Honor Watch 5 Ultra Review: Weeks Of Smartwatch Battery Life At A Premium

Premium smart watches are becoming more and more common these days, with multiple watchmakers touting the "Ultra" label on their finest watch. Along with the high power and functionality, "Ultra" usually comes with a pretty high price tag. Honor is adding its entry to the Ultra landscape with the Honor with the Honor Watch 5 Ultra. This is a smartwatch built with premium materials and a pretty decent price for what it is.

As of now (and for the foreseeable future) it's only available overseas — U.S. buyers need not apply. All the same, I've had the chance to wear this watch sample provided by Honor for a couple of weeks. Not least of all because I haven't had to charge its battery yet, I found it to be a particularly interesting piece of hardware.

Honor claims this watch can run for 15 days on a full charge, and I don't doubt that. Plus it has some other particularly nice elements worth highlighting, so let's get into it. This is my full review of the Honor Watch 5 Ultra.

The first thing I noticed about the Honor Watch Ultra was how similar it looked to the OnePlus Watch 3 (and OnePlus Watch 2 for that matter). Both watches have the same size screen and the same two buttons on the side. By that I mean almost exactly the same to buttons. The top button is a rotating digital crown and the bottom button is a flat pusher. The bottom button can be assigned to any function you want; by default it's set to start an activity.

Unlike the OnePlus Watch 3, the case around the screen is octagonal, which is a really nice look aesthetically. The case also loses the numbers around the periphery, which is a win in my book. The octagonal shape adds a classiness to the watch that the OnePlus doesn't quite achieve, though I find the similarity between the two watches hilarious, likely because I reviewed them basically back to back.

The case is made of a titanium alloy on the front and a polymer fiber composite on the back. Overall, the watch is a chonker, but it's stylish enough that you don't really mind.

The lugs for the Honor watch and much more band replacement friendly. Rather than a TPU strap that is shaped to conform to the watch, Honor closes that gap off with a metal finish that compliments the watch's face and makes it easy to swap in a different band. Speaking of which, the band that comes with the watch is either a brown leather strap (as reviewed) or a black fluorolastomer strap.

The watch runs MagicOS 7.2 which is not based on Google's WearOS. Rather it's reminiscent of a more generic, heavily skinned RTOS. It's compatible with both iOS and Android which is nice. The nature off the operating system allows it to run basically forever on a single charge, but the real win here is universal compatibility with your smartphone.

Navigation on the watch is similar to most other smartwatches. Swipe down to get to quick settings, swipe up to see notifications. Swipe right to left to get into the cards, which are quite nice actually.

Unlike a lot of other smart watches, these cards feel like they were designed specifically for this watch. Most of the cards have a circle of controls around the periphery that allow you to access certain functions. You have a health card, an activity card, and then a weather card. The health card in particular is handy for accessing all the health functions of the watch. A lot of smart watches will bifurcate the various functions into their own cards, which is fine, but I rather prefer this compact approach.

One thing I'm not fond of is that the card are not a carousel. You can only swipe right to left from the main watch face and once you reach the third card, you need to back out by swiping left to right. It's a minor annoyance, and an odd choice.

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra gives you a morning report which lets you know how you slept. Along with a few other key metrics about both your previous day (metrics you reached) and your upcoming day, like weather. You can skip the morning report or scroll through it. It opens automatically when it detects you woke up.

On the other side of things, The Honor Watch 5 Ultra has a 45-second health report that can check your heart rate, stress level, ECG and other data on demand. This is an activity you start on your own; it doesn't run automatically, but it gives you a pretty comprehensive look at all the vital statistics that the watch can measure. The watch also keeps a record of past health checks so you can compare as needed.

Additionally, the watch can measure over 100 different activities on demand. Considering I reviewed this watch in the middle of February and I live in Chicago (which has been especially frigid this year) I didn't get a chance to log any walking activities or other outdoor activities, but they're all there, just waiting for warmer weather.

The health statistics are organized in the Honor Health app nicely, if a bit unimaginatively. Don't get me wrong, you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, but the app is just a list of rows with various data like exercise history, calories burned, steps, sleep and more. You can edit the cards as you need to. There's nothing wrong with that layout; it just lacks creativity.

Tapping on each card brings you into a daily, weekly, or monthly breakdown so you can see your trends over time. Those are also easy to read and understand. One thing I thought was a little funny about the data came from the sleep card which told me I had "too many waking-ups" and while I don't disagree, I'm not sure I would have phrased it exactly in that way.

Speaking of waking-ups, the watch also has automatic nap detection, which is not always a given that a smartwatch will have, but it should be. I took a couple of naps during my review period — you know, for science — and the watch picked them up automatically without having to do anything. I like not having to do anything which is also why I like naps.

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra has one Achilles heel and that in its watch faces. Honor would love to point to the 10,000 watch faces it has available, which is nice, but those watch faces are not customizable at all. What you see is what you get.

That's not the worst thing — there are a lot of watch faces after all, and I found one that worked for me, but the complications are locked too. Complications can be a very personal preference on a smart watch. Not everyone will want the same things. Personally, since I travel a lot, I like to set a world clock complication set to Chicago time, so I know when I can call home to chat.

The things is, most complications are uniform in nature; they're usually a circle, or a bar that runs around the circumference. So, it makes sense to make complications customizable since they're mostly the same shape anyway. My default watch face has seven complications on it, and building watch faces for every combination of those seven, plus a variety of colors just doesn't make sense. It would make much more sense to build one watch face with multiple colors and customizable complications and call it a day.

Performance on the watch is fine, but not amazing. The most notable issue I had on the performance end was getting the watch to wake up after the always-on display had kicked in. Sometimes, raise to wake would work — often it would not. I would have to tap on the screen to get it to wake up and then I could do what I needed to do with it.

As for the battery, It's pretty great. I only had about ten days to test the watch, and it lasted that entire time easily. Honor says the watch can last up to 15 days — that might be a bit optimistic, but certainly twelve days is within reason. The watch charges with standard Qi charging which is a nice bonus. Plus, the way the watch lugs work with the strap, the watch can lay flat, unlike the OnePlus Watch 3. That's always a nice bonus, especially with so many phones supporting reverse wireless charging these days. This is a battery performer for sure.

Overall this is a very nice watch with a classy look to it, even if it is on the larger side. If you have dainty wrists, you may want to look elsewhere. Battery lie too is quite solid. My main issue with the watch comes in the form of the software and its lack of customization. The app is basic, but quite functional. The health features are definitely on point.

Honor plans to sell this watch, exclusively overseas for 270 Euros (right around $280 converted to USD right this minute), which is a bit much, even considering the build materials, quality, and durability. That price also puts it in range of other watches like the OnePlus Watch 3, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, and the Apple Watch Series 10. If you throw in the frequent trade-in deals Samsung often offers, you could even get a Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra for around the same price. All of those offer more functionality and app support than this one.

I feel like it needs to be available for far closer to 100 Euros to be priced competitively. Then again, 15-day battery life is nothing to sneeze at. So, it comes down to priorities — and how much you don't like charging your watch. If you buy this watch, you'll get your money's worth, but there are a lot of other options at that same price point that you might find to be more compelling.