Honor Watch 5 Ultra hands-on review: A surprise package crying out for Wear OS

After 75 minutes of AI-heavy platitudes and talk of paradigm shifts during its MWC 2025 keynote, Honor left just enough time to debut the Watch 5 Ultra. To our surprise when checking the new smartwatch out on the floor at the Barcelona show, it also holds plenty of promise.

See, we’ve grown not to expect much from Honor wearables over the years. While other Chinese brands have invested heavily into competing with industry giants Google and Apple, Honor has sat back and been content to launch the odd budget smartwatch.

As the ‘Ultra’ moniker would suggest, though, this isn’t like the Honor devices that have come before. Yet, for all the positives of our brief hands-on time with it, it’s clear this could have been so much more. Here are our initial impressions.

Price and availability

Before we get into our quick takes on the Watch 5 Ultra, let’s cover price and availability.

At the time of writing, we still don’t have any answers on the smartwatch’s release date. Rumblings around the show floor in Barcelona suggested it will arrive later this month, though.

Availability also hasn’t been officially locked down, yet it’s almost certainly a device that will be marketed in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The Americas aren’t generally within Honor’s scope.

One bit of confirmed information is the price—it will retail for €279. Pricing for the UK and US has yet to be announced (though it converts to around £230/$290).

We’ll update this section upon posting our full review with more details.

Design: Not quite Ultra, but certainly premium

Despite Honor officially cutting ties with Huawei in 2020, there’s still clearly a lot of shared inspiration between the two brands. This is particularly true of a device like the Watch 5 Ultra, which is the only other example of the octagonal bezel synonymous with Huawei’s Watch GT 5 range launched in 2024.

Despite a slight lack of originality, there’s nothing technically wrong with being this derivative—the Watch GT 5 is a superbly designed smartwatch, which means Honor’s octagonal effort is also so.

The titanium alloy case is incredibly light—just 53g—considering the 46.3 x 46.3 x 11.4mm heft. Another premium spec, the sapphire glass covering of the 1.5-inch AMOLED display, should also mean it remains scratch-resistant even in adventurous wear.

Obviously, we weren’t willing to put this to any kind of scratch test on the Honor stand at the show, but we’ll explore over the coming weeks just how well the design holds up in the gym, outdoor exercise, and sleep.

The Watch 5 Ultra will also be available in a silver case/brown leather combo or the gray case/black fluoroelastomer shown above, with each featuring the same rotating crown and lower side button for navigation.

We wouldn’t say it’s a design worthy of the Ultra tag touted by brands such as Apple and Samsung, but it’s a step on from what we’ve seen from Honor previously.

It’s the brand’s first genuinely premium-feeling watch, and the 480mAh battery also means it could have the staying power to match. Honor’s estimates, which we expect refer to the stripped-back smartwatch mode, put battery life at 15 days. Again, we’ll provide a more comprehensive test in our full review.

Features: The missed software opportunity

Honor went to great lengths during its MWC 2025 keynote to highlight its partnership with Google for its latest smartphones, so it’s a shame this hasn’t transferred to its smartwatches, too.

Instead, the Watch Ultra 5 runs on the brand’s proprietary OS. As with other brands’ examples, this ensures the smartwatch is very nippy to navigate around, but there’s a relatively limited amount of apps and services you can tap into.

We performed a quick and easy 60-second health scan and looked through the relatively paltry number of watch faces. However, the lack of apps and ‘proper’ smartwatch features like contactless payments and LTE means it remains like others not running one of the two major software platforms—a fitness tracker trapped inside a watch body.

With robust hardware at a reasonable price, it’s a prime candidate to run Wear OS. While we understand that a brand like Huawei has literal international sanctions that undermine its ability to work with Google, Honor isn’t limited in the same way.

So, while we’re sure we’ll find a groove with this software during in-depth testing, this was a missed opportunity to deliver a fairly complete Wear OS watch out of the blue.

Initial verdict on the Honor Watch 5 Ultra

It has limited pedigree in the smartwatch space, but Honor may have produced its best-ever smartwatch in the Watch 5 Ultra. The design is far more premium than the price tag would suggest, and it has enough personality to be a legitimate Apple Watch alternative or non-Google/Samsung watch for Android users.

We’ll reserve our full judgment on the software until we can live with the watch for an extended period. However, at least initially, we came away from our time with the Watch 5 Ultra wanting more. If it had extended its partnership with Google to include Wear OS, it could have seriously given the likes of Xiaomi and OnePlus something to worry about.

Still, Honor remains the wearable tech industry’s surprise package from MWC 2025. And considering its previous standing, that alone is sufficient progress for now.