Huawei GT6 Pro, a marathon runner on your wrist, sleek and robust with record battery life

There are objects that induce behaviour or at least justify it to yourself in the first place. For example, social obsession, exercise addiction, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) from work notifications. Smartwatches were also born to be the object of morbid relationships. The Huawei Watch GT6 Pro that we tested for a few weeks is a sleek and rugged watch with record-breaking battery life and top-notch sports and health monitoring. Let's say right away that compared to its competitors, it's a bit like wearing a small powerhouse on your wrist. Not so much for its computing power but for its autonomy: Huawei claims 21 days of battery life, which is a lot. In my tests I reached about ten days, activating the GPS and all the notifications (there are many) that I use but without spending time playing with the display. For a sportsman, this means that you can train every day with GPS on, leave the screen always lit up and arrive at the fifth or sixth day with half a charge remaining. This is a figure that, put next to the scarce two days of an Apple Watch, tells the difference between a marathon runner and a sprinter.

The construction is heavy watchmaking: TC4 titanium for the case, ceramic back, sapphire crystal protecting a 1.47-inch AMOLED that shoots up to 3000 nits. In practice, even under the midday sun, the dial remains legible. It is not a discreet watch: 46 millimetres in diameter and 50 grams of weight make themselves felt, especially on small wrists. But those who choose it do not do so out of minimalist elegance.

The real substance is in the sensors. The GT6 Pro measures pulse, oxygen saturation, cardiac variability, arterial stiffness, body temperature. It monitors your sleep and, when you use it for running, it returns lab-like data: VO₂max, vertical oscillation, stride length, ground contact time. It doesn't just tell you how many kilometres you have run, but how you have run them. The dual-band GPS works with all possible constellations - Galileo, Glonass, BeiDou - and the offline maps allow you to orient yourself even without your phone.

The limitation is the ecosystem. HarmonyOS 6.0 handles notifications, health, training, Bluetooth calls well, but it doesn't offer the same variety of apps you find on Apple or Wear OS. There is no integrated LTE, no WiFi, and NFC payments work spottily depending on the country. Here the comparison with the Apple Watch is reversed: Cupertino wins on software integration and quantity of apps, Huawei wins on autonomy and durability of materials.

Ultimately, the GT6 Pro is not a showcase gadget but a field instrument, designed for those who treat their body as a dataset to be analysed. It is the companion for those who run, cycle, train and want solid numbers rather than shiny icons. It is a watch that doesn't ask you to remember the charger every night, but demands wrists that are ready to support its presence. But it is not the best choice for those looking for an all-round smartwatch experience with a vast ecosystem of apps and advanced integration with their smartphone. The price? It starts at 379 euros for the fabric and fluoroelastomer straps and goes up to 499 euros for the titanium one.