Honor Watch GS3 drops in Europe with improved health tracking

Honor Watch GS3 has received an official unveiling in Europe at MWC 2022. The device comes with improved GPS positioning and health tracking.

The company, which separated from Huawei recently, held a big presentation back in August where it announced its flagship Magic3 smartphone and provided the first info on Honor Watch GS3. We then saw a China reveal at the start of 2022, and that was followed up yesterday at MWC 2022 with a Europe-specific launch.

Strangely enough, we have not seen a GS2 so this is the successor to Watch GS Pro launched last year. Perhaps Honor deeds the upgrades to be big enough to warrant skipping a number.

In our review of Watch GS Pro we found it to be an excellent all-rounder. The highlights are the plethora of sensors and features, along with excellent battery life. The caveat is that the GS Pro is quite big. Therefore it caters to a specific audience so is not a good fit for those with small wrists and women. GS3 goes a long way towards rectifying this issue.

Honor Watch GS3 – technical specs

Three variants

Honor Watch GS3 looks much smarter and more streamlined that Watch GS Pro. The device still has the circular design, two physical buttons and a touchscreen. But it is all a bit lower key than before. Gone is the rugged look and we now have something much more conducive to everyday wear.

The actual specs consist of a 1.43 inch AMOLED screen (with 326 ppi, 466 x 466 pixel resolution) with a 3D curved glass design. The screen is held in place by a 45.9 millimetre, 316L low-carbon stainless steel case. It is only 10.5mm thick, weighs a mere 44 grams and is 5 ATM rated for water resistance.

You can choose from three variants. The main difference between them are the colours and straps – the actual design is identical. So you’ll get to choose between the Racing Pioneer (grey case, black rubber strap), Voyager (silver case, blue Nava leather strap) and Streamer Classic (golden case, brown Nava leather strap).

A more accurate, eight-channel heart rate sensor

The underlying hardware also improves on the original. Watch GS3 sports a heart rate sensor with better accuracy and frequency, along with many sports modes (100+ including 10 professional sports modes), a pulse oximeter and improved built-in GPS positioning (dual-frequency positioning with support for the five major satellite constellations). Other sensors include an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, air pressure and ambient light.

Essential reading: Best fitness trackers and health gadgets

The main news here is that the heart rate sensor is an eight-channel PPG sensor. Honor says the tech utilises artificial intelligence (including a frequency tracking algorithm and a AI heart rate algorithm), to provide more accurate heart rate tracking (targeting 97% minimum accuracy) over typical wrist-based systems. This should particularly be evident with high-intensity exercise.

Sleep is also said to be very accurate. In fact, the watch has the ability to provide over 200 different suggestions on how to improve your sleep, courtesy of Honor Health 5.0.

Battery life is a respectable 14 days between charges. With GPS switched on you can expect 30 hours. Rather impressively, just 5 minutes on the charger is enough to last a whole day. If you want a full charge of the 451 mAh battery, it will take about an hour.

Other things worth a mention are the 4GB of on-board storage for music. There’s an alarm and timer that comes preinstalled, remote camera shutter and you also have the ability to add additional apps via the LiteOS operating system. Of course, users are also able to view smartwatch notifications and the device offers a way to decline incoming calls with predefined text messages.

Honor Watch GS3: release date, price

Honor Watch GS3 should be available for purchase in Europe any day now. The timepiece will be available in Midnight Black, Ocean Blue and Classic Gold options. They start at 229 euros.

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