It’s the most significant design refresh this family has seen to date. We get a “fashion squared” rounded square screen rather than the longer style previous models used, and a fetching rotary crown.
You can choose your strap fabric and colour, the Watch Fit 3 is super-slim at 9.9mm thick, weighs only 26 grams and has an incredibly bright and sharp OLED screen. It’s a watch with a strong image, particularly when you consider how affordable it is, starting at £139.
However, if you just focus on comfort and style, you’ll miss out on all the new and improved health and fitness features packed into the Huawei Watch Fit 3. Let’s take a closer look at six of the highlights. And after that we’ll tell you about a couple of new members of Huawei’s other watch families, for some more fitness-tracking smartwatch options.
Activity Rings
The heart of the Huawei Watch Fit 3’s daily fitness tracking is its Activity Rings. These featured in earlier Watch Fit models, but have been reworked from the ground up, including new algorithmic intelligence developed by the Huawei Finland Research Center.
Three rings show you how close you are to matching your daily goals. The first ring tracks calories burnt through exercise. The second is all about how long you’ve spent exercising, while the third relays your activity level outside of exercise. That includes things like getting up from your desk and walking around your home or office a bit.
Huawei Watch Fit 3 Activity Rings let you see your activity level with just the quickest of glances. Generational improvements in the behind-the-scenes tech are also designed to make calorie calculations more accurate than ever before, which is handy.
AI daily workout advice
The Huawei Watch Fit 3’s Intelligent Workouts feature is perhaps the one we’re most keen to try. It uses AI to work out an exercise plan that will get you closer to your fitness goals, without increasing the risk of burnout or injury.
On the watch itself you’ll be given suggested workout types, and how long your ideal workout should be that day. But there’s much more going on behind the scenes.
Intelligent Workouts’s workouts are based on a smart analysis of factors like your calorie intake and burn, how much you’ve worked out recently, the kind of work outs you enjoy, and even the weather forecast. Who likes going out for a run in the pouring rain, after all?
Stay Fit
Want to get in better shape? The Huawei Watch Fit 3’s Stay Fit app can help out with that.
Here’s how it works. You input the food you eat on the Huawei Health app on your phone, and the data is sync’d to your watch to let you keep track of your calorie goals more easily.
By automatically balancing calories consumed with calories burnt, the Stay Fit app lets you check in on your daily calorie deficit. And you can see how well-balanced your daily diet is in terms of fats, protein and carbohydrates too. Nail this fundamental stuff and you are on the road to a fitter, healthier lifestyle and, if it’s your goal, weight loss.
Massive workout mode library
Just like Huawei’s other higher-end health and fitness watches, the Huawei Watch Fit 3 includes a massive library of exercise tracking modes. There are more than 100 of them, and five are new for this generation.
They are football, basketball, track running, e-sports and, one of the fastest growing sports of the moment, Padel tennis.
The Huawei Watch Fit 3 is ready for indoors and outdoors training, and has an advanced dual-band GNSS location system to let you track your runs, walks and rides, no matter where you go. It’s a 5-system array, including support for GPS and GLONASS.
Next-generation sleep tracking
Unlikely as it may sound to some, sleeping is also a critical element of your workout routine. Bad sleep means poor recovery, diminished performance and more chance of developing an injury over time.
The Huawei Watch Fit 3 has TruSleep 4.0 tech, which analyses a huge amount of data as you sleep each night. As well as preparing the classic summary of your sleep duration and zones (deep, light, REM and awake) a wide array of other stats come into play.
You’ll see your sleep efficiency and sleep latency, which is how long it takes you to get to sleep after you actually get into bed. Your breathing is tracked through the night, as is your blood oxygenation. Each night becomes a mini sleep study, powered by the Huawei Watch Fit 3’s TruSeen 5.5 optical heart rate reader array.
Cycle tracking
The Huawei Watch Fit 3 also provides full menstrual cycle tracking. A calendar view lets you see info on previous cycles, and gauge what’s coming in the days ahead.
The most useful part for the average watch owner, though, is the ability to quickly record symptoms and notes on pain and flow intensity. These are then sync’d to your Huawei Health app to become part of your tracking history.
For a watch that starts at £139.99, the Huawei Watch Fit 3 sure packs in a lot of stuff. Huawei is also offering a free pair of FreeBuds SE 2 true wireless earphones for those who buy before June 18, worth £39.99 on their own.
However, if the Huawei Watch Fit 3’s style isn’t quite a match for your own sense of style, there are some alternatives. Huawei just announced a new Space edition of its top-end Watch 4 Pro (£549.99), and some new colours for the Watch GT 4 and FreeClip earphones.
The Huawei FreeClip (£179.99) now come in a fetching matt white, while the Huawei Watch GT 4 (£199.99) is available in a new green shade. You can check out the whole extended Huawei family of wearable tech at the Huawei website.