Huawei Watch 5 Review | Trusted Reviews

Design and screen

• Comes in stainless steel or titanium 
• Next generation LTPO display technology
• Suitable for swimming and freediving

The Huawei Watch 5 feels like an amalgamation of the Watch 4 and Watch 4 Pro, and that’s definitely a positive.

There are now 46mm and 42mm sizes with the option of a titanium or stainless steel finish. You can grab the 46mm titanium model in brown or silver purple, or get it in black if you want the stainless steel version. The smaller 42mm model comes in sand, gold, beige, white and green, and is clearly made for those who have felt previous Huawei Watches were a bit too big.

The titanium version also hosts a new LTPO touchscreen, which now has slimmer 2.2mm-thick bezels, giving you more screen for everyday tasks. It now has a much curvier look, which while looking premium, can create some glare from some angles when viewing outside in bright outdoor light.

That said, the screen is sharp and colourful, has a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, and can be set to stay on at all times.

When not swiping and tapping on the display, there’s a rotating crown and a regular button on the side of the case with a new sensor in between, which enables the Watch 5’s new health tracking powers.

The strap is removable, and the composite version I had strapped to my wrist adopted the appearance of a leather one. Perhaps it would’ve been better to simply embrace its more durable, workout-friendly design rather than pretend to be something else.

Waterproofing remains the same as the Watch 4, so you’re getting something fit to survive being dunked in water up to 50 metres deep. If you’re into freediving, then the Watch 5 meets the EN13319 standard to work for recreational diving up to 30 metres depth. If you want richer diving smarts and support, you’ll need the Huawei Watch Ultimate for that.

Performance and software

• Works with Android and iOS
• Include eSIM support 
• New gesture controls

The software experience on the Huawei Watch 5 is best described as mostly nice on the watch and a bit messy in the Huawei Health companion smartphone app.

Once again, you can use it with Android phones or iPhones, with the former giving you full access to all available smartwatch features – no need for a Huawei-branded phone here. Like the Watch 4 Pro, you have optional eSIM functionality to make calls and get navigation directions without needing your phone nearby.

Whichever phone is paired, the HarmonyOS operating system is the same. It’s clean, polished, and looks great on that curved LTPO display.

Huawei has got in on the gesture control hype, adding double slide and double tap gestures that are compatible with incoming calls, music playback support and snoozing alarms. It’s easy to set up and can be useful when your hands aren’t free for limited functionality.

It handles notifications really nicely, and features like mapping support work well. It does a good job covering most staples, like weather and setting alarms and timers. However, when it comes to features like apps, music and using NFC to add transport cards, it doesn’t feel as polished as the experience on rival Apple, Samsung, and Google smartwatches. 

Huawei says some big-name apps are coming to the AppGallery, but I didn’t see masses of them there. I downloaded a few, including a whack-a-mole game, which ran a bit sluggish on the watch. There are some useful apps there, like a remote built for Spotify, though it isn’t an official Spotify app.

While Huawei offers a good collection of pre-loaded watch faces, most of the additional watch faces you can add to the watch cost money, and not all are that cheap. Basically, there’s still some work to do, and while there are clearly things to like about HarmonyOS, there are clearly some elements that still need refining.

Tracking and features

• X-Tap sensing technology
• Richer Health glances
• Dual-band GPS and offline colour maps

The Watch 5 is packed with sports and health features, some of which we’ve seen before on the Watch 4 and Watch 4 Pro and some entirely new to Huawei’s smartwatches.

The headline feature is the new X-Tap health sensor on the right side of the case. This sensor is capable of taking ECG heart rate measurements, fingertip SpO2 readings, and detecting arterial stiffness, which isn’t a regulatory-approved feature. It boosts Huawei’s Health Glances feature, which now lets you capture nine data points, with HRV and breathing during sleep now added to the 60-second process.

Using the new sensor requires a little bit of practice and mainly not pressing too firmly when trying to take a measurement. I also had some issues with it because I wear a bracelet, which made getting to that sensor slightly awkward to do.

Once mastered, metrics like temperature, heart rate and SpO2 readings looked normal. ECG readings typically were classified as inconclusive, as my normal resting heart rate sits below 50 bpm. 

You can view most of this data right on the watch, but you’ll often be prompted to head to the Health phone app to explore trends and see your data in greater detail. Consuming all of the data can feel a little overwhelming, so the onus is on you to hone in on the metrics that matter most to you, remembering that some metrics don’t offer medical-grade accuracy.

Switch to sports tracking mode, and the Watch 5 is well equipped. There are sports profiles for indoor and outdoor workouts like running, cycling, spinning, yoga and more niche pursuits like handball, water sports and dance. It offers sports watch-style training metrics like VO2 Max estimates, and for runners, it will predict running times for different distances.

Huawei includes dual-band GPS to keep it in line with sports watches that offer the latest in positioning technology, to improve GPS performance when tracking near tall buildings and heavily wooded areas. 

The sports tracking has been good on the whole, whether it’s been indoor rides, outdoor runs or pool swims. Heart rate tracking during exercise has been a mixed bag; it can be slow at the beginning of workouts to kick into gear and catch up with the more accurate and reliable tracking from a dedicated heart rate monitor.

As a fitness and sleep tracker, it’s also a dependable companion. There’s a nice big widget to monitor daily activity progress, and data like daily step counts chimed with similar tracking from two other wearables I wore alongside it.

The sleep tracking has been good too, with plenty of data to view from the sleep widget on the watch. You can see a nice breakdown of your night’s sleep as well as a record of additional sleep metrics like heart rate and heart rate variability readings. 

The core sleep data does feel useful, if a little generous at times with sleep duration recorded. There have been more good sleep tracking nights than bad ones, and while Huawei’s attempt to analyse and make recommendations about sleep is a bit clunky, it can be useful to take it to bed.

Battery life

• 3-4.5 days in standard usage
• 2-3 days in always-on mode
• New auto-switching battery mode

The battery life of the Watch 5 depends on the size you choose. If you opt for the smaller 42mm model, you can expect to enjoy three days in standard mode or two days with the screen on 24/7. On the 46mm version I tested, that jumps to four and a half days with standard use or three days with the always-on display mode enabled.

Those numbers across sizes are similar to the numbers attached to the Watch 4, with some small promised improvements. I found the 46mm Watch 5 lasted four days, or three days as promised with the screen on at all times.

When the battery gets low, there’s a battery saver mode that switches off some features that will notably drain the battery, like eSIM connectivity or syncing data from the phone to the watch over Bluetooth.

An auto battery mode will switch from standard mode to battery saver mode when the battery drops below 15%. Using that battery saver mode does a good job of getting you sufficient extra watch time before you can get hold of the charger.

Charging from 0-100% takes 90 minutes for the 46mm Watch 5 and 60 minutes for the 42mm model, so again, these are similar fast charging numbers to the Watch 4.

Should you buy it?