Huawei Watch Ultimate, from mountains to diving. Our proof
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When we look at the box of a smartwatch or its data sheet on the Internet we find an endless list of technical features and functions that always leave the same doubt “who will ever use this watch to do all these things”? We tried.
The new Huawei Watch Ultimate, which arrived on the market a few weeks ago, boasts spectacular specifications: 14 days of autonomy, control of vital parameters such as heart rate, oxygen saturation, stress level, arterial stiffness, sleep quality and so on, but goes further. Giving up the role of the “wearable” doctor, he transforms into an eclectic coach, monitoring all our sports activities. To begin with, it keeps statistics of how much, how, where and how far we run, but then it pushes itself into much more exotic terrain to range between over 20 professional training modes and more than 100 basic fitness modes: from trekking, to climbing, passing through for marathon and golf, there is something for everyone. Indeed, for scuba enthusiasts it could be a small revolution because the Huawei Watch ultimate can be used instead of the dive computer with a depth limit of 100 meters. Why a revolution? Because dive computers have always been very useful and full of technology, but they also show off a bulky and very sporty look. This Huawei, on the other hand, is a really nice watch to look at, with a look very similar to high-end jewels and therefore also suitable for social situations. It won’t often happen that you have to dive wearing a tailcoat, but knowing that you always have the right tool on your wrist is a great comfort. The case is in a very strong and light zirconium alloy, which is combined with a titanium strap, for maximum elegance, or in hydrogenated nitrile rubber for comfort while playing sports. A quick but reliable release system allows them to be swapped in an instant. In the Voyage Blue version, the one we tested, the external frame is in nano-ceramic, as is the back of the case in ceramic, very smooth and extremely comfortable. The 1.5-inch display is very bright and remains perfectly readable even in bright light, directly under the sun. A great watch, then, but can we really entrust our lives to it during a dive?
Certifications and a lot of attention to detail
We tried practically all the functions in about a week and the result was always very good. From 24h heart rate monitoring to oxygen saturation monitoring, via electrocardiogram and sports functions, the sensors have always worked great. During automatic monitoring, especially at night, perhaps some readings are not carried out correctly, but these are sporadic problems that have never seriously distorted the graphs: when the glitch exists, it is evident (probably due to the clock not is well attached to the wrist) and therefore ignorable, while the rest of the series of readings is reliable. Altimeter and GPS are very accurate and help plan workouts well. What we really wanted to put to the test, however, is the function as an underwater computer, where the Huawei Watch Ultimate boasts EN 13319 certification. To find out if everything works as you would expect, we went to touch the bottom of the Y40 pool, in the province of Padua , which is -42 meters from the surface using this device as the main computer.
Meticulous preparation and well calibrated alarms
I am a two-star CMAS certified diver certified for deep diving and have been diving with a computer on my wrist for some time and I must say that this Huawei has favorably impressed me. There are many options available: you can choose the type of dive to perform, whether recreational (like the one we did at the Y40) or technical with nitrox; we can set the type of water (fresh or salty) and even its density, to have great precision in detecting depth; we can set the maximum pO2, the duration of safety stops and a plethora of alerts and alarms.
We go down to the water
Once the dive started, we immediately headed to the well to test the watch at the maximum depth of the structure (-42 meters, the deepest in Europe) and see how the various warnings and alarms we had set behaved. Under water, the display is always on and its great brightness is a boon: the readability is excellent even for those who, like me, are no longer young and have a bit of farsightedness that I haven’t corrected. The alarms are perceived very well, both for vibrations and via acoustic warning (and also in this case the watch got the better of the aches and pains due to my being “differently young”). The touch screen, very convenient out of the water, obviously doesn’t work underwater, but the buttons are very convenient and precise to use. At the Y40 I didn’t wear gloves, the controlled environment and the temperature of 34 degrees make them at least superfluous, but at home I did various tests that were certainly less technical, but absolutely able to give me an idea of what the answer is with gloves thick and I was very happy with it. The information is arranged in several screens to ensure reasonably large writing and numbers on the screen and indeed everything remained very legible at all times. Of course, there was a bit of back and forth between screens as I still wasn’t quite comfortable with the interface, but my dive computer was no different at first.
The watch is very good, the app is still a bit crude
After a sightseeing tour of the Y40 which, in addition to the 42-metre well, is made up of several other areas at different depths where the most diverse activities can be carried out such as exploring the reproduction of a group of caves for example, the time comes for assisted decompression in a impeccable from the clock and then exit. Obviously, the first thing to do is watch our dive on your smartphone. At this point came the disappointment. The Huawei Health app is done quite well and gives many indications on the data it collects during sports activities, but in the case of diving the screens should be better organized. In particular, there is no screen dedicated to alarms, notes and alerts. These, in fact, are visible on the dive graph, but they are tremendously inconvenient to select and there are no insights. Better ergonomics would certainly please all users, as well as more elaborate management of warnings and alarms outside the pool.
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