Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: The Android smartwatch I’ve been waiting for

As an Android user and someone who likes keeping an eye on their sleep patterns, I consider having one of the best Android smartwatches essential. And with the Honor Watch 5 Ultra, which joined Honor’s lineup of smartwatches at MWC 2025, we might have the brand’s best contender for a spot on this guide yet.

Featuring comprehensive and accurate sleep and fitness tracking, the Watch 5 Ultra packs a serious punch. Not only can you view in-depth details about how you slept the previous night or how your workout fared, you can also undertake free training courses and do meditation exercises.

The smartwatch sports a sleek, comfortable design too, with a bright AMOLED display. The cherry on top of the cake? Up to 15 days of battery life — some of the best we’ve seen, setting it apart from its main competitors like Google and OnePlus.

So, should you buy it? Yes. Why? Read my full Honor Watch 5 Ultra review to find out.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? Honor’s latest smartwatch with an octagonal design
• Who is it for? Both Android and iPhone users
• How much does it cost? The Honor Watch 5 Ultra has a starting price of €279
• What do we like? The sleek and comfortable design, bright AMOLED display, comprehensive sleep and fitness tracking, and up to 15 days of battery life
• What don’t we like? There aren’t any different size options, and it can’t detect conditions like sleep apnea which some other watches can

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Specs

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Price & availability

Announced during a keynote address at MWC 2025 in Barcelona, Spain on 2 March, the Honor Watch 5 Ultra joins the tech giant’s lineup of smartwatches with a retail price of €279. You’ll be able to buy either a black or brown model, with a black fluoroelastomer (synthetic rubber) or brown leather strap respectively.

At the time of writing, Honor hadn't confirmed when the Watch 5 Ultra would be available to purchase in Europe and other parts of the world. I will update this review as soon as that information is released.

The Watch 5 Ultra’s retail price is similar to that of the OnePlus Watch 3 ($329), the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 ($299) and the Fossil Gen 5 ($295). But the Watch 5 Ultra is closest to the OnePlus and Samsung watches, in both features and our rating.

The Watch 5 Ultra will, of course, work best when paired with a phone of the same brand, like the Honor Magic7 Pro, but the watch is compatible with Android 9.0 and iOS 13.0 or higher models too. And it works like a charm on other Android devices, as you’ll soon see.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Design & comfort

The new Honor Watch 5 Ultra is one of the best-looking and most practical smartwatches I’ve had the pleasure of using. Unlike the standard Honor Watch 5 which sports a rectangular screen, the Watch 5 Ultra has a domed octagonal shape which, in my opinion, looks better and classier.

The bezel is made with a grade 5 titanium case and is safeguarded by sapphire crystal. This means the watch is rugged and can withstand scratches, tumbles and endure daily use — and boy is that true. In my role as reviews writer, I need to carry big boxes back and forth from the photography studio, and that means I will more often than not hit my hand against walls and doors as I go. In my week of testing the Watch 5 Ultra, I grazed the watch against rough surfaces a fair few times, and I can’t see a single scratch on it. As rugged smartwatches go, the Watch 5 Ultra is up there with the best.

As I already mentioned, you can get either a fluoro or leather strap. My review unit came with the black fluoro strap which I found comfortable to wear. It has a soft texture on the inside where the watch sits against your skin, with a ridged pattern on the outside for style.

The Watch 5 Ultra measures 1.82 x 1.82 x 0.44 inches, and it sits comfortably on my wrist. It’s not a very heavy watch either, weighing just 1.82oz (without strap), so my hand never felt weighed down. There were moments when I didn’t even realize I had the watch on my wrist, like when I was sleeping or showering.

On that note, the Watch 5 Ultra has an IP68 water- and dust-resistance rating and a resistance to up to 5ATM (water resistant to up to 50m in depth for 10 minutes). This is the same IP-rating as the OnePlus Watch 3 and the Google Pixel Watch 3 ($349). Showering with it was no problem and neither was dunking it into a kitchen sink filled with water. Obviously it isn’t advisable you shower with the watch regularly, though, as soap and steam can degrade the water resistance over time.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Display & touchscreen

Now, let’s talk about the Honor Watch 5 Ultra’s 1.5-inch AMOLED display. This touchscreen is fantastic, bright and detailed, and you can adjust the brightness manually or set it to auto (which I did). The pricier Coros Vertix 2S ($699) is one of my favorite smartwatches but one of my gripes with it is that its LCD screen’s brightness could not be adjusted and it was very dull. Thankfully, this isn't an issue with the Watch 5 Ultra.

With a refresh rate of 60Hz, the touchscreen was extremely responsive in my testing. Every touch registers instantly, and the screen is big enough that I could clearly read what it said in all lighting conditions — whether I was in a dark room or in bright sunlight, I knew what the Watch 5 Ultra was displaying.

Via the Honor Health app — available for free on iOS and Android — you can customize the display to your heart’s content. There are tens of thousands of watchfaces to choose from in analog and digital designs, and you can customize the way the clock looks, if you want the icons to be displayed as a grid or list, and more. Van Gogh’s Starry Night is my favorite artwork, so I was pleased there was an iteration of it available as a watchface.

There are also two physical buttons on the Watch 5 Ultra’s dial. The first is a crown, which gives decent haptic feedback when rotated. The second button is, by default, programmed to jump to the workout page so that you can quickly start tracking your run, for instance.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Health features

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra has a plethora of health tracking features for nearly every situation you could think of. I tested a beta version of the Honor Health app on my Google Pixel 7 Pro, and pairing the watch with my phone was straightforward. Once I’d given the smartwatch all the necessary permissions, I was ready to start using the health features. Honor recommends wearing the watch higher than your wristbone and keeping a finger’s distance between the Watch 5 Ultra and your skin.

As on most other modern smartwatches, the Watch 5 Ultra uses an array of sensors to monitor things like your heart rate, blood oxygen level and wrist temperature. It also tracks your stress levels as well as your heart rate throughout the day (if you allow it to).

The app creates handy colorful graphs and gives you insight into things like your stress range. There are also a few breathing exercises you can do via instructions in the app to relieve stress. I found the stress tracking accurate and helpful as I could view the data and try to pinpoint the source of the stress — and hopefully eliminate or reduce it.

Another feature I find extremely useful is the Sedentary Alert. When enabled, it tells you to stand up and stretch if you’ve been sitting in one spot for more than an hour. I have a desk job and I will often go hours sitting in one position, so having a reminder is useful and gives me an excuse to go downstairs to get myself a glass of water, for example.

Sleep tracking

Full disclosure: I have had poor sleep for the last eight years or so, so being able to track my sleep is very important to me. Wearing the Watch 5 Ultra to sleep every night during testing truly revealed the extent of my sleep issues. First of all, the watch will automatically mute all notifications and stop waking up when it’s lifted at the time you choose. It will then track your sleep throughout the night and give you your sleep score in the morning which it determines by tracking the four stages: when you were awake, in light sleep, deep sleep and REM.

I now look forward to analyzing my sleep graph in the morning and to try and identify factors that may have contributed to my low sleep score. For instance, I drank alcohol on one of the nights which in turn led to me going to bed late and not sleeping very well. The Honor Health app suggested that I should try going to bed by 11PM the next night to ensure better sleep — and I like these suggestions. I also like that you can enable Record Sleep where the watch will record you sleep talking or snoring. You can listen to pre-programmed meditative sleep music and do breathing exercises too.

It’ll take time for me to fix my sleep schedule, but I’m hopeful the Watch 5 Ultra will play a crucial role here. If anything, I’m determined to get more REM and deep sleep just to get a better sleep score and not see as much red in my graph.

It’s important to note that the Watch 5 Ultra doesn't offer detection for things like sleep apnea, which the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 and the Apple Watch Series 9 ($399) do. There’s no crash or fall detection either, which I believe is an important safety feature, and is available on both the Apple and Galaxy watches.

Fitness tracking

Whether you work out indoors or outdoors, the Watch 5 Ultra is capable of tracking over 100 activities — running, triathlons, snowboarding, hiking, rope skipping, and more. You can also track activities like dancing (ballet, Latin, street, etc.), hula hooping, laser tag, motor racing, and others. You can track darts too, so I will definitely be logging that next time my partner and I go out to play.

I wore the Watch 5 Ultra to track a hike, and I was impressed by the stats it offered. The watch will tell you your average stride frequency, length and speed, cumulative descent, anaerobic and aerobic endurance, detailed pace graph, and more.

There are also loads of free training courses with videos if you want to, say, improve athleticism, relieve stress, improve your posture, or gain muscle. Overall, the Watch 5 Ultra is great at keeping up with your activities.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Smartwatch features

Aside from the plethora of health features, the Honor Watch 5 Ultra boasts lots of smartwatch features too. Pressing the crown takes you to the main menu where you’ll find apps like messages and calls (as long as you have an eSim enabled via the app), workout records, weather, maps, and more.

The Watch 5 Ultra’s GPS works extremely well so using maps to navigate my way around streets was a breeze. This way, you can retrace your steps and accurately track your outdoor workouts too.

When you receive a notification on your phone, it immediately pops up on the Watch 5 Ultra without any noticeable delays. This was one feature I missed in the Coros Vertix 2S which is a fantastic smartwatch in its own right, but wouldn’t receive notifications from my phone.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Battery life

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra is fitted with a rechargeable 480mAh battery, which is the same as the one in the Watch 5. Honor claims a single charge should last you up to 15 days, but this depends on usage conditions and the smart features you’re using.

To put this to the test, I first charged the Watch 5 Ultra to 100% with the included magnetic charging base, which took just under 90 minutes — similar to the OnePlus Watch 3. My methodology involved me wearing the watch 24 hours a day for five days, using sleep tracking and receiving notifications from my phone. After five days, the battery dipped to 72%, which is excellent.

In comparison, the pricier Apple Watch Series 9 has an 18-hour battery life. The OnePlus Watch 3 can last up to five days, while the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 lasts just under 24 hours.

The Watch 5 Ultra also supports reverse charging. If you’re an Honor smartphone user and own the Magic5 Pro, Magic6 Pro or Magic7 Pro, you can see any of these to charge the Watch 5 Ultra by simply placing the watch on your phone’s back — nifty! You can use any wireless charger with the watch too.

Honor Watch 5 Ultra review: Should you buy it?

As Android smartwatches go, the Honor Watch 5 Ultra is up there with the crème de la crème. Honor’s latest smartwatch is compatible with Android 9.0 and iOS 13.0 and higher, and it works like a charm.

It looks stunning with its titanium bezel and its bright AMOLED display makes reading text on screen much easier. The Watch 5 Ultra’s prowess lies in its ability to accurately track over 100 indoor and outdoor activities, give you insight into your sleep and even record your snoring.

While it can’t detect disturbances like sleep apnea, doesn’t feature fall detection and there’s only one size available, the Watch 5 Ultra hasn’t given me a lot else to complain about. Even paired with my non-Honor Android phone, this is one watch I’m not willing to part with easily.