Honor Watch 5 Ultra review

Price When Reviewed

Unavailable in the US

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra is Honor’s first Ultra smartwatch, but this isn’t necessarily like putting an Apple Watch Ultra 2 or a Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra on your wrist.

It does offer some qualities of those ultra smartwatches like giving you a dive-friendly design and introducing an ECG sensor to provide more accurate heart rate readings, and does that for considerably less money.

Unlike the Honor Watch 5, the Watch 5 Ultra is playing at a slightly different end of the smartwatch spectrum. One where there are some pretty great smartwatches from Huawei, Xiaomi along with a host of WearOS-packing watches. It’s also going up against the Apple Watch SE 2, which means it is up against some pretty stiff competition.

Design & Build

• Just one case size option
• Suitable for freediving
• Available with brown and black straps

The Watch Ultra 5 looks absolutely nothing like the Honor Watch 5 and should really be seen as the successor to the Honor Watch 4 Pro.

It’s available in just a 46.3mm case size, making it roughly the same size as the 4 Pro (46.4mm) and matching up to smartwatches like the OnePlus Watch 3. Honor opts for an octagonal case design, which helps to ensure it doesn’t just disappear into a sea of the many very similar-looking round smartwatches.

The case is made from grade 5 titanium, offering something that’s tough yet light and gives the Ultra a pretty pleasing matt look that does feel like an upgrade on the stainless steel used on previous Honor smartwatches.

That case is matched up with either a brown leather or a black fluoroelastomer strap, with each easily removable via the small sliding button mechanism on the back. The brown leather strap I had partnered up with the silver titanium case is a tried and trusted look that works well for many watches and it’s no different here.

I do think it would be nice to have a smaller case size option, but in general it’s been a comfortable watch to wear without ever feeling too hulking in stature. 

Mike Sawh

Like the Watch 4 Pro, you’ve got a twisting crown button on the top right side of the case and that can be used to scroll through screens and push you into the main app screen. The button below acts as your shortcut to the workout tracking screen as default.

The crown works well and you can assign that bottom button to do things like display heart rate readings or open up the Bluetooth calling screen instead.

Following in the footsteps of other smartwatches that feature ultra in the name, Honor offers a level of waterproofing that makes it suitable for freediving up to 40 metres. That’s to add to a 5 ATM rating, which means it’s fit for being submerged in water up to 50 metres depth with pool and open water swim tracking modes both at your tracking disposal.

Screen & Audio 

• 1.5-inch AMOLED display
• Sapphire crystal glass
• Supports Bluetooth calls

Honor plants a 1.5-inch, 466 x 466 resolution AMOLED touchscreen display inside of that grade 5 titanium case, which does support an always-on mode and promises a refresh rate up to 60Hz to keep those visuals looking smooth.

The screen doesn’t entirely reach the edge of that case with a mediumly thick black bezel surrounding that screen, which is more noticeable when you’ve got a lighter-coloured watch face in place.

Mike Sawh

The screen quality overall is fine. This isn’t the best AMOLED panel you’ll find on a smartwatch, nor is it necessarily the worst. Colours are accurate, black levels are solid overall and it’s nicely responsive to swipes and taps.

I did find I needed to use it with it set to near the maximum brightness setting when using it in brighter outdoor light.

What is good to see is that this AMOLED panel is being guarded from scratches by sapphire glass, giving you the kind of screen defence usually reserved for more expensive watches and smartwatches.

It’s not a major surprise to find there’s no LTE connectivity on offer, though Honor does include a microphone and speaker to let you make calls via Bluetooth. Once permitted through the Honor Health app, it’ll pull through contacts and give you a well optimised keypad to type out numbers on along with a call log to see previous callers.

I found call quality perfectly acceptable, if not the clearest, with good volume that does make it usable if you actually want to intercept a call from your smartphone.

Software & Features 

• Runs on Honor MagicOS operating system
• Works with Android and iOS
• Music player access for Android only

Honor once again relies on its own MagicOS operating system to provide the software experience on the watch, which still has a Huawei HarmonyOS and LiteOS feel about things.

It’s compatible with Android phones and iPhones with some features off-limits for iPhone users, like access to paid watch faces and making use of the built-in music player that offers a portion of the 8GB of storage to store audio on.

Mike Sawh

The watch software is pretty easy to get to grips with and doesn’t spring a lot of surprises.

Notification support works well and widgets for items like the weather and health and wellness metrics are well presented. I just think there’s just an overall feeling that the user interface feels a bit cheap in places.

The watch faces is one of those areas as is the menu styling that are reminders that you’re not playing with an Apple Watch or a WearOS smartwatch here.

Mike Sawh

The Honor Health smartphone app that’s required to set things up and will host your data does a good job of presenting health and fitness stats and giving you access to Honor’s watch face market.

There isn’t an app store front or contactless payments, but if you’re looking for a smartwatch that handles features like notifications, weather, music controls and playback (for Android phones), the Watch 5 Ultra can cover those things. Is it the slickest operating system you’ll find on a smartwatch right now? I’d say that’s a comfortable no, but there’s enough that’s good about it to make sure you get a good overall smartwatch experience.

Fitness & Tracking 

• Over 100 sports modes
• Includes free diving mode
• ECG measurements not available

The Watch 5 Ultra has plenty to offer on the health and fitness tracking front and, notably, now promises to let you take ECG heart rate measurements.

This is done through its health scan feature that captures readings alongside ones for your SpO2 levels, stress while also keeping tabs on sleep and weight (if manually added in the app) to offer a more insightful picture into your health and power morning updates on trends. 

However, the ECG feature didn’t appear live in my testing nor does it seem to carry the same regulatory approval that other ECG smartwatches offer in detecting signs of serious heart health conditions.

Mike Sawh

Delving into that data, I could see that, in general, heart rate readings were a lot higher and that was a similar story for heart rate ranges and during pretty steady-paced workouts.

It performed better tracking my sleep where data like sleep scores and duration were similar to the same data captured by two other sleep trackers. Light and REM sleep stages also chimed with similar data with shortcuts available in the Honor Health app to add sleep music or breathing exercises to your pre-sleep routine to improve your bedtime.

Mike Sawh

Daily step tracking was nicely in line with two other fitness trackers, though it lacked any really sort of useful features to motivate you to move more on a regular basis. If you’ve dropped your step count from the previous day, it’ll show you that in the app, but that’s really about as far as things go. 

When you’re tracking workouts, there’s everything from cross training to rowing covered with a host of additional profiles that can be added. You’ve also got access to fitness age, VO2 Max and fatigue training insights that are reliant on GPS and heart rate tracking to be accurate.

GPS-tracked routes looked pretty good, though in general tended to underreportthe distance covered. VO2 Max estimates were surprisingly similar to a sports watch with recommended recovery time after workouts a bit on the generous side even for shorter, low-intensity sessions.

Battery Life & Charging

• Up to 15 days battery life
• Supports wireless charging
• Reverse charging with compatible phones

Honor promises some improvements on the battery front compared to the Honor Watch 4 Pro. There’s a 480mAh capacity battery that should offer up to 15 days battery life in typical usage.

That’s up to a day on the Watch 4 Pro in the same scenario. You still get the option of using the supplied proprietary charger or topping up wirelessly using a QI-certified wireless charger. It also supports reverse charging with smartphones that offer it.

The battery performance has been solid in my testing with a daily and overnight drop-off anywhere from 3-5% and means you can comfortably get through a week’s use and longer when using the raise to wake gesture display mode.

Mike Sawh

Switch to always-on display mode, and, unsurprisingly, the battery drop is more severe as it does prompt when enabled. I found it was more like 3-5 days depending on the features in use during that period, outside of core smartwatch ones like notifications.

Switch the scheduled always-on display mode and it does a much smarter job of keeping that screen on during hours when you actually need to stare at it.

The additional charging support is nice to see. I had no problems using it with a few different wireless chargers, including the PowerShare feature on a Samsung smartphone.

Price & Availability

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra was officially announced in March 2025 and currently doesn’t have an official release date. Honor’s global website still says ‘coming soon’.

We do know that from Honor’s big reveal at MWC 2025 that it’s going to be priced at €279 with no UK pricing as yet provided. It’s not going to be one you can grab in the US much like other Honor smartwatches.

A simple conversion suggests roughly £235 or a $300 price point, so this is a Honor smartwatch that should cost more than the Honor Watch 5 (£129.99) and is more likely to sit up against smartwatches like the Huawei Watch GT 5, Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro and the Amazfit Balance.

Should you buy the Honor Watch 5 Ultra?

The Honor Watch Ultra 5 isn’t Ultra in the way that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 or the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is. This isn’t a smartwatch built for rugged use, but instead one that seeks to marry good-performing software with a more elegant look than Honor’s non-Ultra Watch 5 

It does deliver on providing a good look and bringing in design materials usually reserved for more expensive smartwatches. Where things take a downturn ios the watch software, which isn’t necessarily bad or badly executed; it just doesn’t have that same polish or level of features you’ll find from watches around this price.

There are definitely things to like about the Honor Watch 5 Ultra, but if you’re looking for the best smartwatch for the price, there are better options.

Specs

• Sapphire glass 
• Titanium alloy case
• Up to 15 days battery life 
• 100 sports modes
• Tracks heart rate, stress, SpO2
• 40 metres freediving mode
• Works with Android and iOS