Huawei Watch D2 Review: Cutting-Edge Health Smartwatch

Price at time of review

£349.99

Today’s best deal: Huawei Watch D2

this Huawei Watch D2 It is the follow-up of Huawei’s health field smart watch Launched its breakthrough blood pressure monitoring technology. This time, it improves how blood pressure smart works and adds more smart watch features from other Huawei watches.

In addition to new health insights, Huawei has also added smart features such as Bluetooth calling, richer notification support, and more exercise modes than the Watch D.

This is a Huawei smartwatch and, like its predecessor, it doesn’t come cheap, priced at £349/$399. It’s made some big changes here, though, which should make this version of Huawei’s blood pressure tracking smartwatch more attractive than a watch with blood pressure monitoring capabilities. Samsung Galaxy Watch 7.

design and build

• Available in two colors
• Smaller housing design
• IP68 waterproof design

The first Huawei Watch D was a bulky smartwatch with a 51mm bezel that looked like a medical device with an AMOLED screen.

Thankfully, the Watch D2 has been downsized, with a more manageable 48mm aluminum case design that’s only slightly thinner than the Watch D at 13.3mm thick.

You can now choose between black or gold (with white strap) looks, and a choice of Viton or leather straps, which help make the Watch D2 feel and look more like a smartwatch you’d want to wear.

There’s no denying it’s still a big watch, and I still wish it were smaller and lighter. But for now, this is a step in the right direction for the Watch D.

There are still two physical buttons, and Huawei has ditched the top one in favor of a rotating crown that you can use to scroll the screen, adjust the volume, and launch the app screen.

Unfortunately, the Huawei D2’s waterproof rating hasn’t changed, with an IP68 rating making it more suitable for showering than open water swimming.

Another important design aspect here is the integration of the inflatable cuff, which sits within a fairly wide strap that hides it. You’ll find a mid-length band that provides cuff-style blood pressure measurement along with the same-sized bladder.

I found the combination of the two made the original Watch D rather awkward to wear. While that feeling hasn’t completely gone away, the combined belt and airbag design is definitely more comfortable.

Screen and audio

• Larger AMOLED screen
• Display can be set to always on
• Includes microphone and speakers

Although the size of the Watch D2 has shrunk, the screen has actually grown larger. Now it comes with a 1.82-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 480×480 pixels.

That’s a pretty big jump compared to the 1.64-inch, 456×280 size used on the Watch D.

As a result, you get a screen quality that’s more in line with Huawei’s other smartwatches. It’s incredibly sharp, colors are nice and accurate, and it offers deep blacks you’d associate with a premium AMOLED display.

It’s also a very responsive screen, with no terrible lag, and while there are some black screen borders to contend with, it doesn’t take up too much available screen real estate.

Like the Watch D, it also includes a microphone, and Huawei has now also added a speaker, meaning you can now make calls via Bluetooth and listen to audio via the built-in music player. The speaker delivers ample volume and crisp clarity for music streaming and phone calls.

Software and functions

• Runs on Hongmeng operating system
• Added more smart watch features
• Support custom watch faces

Watch D2 runs Huawei HarmonyOS 5.0 and is compatible with Android and iOS devices. I mainly use it on my iPhone and paired it with a Samsung for a while Android phone I found the pairing and syncing experience to be generally good.

The Huawei Health Europe companion smartphone app is a very busy place and it’s worth spending some time getting to know it as there’s a lot to play with here in terms of settings and features.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Watch D is that it’s a smaller smartwatch than Huawei’s other smartwatches, but that’s something the Huawei D2 is clearly trying to solve.

It’s still not on par with the best features Huawei has to offer in this regard, but it certainly gives you more features, including Bluetooth calling, a music player, and screenshot capabilities, which are the most noteworthy. However, you still can’t get LTE or access Huawei’s AppGallery storefront.

There are still some limitations to using it with an iPhone, such as not being able to act on notifications or use the music player. Viewing notifications on the Watch D2 is fine, but I did notice that it didn’t always show the correct app icon for where the notification was sent.

Music controls (media played from the phone) are well integrated, and there’s a good mix of dials that allow you to make these health features a focus of attention, or not.

Health & Fitness Tracking

• New ambulatory blood pressure monitoring
• New Huawei TruSense system
• More than 80 sports modes

While this is a watch with sensors and features to track exercise, steps, and sleep, the real focus of the Watch D2 is its ability to provide rigorous health monitoring with built-in blood pressure monitoring.

This is a blood pressure tracking method that uses an inflatable airbag (in-band) and Huawei’s algorithm to measure blood pressure, and its accuracy has been medically certified.

It beats Apple to offer this type of monitoring While Samsung and now the Amazfit do offer blood pressure tracking, you’ll need to calibrate it regularly with a traditional cuff monitor to ensure it’s reliable. With the Watch D2, you don’t have to do this.

Taking measurements is convenient and simple. It provides instructions for correct readings and takes only 30 seconds. During testing, I’ve been using it with a traditional cuff blood pressure monitor to compare readings.

While the readings are not always the same, they are usually very close. Just like the cuff monitor, it’s all about making sure you follow instructions to get the most reliable data.

As with the original Watch D, the SYS (systolic) blood pressure value is often different from the value shown on a traditional monitor, and the diastolic value is usually closer, but when the difference between the two is small, a large number of measurements are taken. Press numbers.

Previous readings can be viewed on the watch, and guest measurements can be selected if you want others to use the watch for special features of the D2.

Records of these visitors will not be saved. The main purpose here is to reliably measure and present this data within the application to identify trends. This provides some small insights when looking at average blood pressure and pulse readings, but ultimately gives you the data record you need to do your job.

Huawei has also added support for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, or ABPM, which is a really big deal. This includes taking blood pressure regularly during the day and night as part of a monitoring plan.

It is recommended to use this feature 24 hours a day to get the most insightful set of trends and charts to view. It’s an odd feeling to have these measurements disappear at night (they might wake you up), and while it’s usually a quiet process, you can still hear the slight squeaking sound of the airbags inflating.

In addition to blood pressure tracking, you also get medically approved EKG monitoring. I compared ECG readings on Apple and Polar watches to ECG monitoring, as well as data from the blood pressure monitor I used to test blood pressure tracking, and it felt very consistent and reliable.

One problem with it is that since I’m a very fit person with usually lower heart rate, but I really enjoy post-workout, I was prompted to consider taking an EKG 30 minutes after a workout as a way to see if your How the heart responds to exercise during that time.

In addition to blood pressure and ECG monitoring, there are many other functions. The watch continuously monitors your heart, tracks stress and skin temperature, and provides a health overview by monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, stress and skin temperature in one go.

It’s also a very capable activity and sleep tracker, although it’s a pretty bulky thing to have in bed. It has solid exercise tracking, and while it doesn’t come with the latest GPS technology, overall the performance during my workouts was pretty solid.

Battery life and charging

• Battery life up to 6 days
• Up to 24 hours in ABPM mode
• Use wireless charging

The Watch D2’s promised battery life does drop slightly, with typical use falling from 7 days to 6 days. This does not include keeping the screen on at all times or using some of the more power-hungry available features.

I found that the battery lasted 5-6 days when using Wake to Wake support and measuring my blood pressure twice a day. When I enable always-on display mode, it drops to 4-5 days.

If you plan to use ambulatory blood pressure mode, taking these measurements throughout the day will consume a lot of battery power and only last 24 hours. When used for outdoor exercise tracking, the battery power dropped by 4% after 30 minutes of running.

When it’s time to charge, you’ll find a very familiar white round charging puck on which to place the Watch D2. Charging from 0% to 100% takes less than an hour, so the watch can be back up and monitoring your health again relatively quickly.

Price and availability

Huawei Watch D2 can pass Huawei website and retailers like Amazon and Argos Priced at £349.99/$399.

This is the same price as the original Watch D launched in 2022, but more expensive than the Watch D launched in 2022. Huawei Watch GT 5but not like Huawei Watch Ultimate Edition.

Both Samsung Amazfit offers blood pressure tracking features, but they do so primarily through measurements based on optical sensors and require regular calibration with traditional blood pressure monitors.

Check out our ranking best smartwatch For the top options.

Should you buy the Huawei Watch D2?

If you like the idea of ​​the Huawei Watch D but are intimidated by its big and bulky design, or don’t like that it’s a worse smartwatch than other Huawei watches, this watch will be more to your liking .

If you want proper blood pressure tracking and other thoughtful health monitoring features, these are great reasons to choose the Watch D2.

Now it’s also a better smartwatch if you can live without it, doesn’t quite match Huawei’s most feature-rich smartwatches, and doesn’t expect it to perform like an Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch, I think a lot of people will be disappointed with the Watch D2 Very Satisfied Offers blood pressure tracking capabilities that allow you to move away from traditional cuff-based monitoring.

Specification

• Available for Android and iOS
• 1.82-inch AMOLED touch display
• Battery life up to 6 days
• Medically certified EKG sensor
• Medically Approved Blood Pressure Monitoring
• Optical heart rate and SpO2 sensor
• skin temperature sensor
• Built-in GPS
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
• 48×38×13.3 mm
• 40g (excluding strap)