Review of smart watch honor magicwatch 2 — autonomous magic! | smart watches and fitness bracelets | reviews | club dns
Recently, the wearable electronics market has been gaining momentum, sales of various smart watches and fitness trackers are only increasing. For example, in 2020, Apple sold more watches than all Swiss manufacturers combined. In this review, I will talk about the HONOR MagicWatch 2 smartwatch. The HONOR/HUAWEI brands are among the leaders in the production and sale of such gadgets.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
- Case color — silver
- Strap color — brown/black
- Compatibility — iOS, Android
- Control type — touch
- LCD screen — AMOLED
- Diagonal — 1.39″
- Resolution — 454×454
- Case material — stainless steel
- Water resistance — 5 Bar
- Degree of protection — IP68
- Strap material — leather
- Built-in memory — 4 GB
- Sensors — altimeter, altimeter, GLONASS, GPS
- Wireless — Bluetooth
- Audio playback — yes
- NFC support — yes (temporarily limited at the software level)
- Li-Ion battery — 455 mAh
- Features — built-in microphone, built-in speaker
- Width — 45.9 mm
- Length — 45.9 mm
- Weight — 41 g
EQUIPMENT
The watch is delivered in a square tight box, everything is made and packaged, which is called conscientiously.
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The package includes the following:
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- Watch
- Warranty card
- User Manual
- Spare strap
- Charging Dock
- Charging cable
Please note that the black watch does not come with an additional strap.
APPEARANCE
Available in two dial sizes, 42 and 46 mm. They differ in battery capacity, diagonal and screen resolution. I reviewed a watch with a diameter of 46 mm in brown and black colors.
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If you make the screen on the watch constantly active, it is quite difficult to distinguish it from a regular watch. This way you won’t stand out among owners of classic watches.
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The appearance of the watch is similar to the previous model. Large round screen with no dead spots (Hello Morotola!). A bezel with a tachymeter runs along the edge of the screen, but this element is painted on the watch body itself and cannot be physically interacted with. The case is steel, turning into fastenings for the strap. Two steel buttons that protrude far beyond the body. The top button enables the application menu when we are on the watch face, and correspondingly returns to the watch face when we are on any other screen. The bottom button opens the training menu, but it can be assigned to open any other application.
Between the buttons there is an earpiece. On the left side you can see the microphone hole. The speaker is very loud. Of course, you can have a full conversation through this watch. Just keep in mind that others may witness your conversation. In this case, it is better to use a BT headset.
The reverse side of the watch case is made of matte black plastic. In the central part there is a heart rate sensor and contacts for connecting a charger.
Attaching the strap to the watch is standard, like most regular watches. You need to move the small lever to the side and you can change the strap. By the way, the straps themselves are 22 mm, which makes it possible to install any other similar strap. I had two strap options: brown leather with stitching and black silicone. By the way, watches with a leather strap come with a black strap. But with a watch with a silicone strap, there is no longer an additional strap.
With a leather strap, the watch looks more expensive than with a regular black silicone strap. But with a black strap, the watch looks monolithic. But this is purely a matter of taste. A watch with a black strap will suit any style of clothing and feels more comfortable on the hand (soft silicone).
Overall, the design of the watch makes a very good impression. They don’t look big even on a small hand, but a watch with a diameter of 42 mm is still better suited for the weaker sex.
The AMOLED screen of the watch is completely round. With a diameter of 1.39 inches, the resolution is 454×454, which is the largest in its class. The pixel density is 461 ppi, which is an indicator of the level of top smartphones! You won’t see any individual pixels here. I would immediately like to note the very high maximum brightness of the screen, this is good, since there is always room for adjustment. Again, on this type of screen we get a natural black color, which with high brightness gives us an excellent visual level of information perception in bright sunlight.
All icons, dials and fonts on this screen are clear with good rendering and visual perception. The front side of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a very smooth surface, there is an oleophobic coating. In general, we can say that the screen of the HONOR MagicWatch 2 is one of the best on the market.
HONOR MagicWatch 2 is protected against external factors according to the IP68 standard. With this watch you can easily swim in the pool, but it is better to avoid diving into sea water.
CONNECTION/SETTINGS/FUNCTIONALITY
To connect the watch to a smartphone, you need to install the Huawei Health application, available for iOS and Android. In the application itself, simply select your watch model from the proposed list and a connection will be established with your smartphone, everything is simple.
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A few words about the application itself:
The main screen shows all your achievements: steps, heart rate, sleep, weight, stress.
The exercise item allows you to set the following parameters: running outside, running on a treadmill, walking, cycling, training. If you turn on the GPS tracker, your GPS logs will be recorded, which in turn are displayed on Google Map.
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The “devices” item contains three sub-items. The “clock faces” item is responsible for the ability to load about 40 different types of the main screen with a clock. The “music” item allows you to download your music tracks via your smartphone to your watch (4GB available). The last item is responsible for fine-tuning the watch: constant heart rate monitoring, stress level test, notifications on/off, software updates, factory reset, etc.
The last fourth point “I” is responsible for entering your biometric data and managing notifications. The most convenient way to view information from the watch is in the application, since all the necessary information is displayed on the smartphone screen.
Now let’s go directly to the watch, look at the settings and functionality.
The main screen on the watch displays the selected watch faces. By long pressing on the screen, we have 12 watch faces to choose from (one is customizable). There are also about 40 watch faces available through the app. But using the «gallery» item you can upload any personal images (family photos, etc.)
When you press the top button on the main screen, a menu with installed applications appears: workouts, recordings, training status, heart rate, activity, sleep, stress, breathing exercises, calls, music, barometer, compass, messages, weather, stopwatch, timer, alarm clock, flashlight, phone search, settings. As you can see, everything you need is right there in an hour and you don’t even have to use the installed application on your smartphone.
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When you swipe from top to bottom on the main screen, five quick options are available: do not disturb, screen on, phone search, alarm clock, settings.
When you swipe from left to right and vice versa, six installed widgets are available: watch faces, heart rate monitoring, stress, weather, music, steps.
Swiping from the bottom to the top opens a menu with messages. The watch can receive absolutely any notifications from your smartphone, but only in text format; you cannot view photos and videos. You should not forget to give access to those applications from which you want to receive notifications.
Separately in the watch settings you can: connect BT headphones, adjust the screen, sound, vibration, configure the bottom button to launch the selected application, do a full reset.
AUTONOMOUS OPERATION
At the beginning, I was skeptical about the battery life in this smart watch; I had a sad experience using the first such watch from Samsung, for example, the Samsung Gear S sometimes had to be charged twice a day.
But in our case the situation is completely different.
The battery in this watch is serious — 455 mAh. The watch is fully charged in less than an hour. For charging, a docking station in the form of a round tablet is used. The station itself is connected to the watch using a magnetic mount, the charge from the network is transmitted via a USB — Type-C connector.
The watch is equipped with a Kirin A1 chipset based on energy-efficient Cortex-M7 cores that consume 10 mA/MHz, which is very little. The manufacturer claims that this watch can work for up to 14 days and it’s easy to believe.
My mode of use was as follows: activation of the watch screen when you raise your hand, constant monitoring of heart rate and stress, screen brightness in auto mode, sometimes connecting a GPS tracker. As a result, in 4 days the watch was discharged to only 78%. Even with the most intensive use, the watch can easily withstand a week of battery life.
CONCLUSIONS
HONOR MagicWatch 2 turned out to be a damn great gadget! The battery life is especially impressive and, in fact, at the moment this is the best smart watch for this parameter. The price is 12,990 rubles, which is a pretty good offer. It is also worth noting the fairly accurate counting of steps and heart rate. But how the sleep monitoring mode works is not entirely clear; in fact, I think it’s not particularly important. The screen deserves special attention; it is very bright and informative. The sound from the external speaker is loud, and the ability to have a conversation through the watch is one of the most important features for me.
IMPORTANT:
The watch has an NFC chip, but it is not activated at the moment. As soon as there are agreements with banks on the use of payment systems, everything will be activated programmatically.
LIKED:
- Excellent operating time
- Simple and sleek appearance
- Good functionality
- Beautiful screen
- Loud speaker
- Ability to talk through the watch
- Excellent workmanship
- IP68 protection
- Availability of NFC module
MAY NOT BE SUITABLE:
It is not possible to download third-party applications.
Workouts
Honor Band 5 has 10 workout modes.
- running outside
- running on a treadmill
- walking outside
- bike
- exercise bike
- swimming in the pool
- free training
- indoor walking
- rowing machine
- ellipse
In most of them, you can track your heart rate, including setting threshold values, the achievement of which the bracelet should signal.
Since we haven’t tested the Honor Band 4, we were most interested in exploring the swimming mode. A well-known problem with many fitness bracelets: even with 5 ATM protection, which allows you to submerge the device to depth, they do not provide any valuable statistics on swims — at best they record the time and total distance covered. Fortunately, Honor Band 5 is not one of them. Although not everything is smooth here either.
The screenshots above and below are a report on one training session, during which a 25-meter pool was crossed in one direction with breaststroke, and in the other with backstroke. It can be seen that the bracelet does not always correctly determine the style (you can see that it was he, and not the author, who was mistaken by looking at the number of strokes). But even the number of strokes is also often determined incorrectly.
But, however, the big plus is that a bracelet for 3000 rubles can, in principle, collect such extensive statistics. And the accuracy can be corrected in future firmware (which we hope will be done).
From the list of workouts that appeared only in Honor Band 5, we checked “Bicycle” — riding a bicycle outside the gym (only “Exercise Bike” was available in Honor Band 4).
The bracelet, connected to a smartphone with GPS, allows you to build a route on a map, records speed, measures heart rate, counts calories and, of course, shows the total duration and distance of the trip.
Among the shortcomings: the bracelet “does not understand” stops. Because of this, overall statistics suffer. That is, if you just stop and stand there, for example, for five minutes, the bracelet apparently thinks that you are just driving very slowly. As a result, the average speed is lower. Simply put, if you stand for five minutes and drive for five minutes at a speed of 15 km/h, the bracelet considers that your average speed over 10 minutes was 7.5 km/h. In a purely physical sense, this is correct, but what is the use of such information for fitness?
If you press pause when you stop, and start again when you start moving, the data will be more indicative. But, for example, during a real walk this is, to put it mildly, not very convenient.
This complaint, however, should be addressed not to the bracelet itself, but to the application. Many sports programs have an auto-pause mode that excludes breaks from race statistics.
honor band a2 smart bracelet priced at $29
Together with smartphone Honor 6A
Today the Honor Band A2 smart bracelet debuted. New product that replaced the model Honor Band A1
, will go on sale in China on June 9 and will be offered at a price of $29, which is almost double what the Honor Band A1 with a rubber strap was asking for at the beginning of sales.
Why such a markup? Most likely for the display. Last year’s model did not have a screen, but the new product has an OLED display with a diagonal of 0.96 inches. Protection from external influences has also improved: if the Honor Band A1 was characterized by a protection degree of IP57, then the Honor Band A2 has a protection degree of IP67. Finally, the developers have improved the functionality: a heart rate sensor has appeared, the bracelet can now track sleep phases and the distance traveled on a bicycle, and give recommendations on exercises. When paired with a phone via Bluetooth 4.2, the device can answer calls and messages.
Honor Band A2 uses a rechargeable battery with a capacity of 95 mAh, the declared autonomy is up to 9 days in normal operation and up to 18 days in standby mode. The color of the bracelet itself is black, but straps of different colors help brighten up the picture somewhat: yellow, white, red.
Source: Weibo
Photos: appearance.
Although Huawei Honor Band 3 has a design very similar to Xiaomi Mi Band, it is quite difficult to confuse them. In the black version of the strap, like mine, the bracelet looks very minimalistic.
Moreover, the design is also different: if the first/second version of the Mi Band has a design with a removable capsule, then Huawei is a “solid device”. That is, you cannot remove the strap while walking.
The strap is made of polyurethane rubber.
The material of the strap is very pleasant to the touch — it is soft and easily takes the desired shape. In the cold, which is very important, the strap does not become dull.
The total length of the entire strap is 215mm, width — 15mm. It can’t be called big, especially compared to watch straps/etc., but for a fitness bracelet it’s not surprising.
There are enough divisions for any hand.
The bracelet is fastened into two divisions at once, as you may have already noticed. The system is completely similar to the Mi Band.
When fastened and tightened (although it is not recommended to wear it this way), there are no highly visible marks from the fasteners on the hand.
The outer part of the clasp looks reliable and has the inscription “Honor”.
The connection with the capsule is beyond doubt — there are no gaps at all.
It is connected using bolts located on the inside of the bracelet.
There you can also see: charging contacts, a heart rate monitor and a special recess for installing a docking station.
Again, there are no strongly protruding parts here. Although the bracelet is ~16mm thick.
The docking station is installed until it clicks, and when installed it holds tightly.
The bracelet capsule is made of high-quality plastic, including its front panel.
I have already tested the water resistance — I did not take off the bracelet in the bathroom. Actually, without any footnotes, it is declared as waterproof, so the bracelet does not need to be removed at all.
In general, there is nothing to complain about here. The bracelet looks and feels like a quality product. And in fact, such a design is definitely more reliable than the version with a removable capsule: at a minimum, the level of water resistance increases. In this case, of course, one of the advantages of possible replacement of the strap with a steel bracelet or something else more original than the standard version is lost.
