Smartwatches such as the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch may be bestsellers stuffed with features, but there are two things neither has ever been able to do. The first is to last more than three days on a single charge, and the second is to take medically certified blood pressure readings.

Those two things may seem odd to group together, but in my time wearing, using and enjoying the Huawei Watch D2, it’s these two things that the device does best, differentiating this £349.99 smartwatch from similarly priced competitors in the Apple Watch Series 10 (£399), Google Pixel Watch 3 (£349) and Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 (£289).

You get premium health features such as heart rate monitoring, including for irregularities such as atrial fibrillation, as well as the ability to take an electrocardiogram (ECG) and measure blood oxygen levels. I’ve found, via the Huawei Health Europe app, this can give a clear overview of your heart health.

While most smartwatches are ‘nice to have’ gadgets that don’t necessarily address or solve a problem, the Watch D2 gives you a way to monitor your blood pressure subtly all day long without having to carry around bulky apparatus or popping into the local pharmacy.

This means the D2 is a great choice if you regularly need to take blood pressure readings for existing medical conditions or doctor’s appointments. It’s also a device to consider buying for someone in your life who isn’t into technology but who could benefit from a relatively easy to use device for the purpose of blood pressure monitoring.

This wearable has an airbag attachment that sits permanently against your wrist, clipped in underneath the strap. It’s removable as there are two options depending on your wrist size. This usually flat airbag inflates when prompted via the blood pressure app on the watch to take a measurement in about 30 seconds. Huawei says it’s a proper alternative to a traditional blood pressure cuff despite the fact it takes a reading from your wrist rather than your upper arm.

You must be seated and raise your arm so the watch is level with your heart, but it can work on either wrist. A diagram on the watch reminds you of this every time, and the tightness of the cuff is only momentarily uncomfortable.

Your reading is then given in three numbers, which are your systolic pressure (pressure when your heart pushes blood out), diastolic pressure (pressure when your heart rests between beats and blood is pushed around the heart), as well as your heart rate in beats per minute.

Readings for the systolic and diastolic pressures are given to you in green, orange or red. I found the ranges corresponded nearly exactly with the NHS’s guidelines on normal, low or high readings, so you should be confident of these.

I tested the readings against an over-the-counter blood pressure cuff and found readings to be very similar. The diastolic and heart rate numbers across the cuff and Watch D2 were practically identical, but the systolic number was consistently higher every time on the cuff.

Huawei says the Watch D2 can detect signs of hypertension and cardiovascular or cerebrovascular risk, which thankfully it did not detect for me. You can also set the watch to record your ambulatory blood pressure at intervals of 15, minutes 30 minutes or one hour for 24 hours to get a picture of your heart health and to detect these potential risks. You can choose for these to start automatically, and I found this wasn’t too inconvenient to stick to throughout my day, though I had to sit down every 30 minutes.

I set it to go off once per hour over night, convinced it would wake me up. To my surprise it didn’t, and the 24 hour course completed early the next day and threw up all the results on the app. It said I had “insufficient valid nighttime data”, which I couldn’t work out why as the app didn’t tell me. I later realised it’s because it has to take a minimum of seven overnight readings, and I only had six.

The app showed I had a daily average blood pressure over seven days of 114/77 mmHg, which made me believe I should be a professional athlete.

Despite the watch’s CE 0197 medical certification, Huawei’s literature still states: “This product can be used as a reference in clinical practice, but measurement results should not serve as a basis for medical diagnosis.”

In reality, perhaps I am just relatively chilled out.

This is the same style of warning Apple, Samsung, Google and most other wearable manufacturers give. The gadgets on our wrist are not professional medical devices, but the Huawei Watch D2 is as close as any has come.

Aside from the impressive heart health features, the D2 capably handles all other fitness tracking admirably. Built-in GPS handled tracking my runs with decent accuracy and I had some notifications from apps coming in. One thing Huawei watches don’t get are third party apps, so there’s no WhatsApp, Uber, Spotify or other popular apps directly on your wrist.

But I am happy to trade that for the excellent battery life. This thing lasted nearly a week of 24/7 use. It also records sleep (though the bulky unit is a little uncomfortable to wear at night) and judges your stress levels to give you an emotional wellbeing score.

There are a few things missing. On-wrist payments are only through Huawei Wallet, and I couldn’t get a card set up. Some features in the app go to an error or dead end, with no explanation on how to fix it. Sometimes it’s because you haven’t given permission on the watch yet to use that feature, but the unpolished software experience doesn’t let you know that. Those less tech savvy will never discover everything this watch can do.

I tested it mostly with an iPhone, which is an easier device to pair to than Android. Be sure to download the Huawei Health Europe app rather than the plain old Huawei Health though. I used the latter initially and wondered why some stats were in Chinese. If you’re on Android, the Huawei Health apps are weirdly not in the Google Play Store. You have to download them on Samsung phones from the Galaxy app store. On other brands of Android phone you have to visit Huawei’s website and sideload it from a browser. This is far from user friendly.

Despite all the Watch D2’s shortcomings, I am still impressed by it because of its excellent main feature. Getting accurate blood pressure monitoring onto a smartwatch is difficult, but Huawei’s execution here is admirable. If you or a loved one have a heart condition or want to monitor your blood pressure, this is hands down the best wearable on the market for that.

For the more casual user, be aware that while this feature is great, the rest of the watch’s experience is a little less polished. But overall I enjoyed wearing the Watch D2 and it shows that companies other than Apple, Google and Samsung have great smartwatch technology on offer.