I've always really liked Honor's smartwatches, and both the Honor Watch ES and Watch GS Pro from 2020 really impressed me – in fact, the latter might be the best smartwatch that I've tested. However, we've only heard radio silence from the brand since then, at least on the smartwatch front.
That's now changed thanks to MWC 2022 as, alongside its new top-spec smartphones, Honor has revealed a new smartwatch. This is the Honor GS 3 (no, I don't know what happened to the GS 2, either) and I want to like it, but there's one small issue.
I haven't tested this new smartwatch yet, so everything we know about it is based on Honor's briefing, launch event and press materials – hopefully we'll be able to play around with it soon, so stay tuned for that.
Is the Honor Watch GS 3 magic?
The Honor Watch GS 3 seems to have lots of the features I liked from previous Honor watches.
Top among them are the fitness courses, which are animated workout practices that walk and talk you through a series of exercises, which is super-useful for people who don't totally know what they're doing with their workout (by that I mean, me).
There are 100 workout modes in total, same as on previous Honor watches, and we've previously found these quite useful. The reason I like Honor's wearables so much is because of their suite of fitness tools.
Now onto the design: to look at them, these are standard smartwatches, inspired by classic watches. There are three variants: blue, gold and black, and while the latter two are paired with straps of the same color, the former has a silver band.
These bands are my issue with the device though – they're made of leather (meat leather, not faux leather as many tech brands use). Not only is leather far from ideal for people who don't want to use animal-based products (like me), it's also annoying on a device with fitness features, as leather doesn't fare well when paired with sweat or moisture like that.
Previous Honor smartwatches have used materials like fluororubber, which are more comfortable and durable.
Beyond that, the watch has a 1.43-inch AMOLED screen (which has an impressive 1,000-nit max brightness), 5ATM water resistance, and comes in stainless steel, so it sounds pretty durable.
Overall, the watch sounds great on paper, though we'll need to test it out - and know its price - to come down on a decisive verdict.
- MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest showcase for the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting on the show all week. Follow our MWC 2022 live blog for the very latest news as it happens and visit our dedicated MWC 2022 hub for a round-up of the biggest announcements.
