Pros: Excellent for keeping the tiniest impressive buds safely nearby, good sound features and noise cancelation.
Cons: Main phone battery life is cut back to accommodate the buds and water resistance is lower than Huawei’s other “normal” watches. Watch does not have a speaker requiring you to wear buds to handle phone calls.
Is it a smartwatch or earbuds? It’s both! The unique Huawei Watch Buds ($699) have arrived in Canada. It’s a smartwatch and earbuds, literally in one package. The tiny buds are housed under the watch’s pop-up latched watch face.
Huawei isn’t the first 2-in-1 smartwatch designer. There’s a slew of similar designs like the SuoKom Smart Watch with Earbuds, which sell for less than $50 at Walmart.ca. It’s crude, thicker than your thumb, and can’t hold a candle to the Huawei’s Watch Buds’ sophistication, compactness, smartness, and quality. The Watch Buds is only 2–3mm thicker than today’s top smartwatches.
Let’s cut to the chase. How do these buds, smaller than a child’s pinky, sound? I tried them with several acquaintances (sanitizing before switching to each new user, of course!) whose eye-popping reaction to the sound quality says it all. They may not have the same punch as much larger buds, but they are close with outstanding features. They have a frequency response range 20 Hz (min) – 20kHz (Max).
Buds Features Besting Competitors
- Voice, instrument, bass and normal presets.
- Noise cancelling – off -awareness settings.
- Resume your song after pausing and removing, then put back in.
- Left and right earbuds adaptive identification. Auto switch left and right by lowering your head slightly. They are featherweight at 4 grams.
- Hearing challenged folks can customize for clearer voice similar to hearing aid testing.
- Tip fit test (comes with a spare set).
- Find audio pinging buds separately within Bluetooth range.
- You can tap the earbud themselves or anywhere on your ears in front of behind the buds. Gestures include twice or three times taps on each ear side for a variety of functions like answering or rejecting calls, play/pause tracks, next track and noise cancelling on and off.
- AI Noise Cancellation Calling uses a bone conduction sensor, dual-mic noise cancellation, and a DNN AI call noise cancellation algorithm to minimize distractions and keep calls loud and clear.
- The 3D curved glass is embedded into the 1300°C refined steel body.
- Adjust angle swing of the pop-up watch face.
- Put away buds securely deep in the magnetic storage charging slots and close watch face lid, left. When you pop lid open the buds are now under the top shallow lid for easier removal. Thoughtful design.
- The buds optionally charge from the watch battery or only when the watch is being charged, the later saving watch battery life.
- On a full charge, the watch can last up to 3 days with typical applications running and up to to 7 days in power-saving mode. Bud battery life has 3.0 h audio playback/ 2.0 h calling with noise cancelation on and 4.0 h audio playback/ 2.5 h calling with noise cancellation off.
- For clear call quality, the HUAWEI WATCH Buds incorporate dual microphones with audio pickup and a bone conduction sensor. The voice clarity in noisy environments was impressive.
Watch Features
The watch component keeps all the measuring and tracking features Huawei watch owners are accustomed to with six sensors: 6-axis inertial sensors (acceleration sensor and gyroscope sensor), optical heart rate sensor 5.0, ambient optical sensor, Hall effect sensor, capacitive sensor, and bone conduction component (VACC).
Healthwise the watch monitors continuous heart rate, SpO2, offers stress relief as well as thorough sleep monitoring. It also offers 80 sports modes, including 10 professional sports modes, and the ability to manually add over 70 sports activities, leveraging Huawei’s sports and fitness technology. The built-in GPS tracks your walks and runs.
The high-definition 1.43-inch AMOLED colour screen with a sharp resolution of 466 x 466 seamlessly fitted on the stainless-steel case, also features a diamond-facet button with a unique metallic lustre and a full-grain leather strap made from top-layer calfskin and is 14.99 mm thick. The pop-up watch face has undergone 100,000 times of opening and closing, a 5kg stress test and other harsh tests, making it robust and durable.
Weather Proofing
The Huawei Watch Buds earbuds are rated IP54 water-resistant. This means that water may enter the earbud compartments when the watch cover is opened and closed, so it’s best to keep the compartments dry. The device is splash, dust, and water-resistant under normal conditions but isn’t a pro-level water-resistant device like Huawie’s normal smartwatches, understandably.
The HUAWEI WATCH Buds are available on the Huawei Amazon.ca storefront and at Visions and Best Buy. To celebrate the Canadian launch, for a limited time, get a free a HUAWEI Scale 3 smart scale ($69 value) as a gift with the purchase of the HUAWEI WATCH Buds and $50 off of your purchase on this item. (Note: to claim gift, users must add both watch and Scale 3 to their Amazon cart in a single order prior to checkout.)