Before a pilot flies you to Cancún, they’ve logged hours in a simulator crashing planes that don’t exist. Surgical training has had a harder time getting there, and residents often get thin hands-on practice before working on living patients. Niklas Andreasen, a graduate of Sweden’s Umeå Institute of Design, set out to fix that with MX Surgical, a mixed reality training kit he developed with Logitech. It pairs replica surgical instruments with a headset, so trainees can rehearse procedures anywhere they can open a case. Call it a flight sim for scalpels, and a lot more portable than the six-figure simulator rigs some hospitals bolt to the floor.

Andreasen grouped surgical tools into three mechanical families (ring-handled scissors and clamps, forceps, and pen-grip instruments), then designed one reconfigurable controller for each. Sensors and adjustable resistance mechanics inside recreate how each tool pushes back in your hand, and layered pads give you something to actually cut into. The headset handles the anatomy, while a companion platform scores you on precision, force, and timing like a very strict video game. It’s a concept for now, with no pricing or launch plans. Even so, it has already picked up Emerging Product Designer of the Year at the 2026 European Product Design Awards, three Core77 student wins, and a nomination for Red Dot’s Peter Zec Prize.

Designer: Niklas Andreasen (Umeå Institute of Design, in collaboration with Logitech)

Three Controllers, One Entire Instrument Tray

A real surgical tray can hold dozens of instruments, and building a replica of each one would turn the kit into a hardware store. Andreasen sidestepped that by mapping what instruments have in common mechanically. Scissors, needle holders, and clamps all pivot on a ring-handled scissor action. Forceps pinch, and scalpels and probes ride in a pen grip. Each MX Surgical controller covers one of those families, tuning its spring tension and range of motion in real time so the same body can feel like a fine dissecting scissor one minute and a stiff clamp the next.

Logitech has spent over four decades shaping mice, keyboards, and controllers around human hands, and the collaboration shows. The kit wears the MX family’s soft radii and matte warm grays, so anyone who owns Logitech’s MX Ink stylus for Meta Quest will feel right at home. Three mentors from Logitech, Nick Jinkinson, Andreas Connellan, and Aidan Kehoe, guided the project. The cutaway renders show a rotary mechanism tucked right at the pivot, where the resistance needs to happen, inside ring handles your fingers already know from the real tool. Compare that with FundamentalXR, a leading haptic surgical platform that has traditionally relied on desk-mounted haptic arms.

Layered Pads Handle the Feel, the Headset Handles the Gore

Haptics can only fake so much, so MX Surgical gives your hands something physical to work on. Layered training pads stand in for tissue at different depths, and they slot into a die-cut tray inside the case. As you work through a procedure, the mixed reality overlay progressively reveals deeper layers of anatomy and shifts to match what you’re doing. Hospitals and universities can stock a material library of swappable pads and components, tailoring the kit to a specialty or a specific case. Residents without a headset aren’t stuck either, because a simpler screen-based version handles the visual side.

This hybrid approach borrows from both ends of current surgical training. On one end are cheap suturing pads that residents practice stitches on at home, which feel real but teach nothing about context. On the other end are VR simulations that show you an entire operating room but feel like waving a remote around. MX Surgical splits the job, letting the pad handle touch and the headset handle everything you need to see. The whole thing packs into a slim carry case, which makes it something you can take home, practice with at 11pm, and toss in a bag for your next rotation.

A Scorecard for Skills Surgeons Used to Pick Up by Osmosis

Every practice session gets logged by the companion platform, which tracks motor patterns, motion efficiency, accuracy, force control, and response timing. Those numbers describe the stuff a senior surgeon notices from across the room, like a hand that hesitates or grips too hard. The platform adjusts difficulty as you improve, keeps a digital anatomy atlas on hand, and lets mentors review your sessions remotely. Residents can train alone or in teams, then sit down with an attending to go through the results together. Andreasen’s own framing is that this data captures knowledge residency has always passed down person to person without ever writing it down.

That puts MX Surgical in direct conversation with William Halsted, who founded the surgical residency program at Johns Hopkins in 1890 around a simple motto: see one, do one, teach one. A century later, a design student added a fourth step, practice one, and made it look like something that belongs next to your keyboard. Andreasen built it through interviews and observation sessions with surgeons and educators in Sweden and Germany, with mentors from Logitech, Intuitive Surgical, and IDEO. In a Red Dot interview, he said he looks for ideas that “earn and defend their place.” A kit that lets a resident make their first mistake on a pad instead of a person sounds like one of those ideas.

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Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a major cause of premature death worldwide and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, and kidney damage. Nearly half of U.S. adults have it, according to the CDC. Yet it often causes no noticeable symptoms, so feeling fine does not necessarily mean your blood pressure is where it should be.

The Huawei Watch D3 puts blood pressure measurement on your wrist, using an inflatable airbag built into the strap and offering scheduled readings throughout the day and night. That sounds like a recipe for a bulky, rather clinical accessory, but the watch I received looks nothing of the sort. More importantly, it is comfortable enough that I was happy to keep wearing it, including overnight. Huawei has squeezed some unusual hardware into a familiar package, and after living with it, I am impressed by how little fuss it adds to my day.

Designer: Huawei

Aesthetics

Huawei has made the Watch D3 surprisingly discreet, and that is one of its biggest design strengths. This is a health-focused smartwatch with more going on under the surface than most, yet it does not look overly technical or awkwardly bulky. Instead, it comes across as clean, polished, and easy to wear, which helps it feel like a proper everyday smartwatch rather than a specialist device.

Visually, it sits somewhere between the clean familiarity of an Apple Watch and the more assertive presence of an Apple Watch Ultra, giving it a look that feels both familiar and slightly more rugged. Huawei offers the Watch D3 in three color options: White, Black, and Mocha Gold. I received the Mocha Gold version, and it gives the watch a warmer, slightly more elevated look than the other finishes. The rectangular-shaped case is paired with a color-matched fluoroelastomer strap, which also houses the airbag used for blood pressure measurement.

Ergonomics

For a smartwatch with a tiny airbag tucked into its strap, the Watch D3 is surprisingly easy to wear. On paper, it is not a small device at 1.83 x 1.61 x 0.44 inches, but it never feels ungainly or overengineered once it is actually on your wrist. The 1.92-inch rectangular display fits well and doesn’t overwhelm the wrist, keeping the overall look streamlined. Huawei has also trimmed the thickness down from 0.52 inches on the Watch D2 to 0.44 inches here, and that slimming makes a real difference. The D3 feels less like a specialist gadget and more like a smartwatch you can throw on in the morning without a second thought.

In practice, the bigger surprise is how quickly it stops feeling unusual. The Watch D3 feels like an ordinary smartwatch on the wrist in the best possible sense. The strap is inevitably thicker than a conventional smartwatch band because it contains the inflatable airbag, but I never found it cumbersome. If anything, that unusual construction fades into the background faster than expected, which is not something I would have assumed before wearing it.

The weight helps here too. At around 1.41 ounces without the strap, the Watch D3 feels substantial enough to come across as a proper piece of hardware, but not heavy enough to become annoying over the course of a full day. Fit matters more on the Watch D3 than it does on a typical smartwatch. Huawei accounts for that with a paper measuring guide and two strap sizes. A watch built around blood pressure readings needs to fit properly, and the D3 feels better for that extra attention.

Performance

Blood pressure monitoring is the main reason to consider the Watch D3, but what surprised me first was how quiet it is. It makes virtually no sound during a reading, with the increasing pressure around my wrist providing the only obvious sign that anything is happening. The sensation is noticeable, as you would expect from an inflatable strap, but the process feels discreet enough that taking a reading does not become a bother.

There are medical credentials behind the feature, too. According to Huawei, the Watch D3’s blood pressure measurement has obtained NMPA medical device registration in China and CE certification under the European Union’s Medical Device Regulation, commonly called CE-MDR.

The Watch D3 also supports ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, or ABPM, which schedules repeated measurements over a 24-hour period, including while you sleep. Rather than giving you one isolated reading, it builds a record of how your blood pressure changes throughout the day and night. Huawei Health brings those results together into a report showing daytime, nighttime, and overall averages, which you can save or share with your doctor.

That does not mean you can forget about the process entirely. During waking hours, you still need to pause, keep still, and hold the watch at heart level, following the positioning instructions. You can adjust the measurement schedule rather than stick with the default intervals. Overnight, the watch takes readings automatically without requiring you to assume the daytime posture. Thankfully, those nighttime readings did not bother me or wake me up.

There is also a dedicated feature for measuring blood pressure before and after six workout types, covering indoor and outdoor running, walking, and cycling. You take an initial reading before starting, then begin another measurement within two minutes of finishing. There is a reason those changes are worth studying. Research using clinical exercise tests has linked certain blood pressure responses during exercise and recovery with a higher risk of developing hypertension or experiencing cardiovascular events later on.

Beyond blood pressure, the D3 covers heart rate, sleep, blood oxygen saturation, and skin temperature, with ECG available in supported regions. Fitness tracking is solid too, with more than 80 workout modes. It works well as an everyday companion for keeping an eye on activity, workouts, and daily movement without making every walk feel like homework.

The everyday smartwatch features are more familiar. The D3 runs HarmonyOS and works with both Android and iOS, although the experience is not identical across the two platforms. Bluetooth calling and music playback are supported, but the limited third-party app selection leaves less room to expand beyond the built-in tools.

With a compatible Android phone, you can respond to supported messages using quick replies or the on-screen keyboard. Message replies are not supported when the watch is paired with an iPhone, which is worth knowing before you buy. Offline maps are available for supported models, while NFC payment support depends on your region and the available payment service. Having NFC hardware does not automatically mean it will work with your usual cards.

Battery life has been good in my use, too. Huawei quotes up to six days under typical conditions, dropping to around one day with ABPM enabled. My typical-use results were close to that six-day claim, while I comfortably passed a day with ambulatory monitoring enabled. Measurement frequency matters here, since Huawei’s ABPM battery test uses 15-minute intervals, so your results may differ depending on your settings.

Charging speed is okay rather than especially quick, but outside ABPM sessions, I was not constantly looking for the charger. The supplied charger uses a USB-C rather than USB-A, which is a welcome change. That is one less reason to keep an older USB-A power adapter around.

Sustainability

The Watch D3 has an IP68 rating, but that is not an invitation to take it swimming or into the shower. Huawei advises against both because of the air openings used by the blood pressure system. The watch is not water- or dust-resistant while taking a measurement, so those openings need to stay clean and dry. It requires a little more care around water than you might expect from an everyday smartwatch.

The strap feels durable, although Huawei does not provide wear-test figures to put that impression into context. It is removable, so a tear would not necessarily mean replacing the whole watch, provided Huawei makes compatible replacement straps available. That is useful for keeping the D3 in service, but the broader sustainability picture remains unclear. I would have liked more information about recycled materials, repair options, and long-term software support.

Value

The Watch D3 costs £399.99 (roughly $533) in the UK and €449 (roughly $505) in Europe, so it is not exactly an impulse purchase. Whether that feels expensive depends on what you want from your watch. The D3’s appeal is having cuff-style blood pressure readings and 24-hour ambulatory monitoring in something you can wear throughout the day and overnight.

If those are features you will use regularly, the price becomes easier to justify, especially given how comfortable I found it. I am also impressed by how streamlined the whole package feels, considering the specialized hardware tucked inside the watch and strap. You are getting more than an extra health metric on a screen, without having to wear something that feels like medical equipment. If you mostly want notifications and workout tracking, though, I would be less inclined to pay for blood pressure hardware that rarely gets used.

Verdict

The Watch D3 impressed me most by making its unusual hardware so easy to live with. Blood pressure readings are quiet, the strap never felt cumbersome, and overnight measurements did not wake me up. Battery life was good, too, particularly outside ambulatory monitoring sessions. I never felt I was putting up with an awkward gadget just to use its blood pressure features.

I would still like a broader selection of third-party apps and clearer information about repair options and long-term support. The price also makes more sense if blood pressure monitoring will be a regular habit rather than an occasional curiosity. It is a tool to use alongside professional care, not a reason to diagnose yourself or change medication based on your readings. With that understood, the D3 earns my recommendation for combining useful blood pressure features with the comfort and discretion of an everyday smartwatch.

The post Huawei Watch D3 Review: A Game Changer for On-Wrist Blood Pressure Monitoring first appeared on Yanko Design.