I was excited about the Honor Watch 5 Ultra, until I realized this

The front casing of the 46mm chassis is immediately eye catching, with premium titanium that helps this look less like a piece of technology and more like a legitimate timepiece. The angular, machined design and larger size lean towards a more masculine aesthetic.

That angular approach is a repetitive theme, first noticeable on the Octagonal Dome that surrounds the sapphire glass watch face on the front. The outer edges feature soft, straightened lines, while the inner is circular, giving it a signature look. Huawei took a similar path to last year’s Watch GT 5 line-up, so apparently, it’s a trend.

The angular casing connecting the 22mm watch bands adds to the watch’s boxy footprint, driving the point home that this isn’t for smaller wrists.

It gives the impression that the watch bands are tucked into those housing areas.

The functional rotating crown on the side has a series of short spiky rows that grip the finger well in contrast to the soft tapered design of the OnePlus Watch 3’s crown that can sometimes slip in use.

Below the rotating crown is a flat customizable button for launching any number of actions on the watch. The side area of controls has a very familiar look and function as the OnePlus Watch 3.

Underneath is a sensor pod with a standard array of health-related sensors. That’s also where the wireless charging is managed, though I didn’t get a chance to test that out at all.

The 1.5-inch AMOLED display, protected by sapphire glass, is bright, sharp, and colorful with a 60Hz refresh rate and an Always On option. My eyes quickly spotted a bezel separating the display from the framing, but it’s not distracting. The Watch 5 Ultra is also water and dust protected with a 5ATM/IP68 rating.

While I didn’t have it long enough to begin to put the 480mAh battery to any sort of rigid test, Honor claims the Watch 5 Ultra is capable of up to 15 days of battery life with normal usage, crediting onboard AI for impactful efficiency gains. I might also credit a less robust operating system.

The Honor Watch 5 Ultra is running the company’s own proprietary Honor OS which is responsive and organized in a pretty standard fashion.

Scrolling through the pre-installed apps shows that Honor has sought to cover most of the basics like a solid assortment of fitness tracking activities, a Quick Health Scan, and a compass, cause why not.

The quick settings section looks very familiar with a layout that closely matches what’s found on Wear OS. If I didn’t know going in that this was a different OS when I first saw it, I might not have questioned it at first.

What’s puzzling is why Honor didn’t seek to deepen its relationship with Google with this smartwatch and make this a true Wear OS flagship. The Honor Watch 5 Ultra fails to offer things many Android users have come to expect, including broad app compatibility and core Google services integration.

Sure, the Honor Watch 5 Ultra connects with and works pretty seamlessly with Android and iOS devices alike for universal things like notification triage and integration with the Honor app. But Honor’s ecosystem isn’t enough to compete with what the Google Play Store offers in the way of expanded functionality and third party watch face support.

At €279 (roughly $300), Honor isn’t targeting a particularly price-sensitive audience. This is what makes the watch a bit difficult to understand. With a price and design that shows Honor stepping into a more “Ultra” segment in wearables, the lack of comprehensive software support ultimately diminishes the value proposition for the people who might be most likely to want to buy one in the first place.

I walked away from my hands-on time puzzled about the future of this watch, but hopeful that perhaps Honor will follow this one up with a true Wear OS competitor. That’s something I could get very excited about.