebble Time, you know how soft and comfortable that silicone band felt.

Yeah, this one is not as soft as the Pebble Time's band.

The best way to describe the watch body would be "looks like a frying pan with no handles". The base flares up toward the watch face, which allows for ample moving range of the wrists.

The screen does have a bezel, one which has been decorated with 12 lines in a radial arrangement to indicate time on an analog watchface. The watchface is 39.5mm across while the actual display is 26.3mm across (that's ~1.04"). This calculates to a 6.6mm-thick bezel on the watch.

The watch measures 11.2mm at its thickest point

The watch body is made of aluminum, and some of Huawei's design language can be noticed in the angles of the watch face. While the watch feels well put-together, it lacks a bold design that makes it stand out. Its design seems "regular" to us.

Pricing and availability

The Huawei Fit is hitting the US at Best Buy, Newegg, and Amazon starting today. There will be a black version with a black watch body available at Best Buy exclusively for the first 60 days, otherwise, orange and blue will be the tracker's standard color options. The Fit will retail in the US for $130 at the retailers mentioned.

That price might be a bit steep for a fitness tracker with basic notifications. We'll have to wait and see if Huawei's efforts in sensor accuracy and heart rate monitoring breakthroughs will pay off with the Huawei Fit. Though, Huawei's app that manages the watch for Android or iOS desperately needs more polish.