Honor Watch 5 Ultra

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra is Honor's first Ultra smartwatch, but this isn't necessarily like putting an Apple Watch Ultra 2 or a Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra on your wrist.

- Mike Sawh

It does offer some qualities of those ultra smartwatches like giving you a dive-friendly design and introducing an ECG sensor to provide more accurate heart rate readings, and does that for considerably less money.

Unlike the Honor Watch 5, the Watch 5 Ultra is playing at a slightly different end of the smartwatch spectrum. One where there are some pretty great smartwatches from Huawei, Xiaomi along with a host of WearOS-packing watches. It's also going up against the Apple Watch SE 2, which means it is up against some pretty stiff competition.

DESIGN

The Watch Ultra 5 looks absolutely nothing like the Honor Watch 5 and should really be seen as the successor to the Honor Watch 4 Pro.

It's available in just a 46.3mm case size, making it roughly the same size as the 4 Pro (46.4mm) and matching up to smartwatches like the OnePlus Watch 3. Honor opts for an octagonal case design, which helps to ensure it doesn't just disappear into a sea of the many very similar-looking round smartwatches.

The case is made from grade 5 titanium, offering something that's tough yet light and gives the Ultra a pretty pleasing matt look that does feel like an upgrade on the stainless steel used on previous Honor smartwatches. That case is matched up with either a brown leather or a black fluoroelastomer strap, with each easily removable via the small sliding button mechanism on the back. The brown leather strap I had partnered up with the silver titanium case is a tried and trusted look that works well for many watches and it's no different here.

I do think it would be nice to have a smaller case size option, but in general it's been a comfortable watch to wear without ever feeling too hulking in stature.