The Huawei Watch Fit 2 looks like a fitness tracker but can behave like a smartwatch and a sports watch too. It’s ultimately Huawei’s stab at a rival for the Fitbit Charge 5 – and it’s not a bad effort at all.

While it might cost less than Huawei’s full-fat smartwatches, the Watch Fit 2 manages to pack in a lot of the same features. It runs on Huawei’s HarmonyOS operating system to give you access to apps, you can follow animated workouts and track blood oxygen day and night.

Huawei has definitely upped its game on the wearables front over the last few years and the Watch Fit 2 looks like being another highlight for the company.

Design and display

• Comes in three different editions
• 1.74-inch AMOLED screen
• Waterproof up to 50 metres

Huawei has largely stuck to the same design it served up with the first Watch Fit. It comes in Active, Classic and Elegant editions, each of which offer different strap options. The Classic and Elegant models also include aluminium front cases as opposed to the polymer one on the Active.

The Active gets an extra case colour to choose from, but essentially you have a couple of colour options to choose from for each model. Want something more sporty? Go for the Active. Like the idea of pairing up that case with a metal or leather strap? Go for the Classic or Elegant.

The one pictured here is the Active edition – all models feature the same sized 46mm case, which measures in at 10.8mm thick. That case houses a solitary physical button and a pretty crisp, 1.74-inch, 336 x 480 pixel resolution AMOLED screen and it’s one of the sharpest, most vibrant screens you’ll find on a tracker around this price. It’s a bigger screen than the first Fit as well and more screen means it’s much nicer to absorb your stats and show off the array of watch faces available.

Speaking of watch faces, there’s a good mix here, with some that make use of the fact you can set that screen to be always on. You’ve got a collection of analogue and digital faces, plus more available for purchase through Huawei’s companion app – though they can be pricey.

While the different models come partnered up with different straps, Huawei does allow you to remove them, so you could whack on some metal or leather or grab a spare silicone strap to use when it’s time to get a sweat on.

The Watch Fit 2 is safe for keeping on in the shower and for going swimming too. It’s been slapped with a 5 ATM water resistant rating, which means pool swims and swims in shallow water in the ocean are all good here.

Overall the Fit 2 is a smart little looker. It feels sleek, you’ve got a great screen and it’s one you can effortlessly keep on 24/7 – including taking it to bed.

Health and fitness

• 97 workout modes
• Continuous SpO2 monitoring
• Built-in GPS with breadcrumb navigation
• Animated workouts

The Huawei Watch Fit 2 can do a lot. In fact, there’s a surprising amount this tracker is capable of. Whether you’re a runner or you like your home workout time, Huawei really does try to cover all of the bases here.

In terms of health and fitness tracking features, it can continuously monitor your heart rate, SpO2 levels, stress and even skin temperature. It won’t use that data to inform you of serious health issues, but can give you a bit of an insight into your general wellness.

Heart rate, SpO2 and stress data seemed to be generally in line with the Garmin Fenix 7 and Oura Ring we compared it against, though skin temperature data doesn’t feel all that useful in its current guise. Huawei includes its Healthy Living Clover to nudge you to keep up good daily habits and will also track steps and sleep in a reliable fashion.

It’s the Fit 2’s sports tracking skills that really take centre stage here though, where Huawei has managed to cram in a lot of the big features from its Huawei Watch GT Runner watch. That includes dual-band positioning technology to improve outdoor tracking accuracy in areas where picking up a reliable satellite signal can be challenging. It wasn’t perfect in our tests against our Garmin watch, but certainly didn’t perform so badly that core stats were wildly off the mark.

Core running stats were also good in general, though heart rate data did falter at high intensities. It’s a shame you can’t pair up an external heart rate monitor like you can on Huawei’s pricier smartwatches.

Huawei is also bringing training plans over from the GT Runner, which you can follow on the Watch Fit 2, plus it’s introducing new animated pre-run and post-run warm ups and stretches, which is a really nice touch. It still includes the animated workouts that featured on the original Watch Fit here, too.

It’s not done with runners either as there’s also the capacity to sync routes to the Fit 2 and make use of simple breadcrumb-style navigation to help you get around and explore new locations – then navigate your way back home. It’s rare to find this kind of support on a device at this price.

All of your data is stored in Huawei’s own Health app but there is the capacity to share that data to third party platforms as well and that does now include Strava.

Smartwatch features

• Built-in music player
• Bluetooth calling
• AppGallery access

Huawei again does a pretty good job of bringing over a lot of the features you’ll find on its GT series and Watch 3 smartwatches to make sure you’re not massively shortchanged in this department.

It is compatible with both Android phones and iPhones, but if you want access to all of the Fit 2’s features, it needs to be a Google-powered phone. The most notable feature that is off limits is the ability to sync over music to the onboard music player.

What you can do across the board is view notifications, view weather reports, take calls over Bluetooth, make use of the music playback controls and the Fit 2 delivers those features in a mostly slick fashion. You can’t respond to notifications, but they are easy to read and identifiable in terms of which app they’ve been fired across from.

The music player is only really useful if you have a lot of your own music to sync over as it doesn’t support offline playlist syncing from third party streaming services like you can do on a lot of Apple, Garmin and Fitbit watches.

It does run on Huawei’s own HarmonyOS operating system that ensures a consistent UI look with Huawei’s other smartwatches. It also gives you access to the Huawei AppGallery store, which – it’s fair to say – is a work in progress and by no means the full fledged app stores you get access to via the Apple Watch or a Wear OS smartwatch.

Battery life

• Up to 10 days battery life
• 7 days battery life in heavy usage

The Huawei Watch Fit 2 can’t match Huawei’s smartwatches for battery life, but it’s still capable of lasting a week before you need to think about charging it again.

Huawei states you’ll get up to 10 days with typical usage and that includes doing things likwe turning on the screen 200 times a day, taking a 30-minute call over Bluetooth and working out for just 30 minutes a week.

When you double that exercise time tracking and enable features like continuous heart-rate monitoring and the most advanced sleep monitoring support, then that drops to 7 days.

We’d say that those numbers largely ring true based on our testing. We definitely tracked more exercise time and made use of that continuous heart-rate monitoring and richer sleep tracking support and it was closer to a week. That 7 days matches what the Fitbit Charge 5 offers to put that into perspective, so it sits well with the competition on this front.

Verdict

The Huawei Watch Fit 2 feels like a bit of a surprise package in the Huawei wearable family. It’s built hugely on the original in terms of the levels of smarts you now have at your disposal. If you’re looking for the kind of sports and fitness features Huawei offers on its pricier smartwatches, but for less, then this is well worth considering.