The Honor MagicWatch 2 is a wonderful gadget for fitness freaks, with a variety of the latest and delivering health features like stress monitoring and exercises pace tracking. Though, as with other wearables from Honor and parent corporation Huawei, its lifestyle accessories are somewhat inadequate, so it might not satisfy someone who doesn’t exercise much. So here is everything you need to know about this wearable.
It’s a fitness-centric smartwatch that builds on its ancestor with some extra exercise-racking characteristics, as well as taking design details from the Huawei Watch GT and setting them in a watch directed at younger fans.
Honor MagicWatch 2
This is Honor’s first smartwatch since the Huawei ban, and a glimpse into what is expected to come from the firm, which has ideas to grow into a variety of other tech gadgets.
Design
The Honor MagicWatch 2 comprises of the main body with detachable straps, which is rather regular for a smartwatch. This smartwatch comes in two size variants, 42mm and 46mm.
The 46mm version has a few size-related advantages, including a larger screen with a greater resolution, a battery life that’s said to be about twice as long as the original models, long-range Bluetooth connection to your phone, and a built-in speaker and microphone for calling as well as for loudspeaker exercise motivation.
The watch strap choices are black fluoroelastomer (which seems a lot like silicone on the wrist), brown leather or rose gold Milanese Loop depending on which choice you go for – our review model had the previous one.
As for body colors, the 46mm version is available in black or light brown, and the 42mm model in black or gold.
The precise dimensions of the 46mm body are 45.9 x 45.9 x 10.7mm, while the 42mm version measures 41.8 x 41.8 x 9.3mm. The more obvious difference between the two is in weight, with the 29g 42mm version quite a little lighter than the 41g 46mm body.
Display
The Honor MagicWatch 2 screens – 1.2 inches and 1.39 inches across for the 42mm and 46mm versions respectively – are AMOLED displays that give a decent 800 NITs in brightness.
There’s an always-on display option, so you can tell the time without shaking the device. We found it a little shadowy, but in most conditions, we could see it properly enough to tell the time.
Fitness Tracker
The Honor MagicWatch 2 comes with a series of fitness modes, from the anticipated, like running, to some more extra niche choices, like a triathlon. Some of these are more complicated than others: some, like running, comes with a huge swath of functions and stats monitored, while others, like open-water swimming, just track time, calories, and heart rate.
Yes, the addition of open-water swimming does mean the watch is waterproof, up to 50m, so regular swimmers who don’t want a technoscientific swimming wearable might find this a suitable replacement.
Software
The Honor MagicWatch 2 doesn’t operate on Watch OS, or Wear OS, or any of the other prominent smartwatch operating systems; Huawei has its own software that it works for both Huawei and Honor wearables.
Huawei’s smartwatch OS is excellent for health and running features, as we’ve discussed, but it’s not as great for non-fitness lifestyle features. There’s an insufficient variety of apps for daily use, and there’s also no online library of any sort to extend the apps you have.
Battery Life
One of the most powerful features of the Honor MagicWatch 2, particularly compared to some other wearables, is its battery life – you can go without charging the device for a long time, which is exceptional for people who don’t want their watch dying on them at critical situations.
Honor claims that the MagicWatch 2 will last two weeks on a full charge while in our experiment, it comfortably made it through one week but didn’t really extend to two.
Price
The Honor MagicWatch 2 price has only been confirmed for the larger 46mm version, which is estimated to cost £159.99 in the UK (about $210, AU$305). That’s a rather reasonable price for a smartwatch, given that some similar options can cost up to twice that.
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