The HONOR MagicWatch 2 was launched late 2019, the second-gen wearable smartwatch by HONOR that added few new useful features and impressively great battery life.

Smartwatch is not really a tech necessity as you still would need to rely on a smartphone. I’m coming from WearOS smartwatch, the HONOR MagicWatch 2 has changed my perspective of a smartwatch. Of course, there are pros and cons and here I would like to share my thought on the new HONOR MagicWatch 2 after 1 week of usage.

Design, Hardware & Build

Right of the bat, the HONOR MagicWatch 2 look like any other manual dial watch instead it has a touch display and more smart functions. The 46mm Flax Brown that I reviewed costs a little higher than the Black version. They even have a 42mm if you have a smaller wrist if you prefer that.

The watch packed with sophisticated hardware like Heart Rate sensor, Barometer, GPS, Bluetooth 5.1, Gyro, Accelerometer and all packed in 10.7mm stainless steel frame case with a ceramic back. It has solidly built like any other exquisite watches out there.

The 22mm straps are interchangeable and it can be replaced with any other watches straps. The brown genuine leather strap that comes along with it is surprisingly good despite they are not from a watch experienced company, the creases are minimum, comfortable and premium.

Display

The 46mm model sports a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 454 x 454 where the 42mm has a 1.2-inch AMOLED display with a slightly lower 390 x 390 resolution. There are 2 buttons on the side, top brings you to the menu and the lower can be custom to your preferred shortcut. The AMOLED display is crazily bright and sharp, according to the tech spec, the display can reach a respectable 800 nits in brightness. Readability is not an issue even you viewing in under bright sunlight.

Here are something that MagicWatch 2 lose to WearOS, Watch Faces. It comes with good vibrant Watch Faces to choose from but it’s not customizable like WearOS.

There’s an always-on-display where you can check the time without waking up the watch. It shows a minimal design either in digital or analogue and dimmer to save battery.

Fitness

If you are buying this watch for fitness, you have made the right decision. The HONOR MagicWatch 2 comes with a range of fitness modes with courses and it has all the necessary hardware and sensors like Barometer, Heart Rate and even GPS.

The fitness includes Running, Cycling, Swimming, Climbing, Hiking, Triathlon, Rowing and more. With all the fitness activities, of course, the watch needs to have some waterproofing or something. The MagicWatch 2 can submerge in water up to 50m.

It comes with an audio companion when you use the courses and will walk you through the stages. The audio come through the MagicWatch 2’s speaker or you can pair your watch with Bluetooth earphone.

It has this post-run feedback report that tells you how much fitness you have improved, as well as how long you to should recover before your next run. All are done through HUAWEI Health app that pair with your smartphone.

Talking about earphone, the MagicWatch 2 supports earphone pairing and it comes with 4GB storage where 2GB usable for music storage that can store up to 500 songs. You can leave your phone at home and focus on your training while enjoying your favourite music.

Answer Phone Like Dick Tracy

The HONOR MagicWatch 2 has improved significantly with a more power-efficient processor, doubled battery life and my favourite, built-in speaker. You can use your smartwatch to play music through the built-in speaker which surprisingly loud. You can also answer calls with your MagicWatch 2, yes! Talking to your smartwatch like Dick Tracy.

HUAWEI LiteOS

The HONOR MagicWatch 2 doesn’t run on WearOS instead HUAWEI’s own wearable smartwatch OS, HUAWEI LiteOS. The OS is great, especially in the fitness department. The swiping down bring to shortcuts, swiping left/right for info and swiping top to bring notifications, and press hold the display to change Watch Faces. All these have a lot similarity with WearOS and I felt like home while using it.

It has all the basic feature of what a smartwatch should have like alarm, timer, weather, stopwatch, find my phone, music control, notification but there are a few limitations compared to WearOS. It doesn’t support third-party apps installation and I can only view notification up to 10 combined (WhatsApp, FB, Gmail and more) but I couldn’t respond to any of it.

Beefy Battery Life

Battery life is one of the reasons I ditched my Moto360 in the drawer for years. WearOS may feature-packed but the daily charging is a bummer. On other hands, the HONOR MagicWatch 2 advertised to have 2 weeks of battery life in a single charge. During my short test around 6 days, I manage to use it pretty intensively to test its various features like always-on-display, continuous heart rate monitoring, answering phone calls and also enabled sleep monitoring, the watch still left me at 48%. This is a game-changer for those who don’t wish to charge your device daily.

It charged on a magnetic dock that sits in. It takes only 1 hour to fully charge the 445 mAh battery (46mm version)

If you are interested, you can get the HONOR MagicWatch 2 from hihonor.com/my for RM 699 – RM 749.