Huawei sub-brand Honor has announced its first rugged smartwatch, the Watch GS Pro, at this year’s scaled-back IFA trade show in Berlin.
The GS Pro has a 1.39-inch round AMOLED display, a stainless steel bezel and a polycarbonate body. It’s got chunky, aggressive styling that screams to everyone that you may be familiar with camping. The company says that it’s passed 14 different tests for military specifications (810G) relating to water, shock and heat damage.
The smartwatch, which is powered by Huawei’s LiteOS operating system, has a heart rate monitor, and it supports blood oxygen tracking, sleep tracking, and even stress monitoring, according to Honor. Other features include weather alerts, support for both GPS and GLONASS satellite positioning systems, and a “route back” mode that Honor says can track your journey and use it to guide you back along your original path. However, there’s no maps support, nor is there any support for third-party apps like Strava.
In terms of specs, you’re getting a 1.39-inch OLED display with a resolution of 454 x 454, and the smartwatch is powered by a Kirin A1 chipset. Battery life goes up to a maximum of 25 days, but run it in outdoor workout mode, and that drops to 100 hours or just 48 hours with GPS enabled. The watch comes in black, white, and blue and will be available starting September 7th in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain for €249.99.
The watch offers 24/7 heart-rate tracking which, again, makes that battery life claim look even more impressive. There’s also a built-in SpO2 monitor for blood oxygenation monitoring as well as sleep and stress monitoring, not to mention live coaching for when you’re running. Rounding out the package is storage space for around 500 songs, automatic weather updates and the ability to use the watch as a remote trigger for your smartphone’s camera.
Its more stylish counterpart, the Honor Watch ES, isn’t quite as rugged, and its battery life only goes up to a maximum of 10 days. However, it’s lighter and still supports a range of 95 workout modes, including six that Honor says it can automatically detect. It’s got a 1.64-inch rectangular OLED display with a resolution of 456 x 280, and it can track your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, sleep, stress, and, where appropriate, menstrual cycles. It will be available from September 7th in the UK and Germany for €99.99. It will be available in more European markets later in the month.
