Huawei unveils its smartest watch ever — with a one-of-a-kind health feature

Huawei launched a new flagship smartwatch — the Huawei Watch 5 — during its Fashion Next event in Berlin on Thursday, 15 May 2025.

Huawei is one of the world’s largest wearables manufacturers, with more than 180 million of these devices shipped in the 12 years since it entered the market.

The company said the Watch 5 introduced “trailblazing innovations” and offered sharper insights, smarter design, and health features, making it Huawei’s “smartest” watch yet.

One of the watch’s standout features is the TruSense system, which can track over 60 health and fitness metrics across six bodily systems.

To provide more accurate health measurements, the Watch 5 is the company’s first watch to boast a Distributed Sensor Module with Huawei’s X-Tap technology.

Situated between the rotating dial and a button on the right side of its frame, users can hold a fingertip to the sensor to get more accurate, faster, and comprehensive health insights.

At a presentation preceding the Watch 5’s launch, Huawei smart wearables president Rico Zhang explained that the fingertip had distinct characteristics ideal for gathering valuable health metrics.

This includes its dense vascular distribution, thin epidermal layer, and low melanin concentration.

Among its capabilities will be measuring blood oxygen levels in roughly 10 seconds and performing a hypertension risk evaluation over 24 hours.

Like on its other smartwatches, continuous health and fitness metrics can still be measured via wrist sensors on the back of the smartwatch.

Zhang provided several examples of how Huawei’s TruSense technology had helped users identify problematic conditions like hypertension before they became dangerous to their health.

He explained these would have been difficult to pick up with short visits to the doctor and required long-term monitoring.

Due to its substantial investments in improving health measurement, Huawei’s TruSense has received accreditation from multiple medical bodies.

That includes SGS Switzerland accreditation for heartrate monitoring.

Design and pricing

Aside from the health and fitness monitoring improvements, the Watch 5 boasts new gesture controls, including support for “Double Slide” and “Double Tap”, providing users with more intuitive interaction.

Even with the substantial improvements in health monitoring, Huawei said the Watch 5 will support up to four and a half days of battery life in standard mode.

The battery-saving mode can support up to 11 days on a single charge.

In terms of design, Huawei has stuck with the circular body AMOLED display from the Watch 4. However, the Watch 5’s screen is less raised.

The display will have a resolution of 466 × 466 and peak brightness of 3,000 nits. Spherical sapphire glass provides strong protection against scratches.

Another change from its predecessor is the option of two sizes instead of one — 42mm and 46mm — each with five colour options.

Both models come with a silicone strap as standard, but the larger variant is also available with a more expensive metal band.

The watches will also retain Huawei’s proprietary quick-release straps.

Recommended retail pricing for the Watch 5 will start at R9,999 when it launches on Huawei South Africa’s online store on 2 June 2025. From July, it will also be available at selected third-party retailers.

While the standard models will have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, there may also be LTE-equipped models in certain markets. It is unclear whether these will be available in South Africa.

Below are photos of the Huawei Watch 5 in four colours.