Huawei Watch Fit 5 Review: A smart choice

Design and screen

• Available in five different colours
• Smaller AMOLED display than Watch Fit 5 Pro
• Not suitable for recreational diving

If you’re comparing the Watch Fit 5 to the Watch Fit 4, Huawei largely sticks to the same watch design. It’s also got a 43mm aluminium alloy case that measures 9.5mm thick and weighs just shy of 30g. It’s a smartwatch that’s pretty compact and sits at the kind of weight that makes it very comfortable to wear, both during the day and the night.

Huawei also sticks to a 1.82-inch, 480 x 408 resolution AMOLED display, featuring a quite noticeable black bezel around the edges. The only notable difference is that the peak brightness has jumped from 2,000 nits to 2,500 nits compared to the Watch Fit 4.

Displays on Huawei’s smartwatches are always a highlight, and that’s also true of the one on the Watch Fit 5. It’s sharp, offers rich colours and does benefit from that bump in overall brightness.

There are two physical buttons to accompany the touchscreen as your methods of interacting with the watch. The top one is your watch crown, used to wake up the display and scroll up and down through screens or notifications. The bottom one is the shortcut button, which by default gives you quicker access to the workout tracking screen. You can change this if you prefer speedier access to another watch feature.

There are five colours to pick from, which mainly relates to the colour of the watch band. The green-grey version features a nylon strap while the purple (pictured), green, white and black versions feature a more exercise-friendly fluoroelastomer strap. There are buttons on the caseback you can press to release the strap from the body if you fancy trading in fluoroelastomer for some nylon.

One of the key design differences between the Watch Fit 5 and Pro model is centred around waterproofing. The Watch Fit 5 carries a 5 ATM rating, making it suitable to handle water pressure up to 50 metres deep for 10 minutes. Basically, it’s good for pools, open-water swims, and showers. Less so big deep-sea dives – you’ll need the Pro if you want to do that.

I like the look of the Watch Fit 5. No, it’s not all that original, but it’s clearly a well-put-together smartwatch that I think a lot of people will be happy with. It mainly lacks the bigger display, tougher materials, and water protection you get on the Pro. As a smartwatch built for those that don’t plan to go on huge outdoor adventures every weekend, there’s plenty to like here.

Performance and software

• Runs on HarmonyOS 6.10
• Upgraded 64GB storage
• NFC payments through Curve Pay supported

You’re getting a Huawei smartwatch that runs on the latest version of Huawei’s in-house built operating system, which is one of the most user-friendly smartwatch operating systems outside of Apple’s watchOS and Google’s Wear OS.

It remains a gesture-centric interface where you can swipe from all directions to get to features like your notification stream or dedicated widgets for data like activity tracking. The watch crown gets you into the main app screen where you can choose from a list or hex grid displays. Either works well, and the software overall is easy to get to grips with.

All of the setup, adjusting watch settings, or getting more watch faces is done from the Huawei Health app. I continue to find Huawei’s phone app a bit too congested, which can make for quite an overwhelming experience to dip in and out of it.

If you like watch faces, you do have good options to choose from here. That includes ones that support dynamic videos or using your own photos. It’s useful that Huawei tells you how much power watch faces consume if you value your battery more over an animated watch face. You can download more faces, with some available for free and paid versions ranging in price from 49p up to £3.99.

You do also get access to the Huawei AppGallery, which is a more pared-back version of what’s available on Huawei’s more expensive smartwatches. You will still find some well-known third-party apps in the small bunch, including home workout app Fiit and Curve Pay.

It’s nice to see quite a sizable bump in storage here from the Watch Fit 4, jumping from 32GB to 64GB. That gives you quite a significant amount of extra room for storing apps, available offline maps and audio files.

Curve Pay is there to unlock contactless payments, which has finally started to roll out onto a range of Huawei’s smartwatches. It means loading cards through the Curve app to start making those payments. That setup process can take some time before you’re free to pay by watch.

There is going to be a slightly different experience using the Watch Fit 5 if you’ve got it paired to an iPhone. You’ll miss out on wallet functionality, the ability to respond to messages and calls, and some health features that haven’t been approved in some countries yet.

I’ve been using it with an iPhone and an Android phone. While using it with the former does mean you miss out on some features, the experience of using it as a smartwatch day-to-day is still very good.

Tracking and features

• New mini-workouts
• Includes more advanced running and cycling modes
• Pulse Wave Arrhythmia analysis available

The Watch Fit 5 might miss out on the Pro’s dive-tracking credentials, ECG sensor and richer mapping support for golfers, but it does still manage to cram in a dizzying amount of features to track your exercise and non-exercise time.

Sensor-wise, you’ve got Huawei’s upgraded optical sensor designed to improve heart rate tracking accuracy during workouts and also to power heart rate variability measurements to better understand your stress.

There’s dual-band GPS to promise accurate positioning tracking for the likes of running and cycling. Those two activities among the hundreds that are supported also benefit from more advanced metrics, including pairing to external sensors like power meters. 

Beyond workouts, this smartwatch will track your sleep and emotional well-being, and it has a pulse wave arrhythmia analysis feature. This feature uses the upgraded optical sensor to track heart rate and measure signs of atrial fibrillation. This is the kind of health-related feature you typically find on more expensive smartwatches. I gave it a spin, and it’s pretty straightforward to take measurements. The data looked reliable as well.

Of all of those many features, there are some clear ones that stand out. Like the mini-workouts, which, accompanied by a cute panda watch face, encourages you to keep moving through bite-sized workouts. These workouts are very approachable and require just 30 seconds of your time to perform. It’s a really great addition to the Huawei ecosystem.

Another thing that stands out is GPS performance. As I’ve learned, just because a watch has the latest dual-band GPS technology doesn’t mean it’s giving great GPS performance.

In the case of the Watch Fit 5, I was surprised how well it performed on outdoor runs for a watch this price. It even managed to match that indoors and using the other motion sensors to generate pretty reliable treadmill tracking. I should also add that offering to turn off the voice prompts when you first start using workout tracking is a feature I’ve long called for.

Heart rate monitoring can often be a good barometer of how good an optical sensor is. Especially if it’s able to monitor other vitals like SpO2 levels and power stress features.

I’ve been wearing the Watch Fit 5 with a range of different smartwatches and smart rings, and real-time and resting heart rate readings looked nicely in line with those devices. During exercise, it largely held up well against a heart rate monitor chest strap, though it did show some more severe drops in heart rate during workouts.

Huawei’s sleep tracking has improved over the years, and the Watch Fit 5 seems to perform well in that department. I’ve been wearing it alongside an Oura Ring 5. When you compare stats like sleep duration, sleep stages and sleep scores, they largely tell a similar story. I found REM sleep stages were a lot shorter on the Huawei, while it can be a touch more generous with sleep scores.

Huawei does provide some additional analysis and recommendations with some pretty baseline insights. It would be great if it was a bit more personalised, but it’s a start on offering more actionable sleep insights.

One irritating element is the need to complete a consent agreement for pretty much all health and fitness features. Until you’ve done that, you won’t see data from those features.

A recurring theme here is that when it comes to delving into your data, there’s quite a lot of other not-so-useful bits of information you need to bypass in the app. It often means missing out on a lot of what this watch is capable of. Whether that’s support for third-party apps like Strava, the available training plan features, or even the fact you can view full maps on this smartwatch. 

• Up to 10 days battery life 
• Up to 4 days in always-on display mode
• Up to 7 days battery life with typical usage

There’s no improvement on the battery front with the Watch 5. In fact, the numbers are the same as the Watch Fit 5 Pro. That’s up to 10 days with what Huawei deems light usage, 7 days with more typical usage and 4 days when you keep the AMOLED display at all times.

My usage of the Watch Fit 5 was mixed. I had some lighter usage days where I wasn’t using features like workout tracking or keeping the screen on at all times. I also spent days with the always-on display mode enabled and used features like GPS and some of the more advanced health and sleep monitoring in use.

I’d say the numbers are pretty much spot on. On lighter days, the battery dropped by around 4-5%. On my intensive days, it was closer to 10-15%. Stick the screen on 24/7, and the battery can last anywhere from 3-4 days.

To charge it, you’ll need to grab the proprietary charger provided to power it back up. Fortunately, it only takes around an hour to get back to 100% when it goes fully flat. 

Should you buy it?