Home » Honor Watch Magic Hands-on

Honor Watch Magic Hands-on

Written By Diangson Louie
Published • October 17th, 2019
Hands-onWearables
0

Honor recently launched in the Philippines its latest smartwatch, the Honor Watch Magic. It’s a good-looking wearable with a premium design, plenty of features, and a sub-PHP 8K price tag. Check out our initial thoughts below.

The unit we received features the Lava Black color with red accents and a red silicone strap. The chassis was crafted using 316L stainless steel, while the tachymeter design was engraved using CNC machining and laser engraving.

It has two buttons on the right side, the one at the top is for launching the menu, while the one at the bottom provides quick access to activity monitoring like running, walking, climbing, cycling, swimming, triathlon, and other activities.

Other features include built-in SatNavs (GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO) heart rate monitor, sleep monitor, barometer, compass, weather, stopwatch, timer, alarm, flashlight function, and find my phone.

Setup involves using the Huawei Health app. If you’re using a Huawei or Honor smartphone, the app is already pre-installed. All you need to do is launch it, add the specific device, and follow the setup instructions. If you’re using a different Android smartphone, you’ll need to download Huawei Mobile Services then the Huawei Health app.

Important note: The out-of-the-box firmware is buggy and Bluetooth doesn’t work well with non-Huawei/Honor phones. You’ll need to connect it to a Huawei/Honor smartphone first then update the firmware to the latest version (1.0.9.4). That should fix the issue.

The app gives you access to additional features like Huawei TruSleep, Activity reminder, continuous heart rate monitoring, and notifications for apps, calls, and SMS. You can also download more watch faces here, but the selection is limited. You will also need to update the firmware of the Honor Watch Magic, which you can do in this app, as well.

For the display, it comes with a 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen with 390 x 390 resolution or 326ppi, which is suitable for a screen of this size. The colors are great and have excellent outdoor legibility. It’s also comfortable and reasonably light. The strap can accommodate different wrist sizes and is easily replaceable.

As for the battery, Honor says that it can last for up to seven days. In our experience, a day’s use with continuous heart rate monitoring only consumed 15% of the battery or an estimate of more than six days. The unit also comes with a wireless charger that uses a USB Type-C connection.