Verdict
The Honor Watch 4 is a very likable smartwatch that offer a nice admixture of features at a very affordable cost .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Honor Watch 4 sits firmly in the budget smartwatch category and sees Honor revivify the straightforward word form divisor that featured on the impressiveHonor Watch ES .
Like the Watch ES , as well as the roundMagicWatchandGS 3smartwatches , the Honor Watch 4 promises weeks of battery lifespan and fitness features admit advanced workout algorithmic program , compute your fittingness eld and monitor metrics like philia rate and stress .
We were braggy lover of the Watch ES when we tested back in 2020 , so does the Honor Watch 4 emerge as a great straightforward successor to Honor ’s late budget offer ? Here ’s my finding of fact .
Design and screen
This is n’t the first clock time Honor has opted for a straight look for one of its sentinel , but unlike the Watch ES , the Honor Watch 4 has a look that imply you could easily mistake it for anAmazfitsmartwatch and also has a veryFitbit Versafeel to it too .
purity proffer the Watch 4 in two colour options , the black good example I try and a gold version , both featuring aluminium cases and a silicone polymer rubber shoulder strap that can be removed and uses a watch buckle with the strap tucking underneath to keep it steadfastly in place . It ’s a shame there ’s not a few more typeface and shoulder strap colouring because there ’s definitely quite a appealing build lineament on this budget spotter .
There ’s a 1.75 - column inch , 450 x 390 resolution AMOLED touchscreen display , making it larger than the screen door included on the Watch ES . While colours are a touch saturated on that video display , it go gracious and vivid and it ’s been easy to view indoors and in brighter outdoor igniter .
It does offer an always - on mode , though it ’s not immediately obvious until you apprehend a bit deeply into the options . If you opt to disable it , you do have a nicely antiphonal raise to wake musical accompaniment here and will save you some battery .
There ’s a individual strong-arm button on the right-hand side of the typesetter’s case , which pushes you into the master menu screen and can be held to countenance you shut down or restart the watch .
Around the back is the visual sensor that will serve out real - time heart rate and SpO2 data and that ’s where you ’ll flatten it onto the circular charge place of origin when the sentinel hits 0 % .
If you want to take it for a dip , the Watch 4 has a 5 ATM rated design . That make it good to be submerge in urine up to 50 metres depth and you do have both syndicate and receptive water swimming modes to chase after your movements in the body of water .
Performance and software
The Honor Watch 4 runs on Honor ’s own proprietary operating organisation , which has a very Huawei Lite OS / Harmony oculus sinister look and sense to it . It does work out with Android earpiece and iPhones , but the former will give you more features to play with . That includes access code to the build - in euphony instrumentalist , where you ’ll ask to synchronise over your own audio from your paired Android speech sound .
Matching it up with a Google - powered headphone also gets you admission to the paid - for watch faces , but I ’d say there ’s some good options you do n’t have to compensate for here . There ’s some overnice creative options and a good mix of analogue and digital face to give you scope to mix things up .
The software itself runs nice and silky . There ’s no lag , it ’s wanton to get to grips with and it just feels well optimised to its square AMOLED surroundings .
The notification support works well and is a elementary swipe away from the chief picket concealment . I did encounter the odd rare oddity where app ikon from incoming notification did n’t match the correct apps . Other than that , it ’s a skillful place to match in on your notifications .
It ’s the same narration if you want to make calls via Bluetooth , pulling in your contacts , offering a call log and progress in a keypad to make birdsong .
The call quality is n’t super exculpated and there is some crackle , but you do get loudness at least to ensure you may hear over louder noise in your surroundings .
Off the watch you have the Honor Health app , which unsurprisingly feels again like a spawn of Huawei ’s own Health companion app . It ’s split into four main tabs with the dashboard including your primal metric in the first , an Exercise tab key where you could also find exercise videos to follow , the Devices tab to adjust watch options and enter the watch face market and the Me tab where you could access workout plans .
Unlike Huawei , you ca n’t pump your workout data into third company apps , but I ’d say Honor ’s own app does a good enough job presenting your stats in the app and on the ticker .
Tracking and features
The Honor Watch 4 offers quite a surprising amount on the fitness and health trailing front , particularly when you factor in in how much it costs .
On the opthalmic sensor front you ’re come something that can unceasingly dog heart rate , emphasis ( via eye pace variance ) , SpO2 levels . There ’s also build - in GPS , which has typically been lacking from Honor ’s more low-priced wearables , so it ’s good to see that ’s made the cut here as well .
When you dig into the workout trailing screen , Honor includes a serial of physical fitness and turn tail ‘ course ’ , which are basically workout you may follow if you ’re looking to cauterize juicy , you ’re tackle your first survival run or you need dance step - by - step teaching and optical pathfinder on how to stretch if you ’ve been sitting at your desk all day . For beginners , these are ready to hand features to have .
dig into the dedicated physical exertion modes for running , cycling , swim and indoor workouts like the crisscross flight simulator and indoor rowing . These are modes with activity specific metrics as well , while the running modality will let you race against a practical runner or go after a specific distance .
The exercise chase on the whole is passably good . I used it for indoor rowing , pool swims and out-of-door run and it performed well overall . Locking onto a GPS sign did take quite a while , but did ameliorate after a couple of runs . GPS accuracy against the pricier Suunto Race andGarmin Forerunner 265fared fairly well , with some slightly wayward and off point in the GPS tracks , while tempo and heart charge per unit were n’t quite in line with the Race and 265 when couple to a kernel pace monitor chest strap .
A courteous added incentive here for outdoor tracking is the ability to cut across back to your location , giving the Honor Watch 4 some utilitarian piloting financial backing . It ’s canonical and you ’re not receive a detailed map of your surround to look at , but it does make get back to your start point a lilliputian easy if you ’ve go off lead .
honour calculate to go big on physical fitness brainwave so it ’ll dish out your VO2 Max estimates , recommended recovery time , training load and generate your Fitness Age found on your cardiovascular endurance and a 25 - moment trial that needs to be conducted outside . This is similar to the fitness age feature provide on Garmin watches like the Venu serial .
The VO2 Max estimate seemed a touch off the same readings from a sports lookout man , though that had a little more data point to create that reading from . With the Fitness Age insights , you need to make certain your profile entropy is right and you do that trial on a regular basis to get the most useful info .
maltreat away from exercise to focus on the other metrics , and Honor can keep tabs on uninterrupted and resting nerve pace reading . The Watch 4 be given to describe eminent readings in general equate to Garmin ’s continuous monitoring , which I witness to be middling reliable . perch pith pace on the Honor Watch 4 was broadly speaking 9 metronome marking higher in equivalence , while real - clock time readings were as much as 10 - 15 bpm out .
honour does display daily measure counts in its Apple Rings - esque contrivance and I get hold casual step counts were within 200 - 300 stride of gradation track on a Garmin and Polar watch , and you do get inactivity alerts to prompt you to move .
For sleep , you ’re get a breakdown of the central sleep stages include rapid eye movement . It ’s also capturing sleep duration , time fallen deceased and beget a rest score and some basic depth psychology of prison term spent in different sleep level . I ’ve been wearing it with theOura Ring Gen 3and the Polar Vantage V3 , two great eternal sleep tracker , and data such as sleep length and rest leg breakdown have largely delivered similar identification number .
I think the Honor is a bit more generous with nap rafts , especially when I know my time on some nights was interrupt , but the burden sleep tracking has in reality been fairly good .
Battery life
The Honor Watch 4 packs in a 451mAh content battery that Honor says can get you up to 14 days of battery life . Now that turn is ground on laboratory condition and using feature like Bluetooth calls , GPS get over and play euphony not on a everyday or with intense use .
If you decide to opt for the always - on display mood , that phone number is going to drop even intemperately and you ’ll be warn it will halve the barrage .
Based on my testing , with the raise to wake gesture accompaniment , uninterrupted heart rate monitoring enabled , notifications turn on and some use of indoor and GPS - establish workout trailing , the Watch 4 could get through a week . On lighter usage day it dropped by around 10 % . So you could mayhap get over a week with this lookout .
flip-flop that screen to be on 24/7 and you will see that battery drop-off well below a week . Honor does warn you , and you may see the bombardment drop apparently . There is a utilitarian mode to schedule when the always - on mode is in use and turned off for when you ’re in layer , to check that it ’s not wasting battery when you do n’t need to gaze at it . So it ’s a considered approach shot to give you that standard watch experience while trying to carry on the battery life .
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Should you buy it?
The Honor Watch 4 proffer estimable seaworthiness features for the Mary Leontyne Price and most do a substantial job tracking your physical exertion fourth dimension .
If you ’ve got an iPhone , you ’ll miss out most notably on the build - in music support and access to the paid spotter face Honor has on offer here .
Final Thoughts
The Honor Watch 4 feels like Honor has built nicely on the astonishingly well - performingHonor Watch ES , bid good seaworthiness feature , specially for beginners , at a really attractive price .
It ’s a nicely made smartwatch too , which does n’t look as budget as I ’d feared and the summation of GPS , some seafaring smartness and fitness workouts coupled with the unspoiled battery life make the Watch 4 a very attractive budget corrupt indeed . Check out ourBest Smartwatchguide for even more options .
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How we test
We good test every smartwatch we retrospect . We use diligence - standard examination to compare feature properly and we use the lookout man as our independent equipment over the review article period . We ’ll always tell you what we encounter and we never , ever , take money to retrospect a intersection .
FAQs
The Honor Watch 4 is waterproofed and has a 5 ATM rated pattern , which make it suitable for swim up to 50 meter deepness .
Yes , you’re able to listen to medicine on the Honor Watch 4 if it ’s paired with an Android phone only . There is a component of the 4 GB reposition available to store unencrypted medicine files from third political party euphony apps , which must be download on your phone before it can be transfer to the watch .
