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amazon HONOR WATCH MAGIC reviews
Healthy design, like a traditional clock
Watch Magic has a classic round face design. The Watch’s surface is stainless steel; the lines are CNC cut and look strong and sturdy. A special highlight in the design of this watch is the very thin and light body, only 9.8mm thick and weighs 32.5g. That is one of the lightest smartwatches on the market today. The slim body combined with the 42mm surface makes this Watch very compact, suitable for most users.
The back of the Watch has sensors and two magnet pins for charging. Plugging in is easy; place the Watch close to the charger’s surface, and they automatically pull into each other. The Watch Magic is also designed to be 5ATM waterproof. Thus, you can safely wear it when swimming, bathing, or exercising in the rain. However, note that you should change the leather strap if the use of the Watch has contact with water.
The strap of the Watch is easily detachable to replace the other cord supplied by Honor or from third parties, and you can even replace the regular watch strap if the length and width of the cord fit. Sensually, the leather strap version looks like a traditional watch, while the black silicone strap looks healthier, more dynamic, and sportier.
The screen of the Watch Magic is a touch screen, 1.2 inch AMOLED panel, 390 x 390-pixel resolution with a pixel density of 326 PPI. The display quality is good today; the color and sharpness are not inferior to Samsung Galaxy Watch or Apple Watch Series 4. Brightness is also very high, can be seen when watching directly under the light sunny.
The screen is designed to fit inside the rounded steel border, limiting the risk of scratches during use. Due to its nearly one year of launch and in the low-price segment, the Watch Magic’s screen does not have the always-on feature like Apple’s recent Apple Watch Series 5. However, this product has a “Show Time” mode that lights up the clock continuously for 5 minutes.
Currently, you can change between 13 clock faces right on the setting of Watch Magic. Honor also offers a few more watch faces that can be downloaded via the Huawei Health app when connected to the Watch. Although the number of watch faces is not much, it is quite enough to change for each different activity. The manufacturer designs each Watch Magic watch face for specific needs, such as a watch face to track running, heart rate, outdoor activities, weather, or to see the time as a traditional clock.
Software: Lite OS is the complete opposite of competitors
Honor Watch uses Huawei’s operating system designed for wearables called Lite OS. That is the first time Huawei abandoned Google’s WearOS operating system to switch to a platform developed by the company. In stark contrast to WearOS and WatchOS, the Lite OS platform does not have an application ecosystem with many applications. Therefore, you can only use applications that are already installed on the device.
In other words, Watch Magic does not currently have many smartwatch functions. You will not have third-party applications on this Watch, unable to download music, control music, view maps, or virtual assistants on Watch. Watch Magic’s software mainly focuses on basic needs such as displaying messages and notifications and receiving and rejecting calls from your phone. Scanning through four main screens on the Watch to see your heart rate, weather, motion parameters, or stress level.
Besides, you can open the menu on the Watch to start the exercise mode. Currently, Watch Magic provides up to 11 different exercises from walking, running, cycling, swimming, triathlon. In addition, you can also use some other functions such as timer, alarm, turn on the screen to make lights, find phones or turn on do not disturb mode.
Despite its limited software functionality, this Watch scores very well in the motor tracking function. Watch Magic supports three popular navigation systems, GPS, GLONASS, and GALILEO, to improve accuracy. That is useful for tracking activities such as cycling, jogging, or climbing. Also, due to the software only simple functions, the control operations on the Watch usually work smoothly, without jerky lag during use.
Track movement, sleep, and heart rate
In the function of tracking movement, sleep, and heart rate, the experience of Watch Magic is quite similar to the Honor Band 5 bracelet we had the experience a few months ago. But due to the built-in GPS, this Watch can work independently in fitness and sports tracking, rather than relying heavily on phones like the Honor Band 5 bracelet.
But to fully track the movement type and watch function visually, you need to install the Huawei Health app, which currently supports Android (from 4.4) and iOS (from iOS 9.0) to your phone, then sync to the Watch via Bluetooth 4.2 LE connection.
Watch Magic allows you to track 11 types of movement, including running, walking, cycling, swimming, running, climbing, and triathlon with an activity tracking function. During the Watch Magic experience, I mostly track running, walking, and biking outdoors. With these activities, the Watch provides a lot of detailed information related to each type of movement right on the watch face and on the Health app.
For example, by walking type, you can know the walking time, distance traveled, calories consumed, average heart rate to average speed, and the number of steps. Due to the integration of the three navigation systems as mentioned, Watch Magic tracks the distance accurately. In particular, this Watch does not count steps when you ride a motorbike or car, unlike some other cheap bracelets like Mi Band 4 still count the wrong number of steps when users ride or sit in a car.
With outdoor running, you will get a lot of information from the chart of distance, running time, running speed to heart rate and calories consumed. You will also have information on distance, cycling time, speed, and calories consumed with cycling. Based on the collected data, the Health app will assess how well exercise is done for each type of exercise.
Regarding heart rate, Watch Magic measures your heart rate continuously and displays information in real-time on the Watch. On the software, the Watch also has an option to display an alert when the heart rate is high, allowing users to choose the alert level from 100 bpm to 150 bpm. That is especially helpful for people who have problems with their heart rate or those who are more active who need to monitor their heart rate to adjust their movement level. The heart rate readings from this Watch are also quite similar to the heart rate measurements on the Apple Watch Series 5, usually only about 2-4 beats per minute.
Like on the Honor Band 5, I was especially impressed with the TruSleep feature designed to assess sleep quality on Watch Magic. The watch tracks sleep in detail at each stage of sleep and provide you with the amount of time you spend deep and REM sleep, as well as the number of times you wake up. In addition, the Health app provides basic advice on exercise, diet, and rest to improve sleep quality. According to Honor, the sleep feature on its watches and wearables has been certified by the US-based Harvard Medical University for reliability.
where can you get a HONOR WATCH MAGIC online
Original Huawei Honor Watch Magic Outdoor NFC Smart Watch Sleek Slim Long Battery Life GPS Scientific Coach 1.2 inch HD AMOLED 390×390 Color Screen Activity Tracker 5ATM Waterproof (Black): Buy it now
Battery time: about five days
The Watch Magic has a 178 mAh battery, which is not big on the watch market. However, the Lite OS operating system with simple functions helps this watch have a long practical usage time. The watch usually lasts about five days in the notification mode, continuous heart rate, sleep tracking, and movement process during real-time use. According to the manufacturer’s announcement, this watch has a battery life of up to 7 days of use.
Charging time for the watch is also quite fast; it takes about 85 minutes to charge since the battery is only 2% fully. In particular, the first 20 minutes of charge is about 34% battery, 30% to 50%, and 1 hour to charge 90% battery.
Summary
That is a lightweight design watch, a good display, and a traditional design that can be worn in place of a stylish watch. The software feature of Watch Magic is not as diverse as other smartwatches. Still, it is quite enough for basic needs such as displaying notifications, messages, calls, heart rate, sleep, and especially tracking a variety of forms of independent education and paired with the phone app. Actual battery life of up to 5 days and water resistance is also very significant plus points.
In general, if you want a pure smartwatch to track movement, then Watch Magic is a soft price option to consider. If you want a smartwatch with rich software functionality, support for many applications, and add more watch faces or other complex features, then Watch Magic is not a suitable choice.