Let's start by saying that the Honor Watch 5 offers a great package of features in a sleek and stylish body. There's no way around the visual similarities this gadget has with the Apple Watch, and we honestly can't fathom why that was needed, as the Honor Watch 5 would've still been a decent smartwatch without the controversial looks, but it is what it is.
In a nutshell, this smartwatch offers a bright and vibrant display, a lightweight and comfortable design, and great battery life thanks to Honor's silicon-carbon battery tech that has found its way from the Magic Pro series to this very watch.
There's also comprehensive sleep and fitness tracking onboard, a pretty decent loudspeaker and microphone, plus the option to fit standard 22mm straps with an adapter. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's everything you need to know about the Honor Watch 5.
What’s new about the Honor Watch 5:
1.85-inch AMOLED display with 1,000 nits peak brightness
480mAh silicon-carbon battery with up to 15 days of battery life
5ATM and IP68 water resistance
New square design with a 72.7% screen-to-body ratio
We got the Honor Watch 5 in plastic bubble wrap, so the retail package is a bit of a mystery. A quick search on the official Honor website showed that the packaging includes:
Watch, 1 Piece
Charging Cable, 1 Piece
Quick Start Guide, Safety Information, 1 Piece
Warranty Card, 1 Piece
There should be a universal strap adapter included to let you use standard 22mm straps, but it either comes with a specific version of the Honor Watch 5 or it's sold separately. Speaking of sales, we still don't have the official pricing for the Honor Watch 5, and will update the review once we've investigated this mysterious matter.
Honor Watch 5 Specs
Here's a quick specs sheet for the Honor Watch 5:
Specs
Honor Watch 5
Dimensions and weight
45.6 mm x 39.4 mm x 11 mm 35 g (without the strap)
480mAh battery Maximum: 15 days Magnetic charger, 100% in 70 mins
Sensors
HR, blood oxygen
Connectivity
Wi-Fi, 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 5.2 supporting LE/BR/EDR
Price
Around €150
Looking at the specs, the thing that stands out the most is the hefty 480mAh silicon-carbon battery. The capacity is quite decent considering the 11mm body and the 35-gram weight of the watch. The screen is also pretty big and bright, and the pixel density is also good at 322 PPI.
Honor Watch 5 Design & Display
Derivative
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
The Honor Watch 5 is available in one size, measuring 45.6mm x 39.4mm x 11mm, and the watch weighs about 35 grams without the silicon strap included. The said strap attaches to the body via a proprietary mechanism with two buttons on the body of the watch, releasing the strap.
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 tacking.
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 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
The Honor Watch 5 comes with a 4GB ROM, but you don't have access to all of it, as a decent portion is reserved for the OS and apps. In practice, you get around half of that, but it's plenty for uploading your favorite MP3 tracks onto the watch for some audio-enhanced, phone-free exercise.
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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
There's a microphone and a loudspeaker inside the Honor Watch 5, hence the ability to make and receive calls using the watch as a Bluetooth remote headset. The quility is pretty good, we were able to hear the other side loud and clear, and vice versa.
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
It's pretty hard to place this watch among the competition when you don't know its exact price tag. We expect the Honor Watch 5 to retail for around €150, which is a pretty good deal considering all the bells and whistles onboard.
With that said, the obvious competitor here is the Apple Watch SE, which is much more expensive (at around €279.00), and for that kind of money you get another Apple device for your ecosystem. This choice makes sense only if you already own an iPhone.
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
If you somehow manage to distract yourself from the way the Honor Watch 5 looks, it can be a great smartwatch and a potent health and fitness tracker. This square design is getting pretty generic at this point, so it's a downside only if you consider it one.
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.
Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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