Mario Bautista
The Honor Watch 5 features an aluminum frame, a ceramic back, and strengthened tempered glass over its display. We understand that you can’t trademark a square shape, but the similarities to one other very popular smartwatch series are blatantly obvious.
There’s a rotating crown with 45 teeth precisely CNC-ed out of a single piece of aluminum. “Designed by Honor” phrase is proudly etched on the rotating button. There’s a microphone on the left side and a loudspeaker on the right side of the watch, and the band locks using a button and a proprietary mechanism.
There’s an adapter to let you slap some standard quick-release 22mm bands as well, and the watch is available in three colors: black, gold, and green. We got the black variant, but the gold looks really nice, and it’s our favorite hue.
Overall, the design is very pleasant, and the watch is ergonomic and lightweight. If you don’t mind being constantly asked what Apple Watch model is strapped around your wrist, you will be happy.
The display is another key selling point of this watch. It’s a very nice looking 1.85-inch AMOLED panel with 1000 nits of peak brightness. The bezel is on the thick side, but overall the display looks very crisp and bright, especially if you choose a fitting watch face from the 400+ available in the Health app.
The auto brightness setting can be slow to react, and if you spend a lot of time outdoors, we suggest leaving the watch at maximum brightness manually. There’s also always on mode, and you can customize many of the watch faces with different complications.
Honor Watch 5 Bands & Size
22mm standard bands, but you need an adapter
You can click in a standard-looking lug adapter and make the watch compatible with 22mm straps, but we don’t have information whether you need to buy these lugs separately or if they’re actually included in the retail package.
Not much can be added here; the situation with third-party bands is unclear. We’re waiting for additional info about the lug adapter and will add it shortly.
Honor Watch 5 Software & Features
Covering the basics nicely
The Honor Watch 5 runs a proprietary MagicOS and most people who have any experience with Honor smartwatches will immediately feel at home. The third-party situation is very limited but you get the usual basic smartwatch functionalities such as notifications with the option to answer with some predefined text messages, camera control from the watch. You can also call people, find your phone, check the weather situation. As a smartwatch, the Honor Watch 5 is somewhat basic but it shines when it comes to health and fitness tracking.
Fitness Tracking
The Honor Watch 5 comes with comprehensive fitness tracking with quite a long list of supported workouts. You can add your fitness poison if it’s not already on the watch and these include indoor, outdoor, dance, fun, extreme, water and more activities. The list is so long that it features things like Latin Dancing and Ballet, Yoga and Pilates, Roller skating, Tug of War, and Darts, Sailing, Rafting, and Water scootering, Biathlon, Sledding, Bungee jumping, Parkour and even Motor Racing.
The GPS is quite accurate thanks to a specially designed antenna, even though it’s of the single position GPS variety. There’s VO2Max reading thanks to the pulse oximeter, running courses, and quite frankly, everything you need for a good and effective workout. The statistics in the Health app are also very thorough.
One-click Health Scan
Honor has aggregated some of the most important health metrics into a single measurement feature called One-click Health Scan. It measures things like your heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, stress levels, etc. It’s a nice and easy way to get a glimpse of your overall condition without manually measuring all these things separately.
Scientific Sleep Management
The sleep tracking is just your regular affair with sleep stages, times of waking up, overall continuity, breathing quality, along with suggestions on how to improve your overall sleep score. There’s also breathing exercises, and you can also add music to help you fall asleep.
Honor Watch 5 Battery and Charging
Weeks of battery life, no wireless charging
Honor is slowly perfecting its silicon-carbon battery technology, and the fact that one of these cells had found its way inside the Honor Watch 5 speaks volumes. It’s has a 480mAh capacity, pretty hefty for such a compact watch, and Honor claims you can get 15 days of moderate use on a single charge.
There’s also a special algorithm for optimizing battery life called OS Turbo X, supposedly using machine learning to lower the energy consumption. Algorithms or not, we were able to extract a good 10–12 days of moderate to heavy use of this watch.
This includes at least one GPS tracked exercise every day, always on mode all the time, sleep and heart rate tracking, an occasional call now and then, and fiddling with the apps and settings (especially the first few days).
Sadly, there’s no wireless charging, and you’re left with a conventional two-pin contact charger. You can’t charge the watch from your phone through reverse charging, and you need the proprietary charger at all times. Thankfully, with such a long battery life, this is not a huge issue; just don’t lose the charger!
Speaking of which, it takes about an hour and 10-15 minutes to fully charge the watch.
Honor Watch 5 Storage and Performance
When it comes to performance, we don’t have specs regarding the chipset used, the graphics engine, RAM figures, and other details. What we can say is that the Honor Watch 5 performs decently in day-to-day use. The GPS is pretty quick to find a lock (maybe thanks to a specially developed GNSS antenna), and scrolling through tiles and features feels smooth.
Honor Watch 5 Voice Calls and Haptics
The loudspeaker is also used to blast music out (if you happen to forget your earbuds) or voice guidance during workouts.
Haptics are pretty decent too; there’s haptic feedback when you turn the crown and also vibration for alarms, notifications, and other important system events. There are three settings for the vibration strength; we recommend leaving it on strong.
Honor Watch 5 Competitors
Another close competitor is the Huawei Watch Fit 3, which not only looks very similar but comes in an even more compact and lightweight package for pretty much the same amount of money. Finally, there’s the Garmin Venu Sq, which boasts a similar form factor, and it’s your ticket to the Garmin health and fitness tracking ecosystem.
Honor Watch 5 Summary and Final Verdict
The battery life is great, the screen is bright and crisp, and there’s a lot of health, fitness, and sleep insights you’re getting with the Honor Watch 5. The watch works with iOS and Android devices (with the Honor Health app), and for the expected price of around €150, it offers a lot.
