You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see where Huawei drew inspiration for its recent Watch Ultimate announcement. It’s clearly Huawei’s not-so-subtle answer to the Apple Watch Ultra, and now we know the similarity extends to the price as well. Starting tomorrow, the Ultimate will be sold in the UK and Europe for €749/£700 for the colored Expedition Black version and €899/£800 for the Expedition Blue version.
If you missed the Watch Ultimate news, chances are the company currently has no plans to launch the device in the US. (Huawei’s ban is still ongoing in 2023.) While the company once had a decent footing in the wearables market, the ban has since limited its reach to the US public for all but the most dedicated users. However, here is a brief summary of the features.
Each of them is a feature that Apple introduced on the Ultra, but to be fair, Ultimate is different enough that you can’t call it that. complete Stop working or be killed. This can be seen at least in the design, which is very similar to traditional mechanical watches. There are also differences in specifications and materials. For example, the Watch Ultimate uses a “zirconium-based liquid metal case” which it claims is 4.5 times stronger and 2.5 times stronger than stainless steel. It’s not titanium, unlike the Ultra, but the extreme hardness effect is the same. (Also obviously not liquid). Both have ceramic nano bezels and sapphire crystal on the LTPO OLED screens.
Huawei is also keen to get ahead of Apple in some areas. Like the Ultra, the Watch Ultimate is EN13319 certified, a standard for diving equipment. But while Apple doesn’t recommend diving deeper than 40 meters, Huawei says the Watch Ultimate can go down to 110 meters and supports technical and free diving as well as recreational diving.
Battery life is also longer. Huawei says the Watch Ultimate can take up to two weeks from a single charge, although it didn’t consider the benchmarks it used to reach that estimate. As always with smartwatches, battery mileage varies with usage. However, Huawei said users can go from zero battery to 100% in 60 minutes and 25% in 10 minutes.
Huawei’s proprietary OS doesn’t have the most powerful app ecosystem, but there are some improvements on that front too. Huawei says users will now be able to use third-party integrations Strava, Komoot, and Runtastic. it’s not completely It’s like having the app on your wrist, but it makes it much easier to share data between these services.
No matter what you think of Huawei, the Watch Ultimate is the closest competitor to the Apple Watch Ultra in a single smartwatch, at least on paper. Garmin has a few options, like the Epix 2 and Fenix ​​7 range, but they’re more solid fitness watches than ambitious luxury smartwatches. It would be nice if everyone had more options in this area, but if you’re in the US, there’s no official way to get the watch through US retailers. Otherwise, you’ll probably have to wait and see what Samsung and other Wear OS watch makers do.
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