New Honor watches make European debut

Honor (Huawei’s spin-off brand) is launching its first flagship smartwatches in Europe today. The release of Watch Magic and Dream has been timed to coincide with the unveiling of the company’s smartphone, the Honor View 20.
Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets
The two watches have actually been around for a while, having made their Chinese debut in October last year. Magic and Dream follow in the footsteps of Huawei’s Watch GT, but are smaller, simpler and less expensive.
There is actually very little to distinguish the two. The main difference are the colours. The Magic can be purchased in black, dark blue and silver while the Dream is available in pink and white. Dream also features smaller band sizes.
What they share is a circular, 316L stainless steel frame. The rim has a tachymeter scale and two physical buttons on the side.

The devices actually have more things in common with the Huawei Watch GT than their predecessor – the Huawei Fit. They all come with an AMOLED display with 390 x 390 resolution (326 ppi), although Honor’s measures 1.2 inches so is 0.19 inches smaller. The 42mm plastic case is down from 46.5mm.

Watch Magic and Dream are thinner, too, measuring just 9.8mm (versus 10.6mm). This makes them a more viable option for both men and women. Coming in at only 32.5 grams you will hardly feel them on your wrist.
The new watches are swim-proof down to depths of 50 metres (5 ATM). Under the hood they have the usual gamut of fitness tracking sensors including a heart rate monitor, nine different fitness monitoring modes, built-in GPS (including GLONASS, Galileo) and NFC for payments on the go.
There’s also Honor’s TruSleep sleep tracking and blood pressure monitoring (BPM) using heart rate variability. Real-world user tests will show how precise the BPM functionality actually is, as this is not something we’ve seen on other smartwatches.
To top it all off, the capacity of the battery is 178 mAh which is enough for a full week of typical use. This is no doubt helped by the fact that the smartwatch runs on Lite OS – the stripped back operating system that runs on Huawei Watch GT.
Watch Magic and Dream start selling on January 23rd in France, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Russia and other countries will follow soon. There’s no word yet on US availability.
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