Huawei Watch Ultimate review: When 'Ultra' isn't good enough

Huawei's flagship watch for 2023 boasts strong claims about durability and sports tracking. Can it deliver?

Look up the word ‘ultimate’ in the dictionary, and you’ll find a description like ‘the best achievable or imaginable, the greatest of its kind’. In the tech naming stakes, it sits above ‘Ultra’ and ‘Pro’, so it's clear where Huawei is aiming with its top-tier smartwatch for 2023.

The Huawei Watch Ultimate is so named because not only is it built from materials we rarely see in tech, but also because it can do things most other smartwatches can't. With big claims come big expectations though and there's a slight possibility - this time - that Huawei's bitten off a little bit more than it can chew.

There's no denying Huawei has - yet again - pulled out another absolute stunner of a watch from its bag of tricks. The only stumbling block for most people is that it's a lot of money to spend on a watch that, in a lot of ways, works and acts just like the much cheaper Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro.

There's no denying this watch is one of Huawei's most ambitious wearables to date. Even when glancing through the design specs, materials list and just looking at the watch on our wrist, that's abundantly clear.

The thing that struck us first when opening up the box was just how gosh-darn good looking it is. It's a genuinely stunning watch, that's up there with the likes of the Garmin Marq 2 in terms of pure prettiness. There's so much attention to detail in the build and shaping. It has a luxury look and finish befitting its name.

It's in the way Huawei has combined matte surfaces with polished chamfers and accents, and juxtaposed shades of grey and subtle red markings. There's a precision to how the white compass markings are etched and marked in the ceramic bezel around the display, and how the Liquid Metal casing is shaped.

Those two elements alone give a hat tip to Huawei's luxury ambition. Ceramic and Liquid Metal are not cheap, and are pretty labour-intensive materials. But it's all in aid of delivering a watch that can go places most other smartwatches can't.

Liquid Metal's atomic structure and properties mean that - by its very nature - it doesn't corrode easily. It's considerably stronger and harder than stainless steel, relatively light, and will survive if you decide to take it diving in the sea. Ceramics are similarly tough and ensure the bezel around the screen isn't just pretty, it'll stay pretty for a long time.

Now - of course - there's no point building a watch out of highly durable materials and then slapping a cheap rubber strap on it, so Huawei even rethought the materials used for the strap that comes in the box. Rather than your usual Fluoroelastomer, Huawei has used HNBR (Hydrogenated Nitrile Butadiene Rubber) for the strap which - again - is corrosion-resistant, as well as heat-resistant, water-resistant and low temperature resistant.

Then there's the sapphire crystal glass over the display. The material itself is pretty commonplace in high-end sports and fitness watches, but its thickness isn't. At 2.35mm thick it provides more support and resistance against water pressure, or any other impact, than your typical sapphire crystal. All those elements combined mean the watch can survive outside in the storm, the cold, the heat and will survive if you take it diving all the way down to depths of 100m. Even in saltwater.

In fact - as we'll get to a little later - the watch is actually designed for use in deep diving situations. And to ensure you don't need to go out and buy a specialist strap, Huawei has included an extra long one in the box so that you can wear it over your wetsuit if you want to.

So what's the design downside? Possibly its size. At 48mm wide, it's not the smallest of watches and - unlike some of its other ranges - Huawei isn't offering an alternative, smaller option with the Watch Ultimate. Even on this reviewer's wrist, which is more than used to wearing 45-47mm watches, this one seemed quite dominating. Thankfully, however, it's relatively slim, and so doesn't feel all that cumbersome.

Huawei typically lacks in a few smartwatch areas with its own watches, but it's compromised in order to make it better in other areas. So while you might not get lots of interactive elements like replying to notifications, or support for popular music streaming platforms and contactless payments, you do get a watch that can last two weeks on a full battery quite comfortably. And this is while featuring a big, bright, colourful AMOLED display which is comfortably one of the best watch displays on the market.

At 1.5-inches, the round surface is considerably larger than what you'll find on the Garmin Epix (Gen 2) or the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, both of which are targeting a similar buyer with their focus on health tracking and battery performance. In fact, comparing it to the Epix is quite striking, because - despite featuring a chunkier case - the Epix display only measures 1.3-inches. Huawei clearly gives you more space, and - we think - uses it more effectively.

During activities, or even just during everyday interactions, the size and sharpness - delivered by a 500 x 500 resolution panel - mean that text and data points are clear. Huawei manages to fit quite a lot of data on the screen, without it becoming complicated to read. It's well organised and - because of the 1000 nits peak brightness, saturated colours and deep contrast - it's so easy to see, whether you're indoors or outside in the sunlight.

One area we'd love to see Huawei focus its energies on for updates and future models is the design and customisation of watch face designs. Unlike what you'll find on Apple Watch or the Google Pixel watch, there's not much customisation available with the watch faces. For the most part, you can change what data appears in the complications but that's about it. There's no granular changing of colours accents, index or hand styles. Even Garmin does this better than Huawei.

What Huawei lacks in quality and customisation, it makes up for in quantity. Its theming store has hundreds, if not thousands, of available watch face styles. From the classic analogue styles through to the digital and even quite abstract options, there's no shortage of designs to choose from.

A lot are free but, equally, there are a lot of paid-for premium faces. They're not expensive - ranging between £2-£5 in the UK - but often, there's no way of really knowing how well they all scale on the sharper, larger display of the Watch Ultimate until after you download and install it.

Huawei also focuses a lot on the health and fitness tracking side of things, having invested heavily in researching these areas over the past few years. Just like the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro, it excels at tracking all manner of workouts.

Its fast, accurate heart-rate sensor means that even HIIT kettlebell sessions don't prove too much of a challenge. It can track, compute and display your heart-rate data quickly and shows changes as they happen. It's a similar sense we get from the multi-band GPS, which is consistent and reliable, tracking runs to a similar level of consistency to the Apple Watch S7/S8 and aforementioned Garmin models.

There are a host of other sensors in here too, all of which make it an ideal companion for any fitness and health enthusiast. Particularly runners. Like Garmin, it offers running training plans that you can choose based on your level of experience. You can pick from a beginner's plan, a lifestyle plan for just getting moving, a 5k plan, plus longer 10k, half and full marathon options.

As you complete the sessions - or do any other running - the Huawei Health platform analyses your performance, fitness and ability and can then adapt and change the plan to suit you. It's a great place to start, and a great place to go if you've lost a bit of motivation and want to just follow a process without planning sessions for yourself.

What we like most about Huawei Health - and it's also true of Huawei's recent watches that sync to the service - is how Huawei gathers and presents data. It's thorough and detailed, while retaining user friendliness that can often get lost when so much data is available to browse through.

If you're a runner you can read through all performance stats from heart rate, pace and cadence through to your VO2 Max, 'running ability' and race pace predictions. For those who don't run and just want daily activity tracking, it's superb at that too. Sleep tracking is detailed and gives helpful indicators as to how you can improve your sleep quality. You can even measure your ECG and arterial stiffness if you want. It's a very holistic, all-round health-focussed service.

If you want the app to remind you to take your medications, drink water, go to bed at the optimal time or even do your breathing exercises, you can set it to do that. With a little tinkering, you can optimise it for your own personal needs.

If you have plans to take advantage of the expedition mode - which lets you place markers manually at different points - or the deep sea diving feature, you can do so. It has custom tracking/activity modes designed specifically for those. We're not professional divers or experienced at long expeditions either, so we'll leave that testing for those who know what they're talking about - but it's there if you need it.

The end feeling from a health/fitness standpoint is that it's a fantastic tool for just about anyone. From the marathon runners, to casual joggers, hikers, walkers, swimmers and everyone in between. You'll struggle to find a more comprehensive wrist-worn fitness assistant.

Huawei Watch models - particularly the bigger ones - have historically always offered excellent battery life. Where you'll be lucky to get two full days from an Apple Watch, Pixel Watch or even a Samsung Galaxy Watch, the Huawei Watch - thanks to its software optimisations (and limitations) - can go two weeks between charges.

It is worth noting, however, that if you're not the most active person, you may find it goes even longer than that with conservative/light use. We rarely struggled to get it to last a full fortnight, even with 3-4 workouts sessions being tracked through the week. Some of those would be GPS tracking runs or walks, others would be HR-intensive workouts like kettlebell sessions and others, calm yoga practices. Regardless, they'd run between 20-45 minutes most of the time.

There are some big benefits in the realm of charging for the Watch Ultimate too. Its included magnetic wireless charger can fully refill the battery in about 60 minutes. And, for added convenience, you can even charge it from other wireless chargers. We were able to just place it down on our bedside charging station overnight some nights, and it'd refill while we slept.

There's no denying Huawei has - yet again - pulled out another absolute stunner of a watch from its bag of tricks. With its liquid metal casing, ceramic bezel and super durable design it can plunge the depths of the ocean, survive a winter mountaintop and cope just fine in the heat of the summer. It's incredibly well made, and not just pretty either.

The only stumbling block for most people - who we assume are not deep sea divers or adventurers of barren landscapes - is that it's a lot of money to spend on a watch that, in a lot of ways, works and acts just like the much cheaper Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro.

As lovely and high-end as it is, we're not convinced it's the fitness watch for everyone, unless you have cash burning holes in your pockets. In which case, maybe fireproof trousers would make a more sensible purchasing choice.

Jokes aside, there's no arguing this is a very good watch and one we've been delighted with in our testing. It shows Huawei is still up there with the best of them when it comes to creating attractive health and fitness-tracking watches.

Cam has worked in online tech reporting since 2010. His responsibilities at Pocket-lint include producing and hosting quality, personable and informative YouTube videos on our growing channel as well as writing reviews and features. Prior to Pocket-lint he honed his video skills at PhoneDog, and wrote for 9to5Google.Other roles have seen him start projects from zero and grow their audience - covering Google, Apple and T-Mobile in depth. In that time, his areas of focus and expertise have mostly been smartphones and wearables, but he has a musician's ear and is equally adept at judging headphones and audio products. He's a graduate in Film and TV Production, and in his spare time, he's usually running, playing the guitar, doing yoga or training in the arts of movie and coffee snobbery.