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The newest entry in Huawei's popular fitness-focused wearable range, the Watch Fit 5 is the smartest watch the brand has yet made. The lineup comprises two models: the standard Watch Fit 5 (£159.99) and the more premium Watch Fit 5 Pro (£249.99). While the standard model is a sleek, everyday tracker, the Pro version adds luxury touches: an aerospace-grade ceramic and titanium build, advanced golf and diving modes, and a brighter screen.
Beyond the hardware and health metrics, Huawei has also introduced an optional virtual pet that lives on the watch face. Two of them, in fact. One a fuzzy critter you can poke and interact with, and one a cute little panda that gets increasingly upset if you don't squeeze in enough 30-second workouts throughout your day.
Does it work? I have the happy panda to prove it. I've been wearing the flagship Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro for the past two weeks, to see if it can hold its own in an Android wearable arena dominated by Samsung and Google's Pixel. Here's my verdict.
Design and Display
The rectangular silhouette of the Watch Fit 5 series draws immediate comparisons with the Apple Watch – particularly the Pro's deliciously juicy orange colourway – but the resemblance isn't just aesthetic. The Fit 5 Pro feels remarkably premium for a £250 wearable. It features a titanium alloy bezel, an aerospace-grade nanoceramic metal body that feels cool against the skin, and a 2.5D sapphire glass screen that promises to deflect wear and tear. It's still box-fresh on my wrist after a few weeks of use. The standard Fit 5 drops the titanium and sapphire in favour of a 100 per cent recycled aluminium body, making it slightly lighter (27g vs 30.4g) and a smidge thinner.
The displays on both models are impressive, but the Pro is the real star. It boasts a 1.92in AMOLED screen with narrow 1.8mm bezels, giving it an 83 per cent screen-to-body ratio. It's brighter too, hitting a peak of 3,000 nits compared to the standard model's 2,500. Even under the harsh, direct glare of the midday sun, the screen remains clear and vibrant. There's no shading the screen with your hand to see your running pace here.
Software
Navigating the watch's HarmonyOS interface is snappy and intuitive, aided by the functional rotating crown on the side. Once the weak point of Huawei wearables, the software has evolved a lot in recent years, with support for contactless payments via Curve and third-party integration with popular fitness apps like Strava. You still can't access Google services on the watch, but it plays nicely with Android and iOS. Huawei's native maps work just fine for getting wrist-based directions, and calls and app notifications work as you'd expect.
Huawei has introduced an interactive panda watch face that essentially turns your £250 smartwatch into a high-res Tamagotchi. If you've been sitting still for too long, the panda becomes lethargic and despondent. Complete some mini-workouts and it starts to cheer up. These 30-second fitness snacks include things you can do at your desk, like neck stretches and shoulder rolls. It's faintly silly and entirely optional, but it's a fun reminder to break up a sedentary workday.
Fitness and Sleep Tracking
Under the hood, the Fit 5 Pro is a biometric powerhouse. Alongside a more accurate heart rate sensor, atrial fibrillation and blood oxygen monitoring, the Pro model adds an ECG app and arterial stiffness detection. How useful is knowing the stiffness of your arteries? It's hard to say – but the Fit 5 Pro can tell you.
When it comes to tracking sports, the Fit 5 Pro packs them in. It supports more than 100 workout modes, but the heavy hitters are golf, trail running and cycling. The Pro model comes pre-loaded with more than 17,000 vector golf course maps, offering precise distance measurements and a green view that auto-rotates based on your angle. Personally, I never advanced past pitch-and-putt, but the Fit 5 Pro makes a competent smartwatch for anyone who owns their own clubs.
The upgraded GPS antenna is accurate when running the convoluted route around the high-rise buildings of my London neighbourhood. It's fast to snap onto a GPS signal, and the resulting maps never have me swimming in the Thames. Cyclists also get a suite of new features, with the watch now capable of calculating power and cadence. The Huawei Health app also becomes a mounted bike computer, with clear and easy-to-read stats as you ride.
Huawei's sleep tracking has also been improved, most notably with the welcome addition of a 'nap recap' feature. This detects when you've tactically nodded off on the sofa and logs it independently of your main overnight sleep data. The overnight tracking itself is comprehensive, breaking down your rest into light, deep, and REM sleep stages, and generating a straightforward daily score.
Battery Life and Connectivity
Battery life is where Huawei consistently embarrasses the competition. The Fit 5 Pro utilises a new high-silicon stacked battery, promising up to 10 days of light use or a solid 7 days of typical use. Even with the always-on display enabled, constant heart-rate tracking, and daily GPS runs, I comfortably sailed through four days before needing to reach for the magnetic charging puck. Compared to my dawdling Pixel Watch 3, which begs for a charger every day and a half, it's a revelation. For endurance athletes, the Pro offers a whopping 25 hours of continuous GPS tracking for trail running.
One historical sticking point with Huawei watches in the UK has been contactless payments. Thankfully, the Fit 5 series supports Curve Pay via NFC, allowing you to link your standard UK bank cards to the watch for tap-and-go coffees at the end of a run. It also plays nicely with third-party fitness ecosystems, seamlessly syncing your workouts to Strava, Komoot, TrainingPeaks and more.
Is the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro Worth It?
The Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro is an exceptionally capable wearable at a very reasonable price. Sitting somewhere between a sleek fitness band and a premium smartwatch, Huawei's fitness watch offers surprisingly build quality at £250, the 3,000 nit screen is premium, and the battery life means you can forget your charger when you go away for a long weekend.
Sure, HarmonyOS lacks the sprawling app store of an Apple Watch or a WearOS device, but it makes up for it with comprehensive health, fitness, running, cycling and sleep tracking. If you want a durable workout companion that doesn't cost the earth – and you don't mind occasionally taking fitness advice from a virtual panda – the Fit 5 Pro is a fantastic choice.
How I Tested the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro
To see if the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro could handle the rigours of an active lifestyle, I strapped it to my wrist for two uninterrupted weeks, putting its battery, sensors and that virtual panda through a real-world assessment.
- Design and durability: I wore the watch 24/7, assessing the comfort of the strap during sleep and seeing how the ceramic and titanium bezel held up against accidental knocks and scrapes.
- Display and battery life: I tested Huawei's brightness claims by checking the screen's legibility during midday runs in direct sunlight. I pushed the battery by enabling continuous heart-rate tracking and the always-on display to see how long it could last away from a charger.
- GPS tracking: I used the watch to track my regular running routes through built-up areas, comparing the speed and accuracy of its new GPS antenna against the Pixel Watch 3.
- Features: I tried the new mini-workouts, guided by my virtual pet panda, to see if they offered genuine benefits or just a temporary distraction.
Why you can trust IndyBest reviews: Steve Hogarty is the former editor of PC Zone magazine and an award-winning journalist with more than a decade's experience testing fitness trackers and smartwatches. His reviews focus on everyday wearability, workout tracking and overall value, so you can be sure his verdict is authentic, honest and based on real-world experience.
