Huawei Watch D2

Huawei is innovating in its home market of China on the smartphone front, and although they unfortunately have no prospect of being sold here with Google services, they have instead thrown themselves into the smartwatch market and have repeatedly proven that they are a fascinating manufacturer that thinks outside the box and can deliver truly excellent hardware, too.

However, the Huawei Watch D2 is cut from a slightly different cloth than the rather solid other smartwatches we have looked at from them recently. In many ways, this is a much more serious tracker, primarily designed to let you monitor your health, or just aspects of it, in a more meticulous way.

First, I would like to address the elephant in the room, because it is, of course, rather unfortunate that the D2 looks the way it does. Huawei would certainly distance itself from calling it an Apple Watch clone, so I will refrain from doing so, but this square shape, the digital crown in the upper right corner. Huawei could have chosen a different form factor, a different screen ratio, but instead, the D2 looks like a far less serious gadget than it actually is, and that's a shame. I'm not crazy about the look, let it be said, even though both the strap with built-in "airbag" to ensure the best possible blood pressure measurement and the sparkling watch case are impressive.

That said, the D2 is probably Huawei's most pragmatic smartwatch to date, designed almost exclusively to provide the user with a specific feature set and to deliver these in the most reliable way possible. There is 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure measurement, a built-in ECG, SpO2 meter, a myriad of training modes, and detailed reviews of, for example, sleep patterns, which monitor from start to finish and look for abnormal or uneven breathing or similar. It is really in-depth and far more accommodating than any other "breakdown" of health data I have seen from other smartwatches. It really makes Fitbit or Apple's suite look like it is designed for children or just for light-hearted use.

I don't have sleep apnoea, nor do I need to keep a close eye on my blood pressure (I've actually developed hypochondria over the last year or so), so it's a bit difficult for me, but I can say that the Huawei Watch D2 is approved and authorised by the EU's Medical Device Regulation, and that the way in which training is selected, presented, and catalogued is among the most advanced suites I've seen to date.

Make no mistake, the D2 is the only smartwatch that offers ABPM, i.e. the constant, consistent, and in-depth measurement of blood pressure that makes this a much more serious piece of health equipment. At the same time, this makes it difficult to assess whether £350 is completely unreasonable, as there is so little to compare it with. However, I can say that even though I really feel that Huawei should have chosen a different design profile here, the technology and functionality behind it are so impressive that I am more willing to overlook a number of minor issues.

And yet, at the same time, I have to point out that as brilliant as the D2 is for running and monitoring your health, it's also a worse smartwatch than Huawei's other watches, including the GT 6 Pro and Ultimate 2. Neither of these have ABPM, but the D2 does not allow you to make contactless payments or listen to Spotify. There are a host of traditional smartwatch features missing, and that is harder to forgive, even though the focus is elsewhere here, and especially because Huawei already offers these features on their other smartwatches. Added to this are the natural limitations, such as less detailed notifications than WearOS, for example, and inadequate app libraries.

That said, the D2 stands alone and is an obvious choice if you are looking for a semi-smartwatch that is far, far more serious about providing you with advanced, in-depth, and accurate health data.