Huawei Watch 4 Pro Space Edition Titanium Review

You'll allow me to depart from our usual editorial style for hardware reviews at Gamereactor for a couple of reasons. The first is the novelty, as the titanium aerospace version of this watch arrived on the market at the end of May, for around 650 euros, while I tested it in three weeks in August, and it is now available for over 500 euros.

The second has to do with the fact that, while you may have read my reviews of gadgets of many kinds (speakers, headphones, computers and other devices), I am not a smart watch user. For that, read the other recent watch reviews of my colleagues at Gamereactor. I haven't even worn a wristwatch this century, so I took the process as something of personal interest and curiosity: let's see how I relate to a high-end smartwatch on my wrist, how much it brings me and how much it annoys me. I think this perspective might be useful to more than one of you.

The first thing I have to say is that the, *takes a deep breath*, Huawei Watch 4 Pro Space Edition Titanium, is not a regular watch. It's a fancy watch. You'll either wear or be used to seeing the sporty, rectangular-shaped, rounded-edged, velcro-strapped smartwatches that Apple Watch and co. made fashionable, and which 80% of users wear.

Although Huawei follows this style in its Fit line, both the Watch 4 and the GT or Ultimate opt for a traditional circular sphere, arranging the elements on the screen in a 3D and concentric manner or imitating the analogue hands. Its size is generous, and it houses a 1.5-inch touchscreen surrounded by a red ceramic bezel, which contrasts with the metallic grey of the rest of the finish, which in this version features a titanium casing.

As the strap is made of metal links (by the way, I found it very easy to remove one to fit my slimmer wrist), the watch looks very elegant compared to the sports watches, with a luxurious but not tacky touch. "The Space Edition is a tribute to the daring machines that have taken mankind to new heights" and this, apart from the combination of metals and colours, is also evident in the themed backgrounds and display layouts, with the day/night cycle on the planets of the solar system, lunar information or constellations, a delight for astronomy lovers.

As a smart watch layman and divorced from wristwatches I found it a bit heavy, and not only on the first day. It's 65 grams for the dial plus the strap, which is fine, but in my particular case I might have needed to take the intermediate step of the sports models, both for the lightness and the fit. From there, I set out to immerse myself in the Huawei smart watch experience as far as it would go.

And does it tell the time? Sure, in every conceivable format, even in two time zones at the same time, which is great for us at Gamereactor when covering events in Los Angeles or Japan. But smartwatches are mainly focused, in terms of functionality and apart from notifications and other things your phone can do, on health and sport measurements. In this sense, I have been using a Polar arm band for years to measure my heart rate in sports such as running, kung-fu, cycling, swimming, rowing or pilates, so I was going to use it as a comparison.

But smart watches are not just about heart rate for specific routines. Beyond wearing it all day (unlike momentary HR sensors), they also include stress, breathing, skin temperature, blood pressure, and blood oxygen monitoring functions. Even more important for me, who suffers from insomnia, they act as a constant monitor of sleep quality. I was going to put it to several comparative uses.

All these functions are recorded via the Huawei Health app on your smartphone, when you sync it daily to your watch. Here, I have to draw the first major conclusion based on my experience: where the hardware of the Huawei Watch 4 Pro Space Edition Titanium impresses and I have little to complain about, the software side needs to work on catching up.

The watch's update process is really slow on first power-up or when it needs a big one (more than an hour, and it asks you not to use your phone), but it also needs to improve the daily synchronisation. Each function requires a series of permissions for access to biometric personal data, but that process could also be streamlined. And then there's the elephant in the room: if you use it with an iPhone, as I do, rather than an Android or Huawei smartphone, you'll have a much more limited experience, in this case perhaps more so because of Apple's own restrictions on communicating with a watch it doesn't own with its phones.

Understand me, I'm not those who put every notification on their watch because I'm already reducing them on my phone so they don't drive me crazy, but something like controlling music playback, seeing what song is playing or hitting "like" is very useful on your wrist, without having to take out your phone. And you can't do that with an iPhone.

I also had problems with some notifications that kept popping up even though I had seen them before, with occasional app errors, with poor in-app translation, or with the on-screen keyboard, not the best for writing a short message or taking a note. But this is all software because, again, the build quality, materials and responsiveness of the device are top notch at almost all times.

Almost, because it doesn't seem normal to me that water in the shower can activate and control the touchscreen so easily, when it's a submersible and generally super-resistant watch. That's my only quibble with the tangible part, along with the caveat that, logically, given its weight and shape it's not the best smartwatch if you want it primarily for sports use; the Huawei Watch 4 Pro is for all-day, all-situation wear.

It's possible to take a call directly on the watch just like Michael Knight talking to KITT, and while the quality is as poor as you'd expect from a wrist device with a micro speaker, it can certainly handle a short conversation when you're, say, in the pool.

As for sleep, which was my main medical interest, I wasn't asking it to be as accurate as an actigraph (a professional sleep ring, for example), and while I found the recordings both useful and interesting, I also noted some inaccuracies. As a general rule, it is able to read the "REM, light and deep" sleep phases in a decent way and then makes analyses and comments that hit the nail on the head (my deep sleep continuity is a disaster, for example), but it is also true that it failed to detect several "awake" states where I had even woken up and walked. I understand that it is like in sports practice, which serves more as a guide than as an ultra-precise dedicated device to take a report to the doctor, but it must be taken into account.

Speaking of sport, I also saw some discrepancies between the watch's BPM and the Polar OH1+, especially when I went above 140 in disciplines such as rowing. At first I was more annoyed, but when comparing the total exercise results - very close to par - and not the real time measurement, I saw that the difference, which could be as much as 5-7 beats (a big difference), might have more to do with the update rate of both devices than the actual accuracy.

So, am I going to buy a smart watch after my experience with Huawei? That's a trick question. I think it's an exceptional and very stylish watch for anyone looking for general use and a traditional finish, especially if your smartphone is Android or Huawei. Its materials are luxurious, its built quality premium and its screen much brighter than inferior models like the Fit. Its battery lasts a week easily and, truth be told, things like the morning alarm I ended up liking much better with a slight rumble on my wrist than the iPhone's shrill audible alarm.

The compass, GPS (although it takes a while to activate) and NFC payment can also make more sense on a wrist device and look great in a circular format, together with all the 24-hour health and sport functions. If you use a smart watch to take out your mobile phone less, it can be a winner, as long as you don't end up hooked to its notifications at every moment, but this is a personal opinion. Remember that this watch costs the same or close to the same as a mid-range smartphone, so I recommend it to people with the needs of the previous paragraph who may be familiar with these watches and want to upgrade to a more luxurious gadget. I'll continue with a bare wrist, but I recognise that the device itself has impressed me and that with some software improvements it will be at the top of its range.