The HUAWEI GT4 is a high quality premium grade smartwatch currently priced at around £230 on Amazon. The AliExpress GT4 smartwatch – which very closely resembles the expensive original – is widely available across AliExpress from multiple sellers at a range of prices. The one I am looking at today cost me £20.93 including shipping.
The AliExpress watch has a 1.53″ 360x 360 display, a stainless steel body, a stainless steel body and a 300mAh battery with wireless charging. The product page claims a wide range of features for it including GPS, NFC, notifications, wireless charging, Blood pressure, SP02, sleep and heart rate tracking, Bluetooth calling, music control, camera control, and multiple sports tracking.
How many of these features are actually present and working?
In the box are the watch, silicon strap, charging cable and a User Guide in English. The presentation is OK but far from premium grade, the box is low to mid market but attractive enough with some thought given to the design.
I was very surprised by the build quality. The watch body feels weighty and substantial with a classy and impressive screen apparent even before switching the thing on. The watch strap is silicone with a simple traditional style metal buckle but does not feel cheap or low end. So far, as regards the hardware, I would genuinely think this was a premium product. Things start to change when looking at the magnetic charger which is lightweight and seems cheaply made The user guide too is not good, being poorly written, badly printed and hard to read but does contain all the instructions needed to use the watch.
The magnetic charger works well enough but the magnetic connection is not very strong and it is prone to falling off. I found that I could get two to three days of normal use from a full charge.
Turning the watch on for the first time I have to say I was very impressed by the display, which is bright colourful and detailed and would not be out of place on a high end watch and, I think, superior to that of my usual Amazfit smartwatch. The watch paired easily to my phone running the required RDFit app. and I was pleased to see it immediately downloaded and installed a firmware update. The phone link seems pretty stable and I have not yet needed to manually reconnect.
The RDFit app covers most of the claimed health tracking modes, although not all are fully supported by the watch. The app is reasonably well designed and easy to navigate, although good eyes are required to read the tiny lettering and often hard to read lettering. A large number of free watchfaces can be downloaded through the app onto the watch but many of them are very similar to each other and not well designed. The watch comes with 5 built-in watch faces which cannot be changed and one custom watch face which can either be downloaded or designed inside the app from your own original photo. For some reason, I have noticed that the active watch faces do seem to cycle of their own accord.
The watch interface is simple and easy to navigate reacts instantly and rapidly to touch and is fast, responsive and lag free in use. Again, this could be the screen of a high end smartwatch. From the home screen swipe down to access a shortcut screen with links to important control features, scroll up to view current app notifications, scroll left to view principal app screens (music control, steps, sleep), and scroll right to see widgets for weather, music control, exercise, sleep analysis, heart rate, blood pressure, SP02 and buttons for the four most used apps. The functions of the top button can be defined inside the watch settings app and I have mine configured so that a single press gives the installed apps which can be scrolled through either by touch or rotating of the top button, double press opens the stopwatch, a long press opens the sports menu. The lower button returns to the home screen, turns off the display and gives an option to power off the watch.
The watch monitors these parameters: Steps. Distance, Calories, Sleep, Heart Rate, SO02, Blood Pressure GPS route tracking and NFC. It also shows weather, phone notifications, breathing mode, phone music and camera controls.
Let’s look in more detail at watch the watch can do
NFC – It may do something since they seem to keep mentioning it, but it will not work in any way I am familiar with and cannot be used for card purchases or to interact in any way I can find with the phone.
GPS – There is no onboard GPS but it will offer connected GPS using your phone. The GPS takes a few seconds to sync but there is an onscreen progress bar to take the guesswork out of it. To my surprise, after an exercise session, the full GPS track is shown in the app along with calories used, pace, heart rate graph etc. I checked the GPS track on the onscreen map and it seems reasonably accurate.
Steps – The step counter works but with results different from my usual watch .
Distance – This works OK and uses the phone GPS but gives acceptably accurate results.
Calories – The app calculates this and is probably no more accurate or otherwise than any other, as I have doubts about them all. However, it does seem consistent and is probably good for showing a day on day usage.
Sleep – This seems to work and mirrors pretty much the same feature on my Amazfit watch although in less (unneeded) detail.
Heart Rate – The heart rate monitor seems pretty accurate and will poll automatically 24/7 in the background although less frequently than my usual watch. Spot readings can also be taken.
Blood Pressure Monitor – This attempts to work but, as with every other watch BP monitor I have tried is so inaccurate as to be useless.
SP02 Monitor – It seems to work and is reasonably accurate.
Music Controls – Yes, this works well and seems to recognise most audio phone apps. You cannot store music on the watch itself but only control playback from the attached phone.
Phone Notifications – Yes, these work, and are large and easy to read although do not identify the app used.
Phone calls – Works and you can initiate and answer a call from the watch. Callers voice comes through the watch speaker.
SMS Messages – Yes, they can be read on the watch screen
Siri/Android Assistant: open the watch. tap the screen and speak, audible reply comes through watch speaker
Lost Phone/Watch Alert – Yes, this works well and is noisy and hard to overlook.
Do Not Disturb – You can define a start and stop time and it works just fine.
Sedentary Reminder – yes, this seems to work.
Weather – Yes, this works too but is very bare-bones.
Watch Faces – A small selection can be made from within the watch and others can be downloaded using the app, either way, is a simple process.
So this is no Apple Watch, but it is certainly no cheap throwaway item. The hardware seems premium quality with a screen that is bright, clear, fast and responsive. On your wrist, this really does look like a £250 watch.
It has all the basics that you may need but many high end features are missing and some of those claimed are not present or do not work correctly.
A good number of apps are included but no third party ones such as Facebook, Instagram etc. There is no onboard GPS or NFC and some of the tracking apps, such as for sleep, are rather basic.
Physically this watch looks very much like the HUAWEI GT4 but lacks the high end features and of course, will not work with the native HUAWEI apps. This is no HUAWEI although it does look pretty much as good on the wrist.
This is a great buy for the price. If you need a well made, and easy to use smartwatch, that performs the basic features OK and looks fantastic then this is for you. If you want a simple sports tracking watch then this is for you too. For the crazy £20 price this is a great buy but don’t expect a HUAWEI.
Desktop Reviews 