HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro vs. Apple Watch Ultra 3: Does More Expensive Mean More Better?

Without looking at the brand, which one do you think costs three times more? Kind of difficult to guess, right? Just by looking at their physical attributes, one wouldn’t be able to tell which is which, unless of course you know what to look for…

A top-down view of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 (black) and the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro (orange) resting side-by-side on a wooden surface with their screens off.

When it comes to wearables, HUAWEI has become one of the few brands capable of seriously challenging Apple’s dominance. Their wearables are some of the best, not just in terms of design but also in the fitness and health features they offer.

A side-by-side comparison on a wooden table showing the active watch faces of the black Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the orange Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro.

Plus, it doesn’t even cost an arm and a leg to buy. So yes, the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro is the one that costs a third of the Apple Watch Ultra 3, but stay till the end to know if it’s really worth buying or if it’s better to just keep earning.

Design

When it comes to design, everyone knows that although Apple wasn’t the first manufacturer to pioneer the square smartwatch design, they were the ones responsible for popularizing the form factor.

A close-up centered shot of the black Apple Watch Ultra 3 with its compass-style watch face illuminated while resting on a wooden surface.

Since then, a decade has passed and the design has remained mostly the same. I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But that doesn’t mean there’s no longer room for improvement.

A top-down view of the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro with its orange watch face and strap, displayed prominently against a wooden background.

Both the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro and the Apple Watch Ultra 3 feature an aerospace-grade titanium alloy body and sapphire glass for the display. However, the WATCH Fit 5 Pro’s white edition boasts enhanced durability thanks to a ceramic coating and micro-arc oxidation technology.

The Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro (orange) stacked on top of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 (black) to show the difference in thickness and casing design.

At 30.4 g, the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro weighs roughly half as much as the Apple Watch Ultra 3, which goes a long way when you’re wearing the watch all day or all night to monitor your sleep. It even has a narrower bezel while still matching the Ultra 3’s 3,000-nit peak brightness.

Pretty impressive, don’t you think? But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Health

Now this is one of the aspects where HUAWEI really shines. For a smartwatch that costs a third of the price, the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro sure does offer a lot of features, even some that aren’t available on the Apple Watch Ultra 3.

One of those is an industry-first, non-invasive diabetes risk assessment feature designed to identify possible warning signs after 3 to 14 days of wear. Just to be clear, it doesn’t diagnose diabetes, it’s simply there to identify potential warning signs.

The Apple Watch Ultra 3, on the other hand, only supports CGMs or Continuous Glucose Monitors. For those unfamiliar, CGMs are small sensors placed under the skin to measure glucose levels.

For the heart, although both the WATCH Fit 5 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra 3 offer ECG functionality, the former provides more detailed analysis through CE-certified ECG analysis and Pulse Wave Arrhythmia analysis.

A person wearing the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro on their wrist, showing an ECG-style heart rate measurement screen that indicates "Poor contact with electrode."

A person wearing the black Apple Watch Ultra 3 while performing a heart rate scan, with the screen displaying a red waveform.

I would just like to point out that these are not substitutes for doctors or medical equipment. They are simply tools used to monitor and hopefully help prevent possible risks.

Going back, both wearables also provide emotional wellness monitoring, but again, it’s broad strokes over fine details. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 approaches it through broader analysis, while the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro offers real-time monitoring of up to 12 distinct emotional states withEmotional Wellbeing 2.0.

A screenshot of a mobile health application dashboard, likely used for syncing data with devices like the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro.

Sports and Fitness Tracking

Another area where HUAWEI makes a strong case is sports and fitness tracking. From running and hiking to playing pickleball or doing shots on a golf course, the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro provides precise monitoring to let you know what and where to improve.

At the core of it is HUAWEI’s upgraded Sunflower Positioning System, which is designed to improve positioning accuracy compared to standard dual-frequency GNSS. Why sunflower, you ask? Notice how sunflowers always point themselves toward sunlight? Well, HUAWEI’s system does something similar by aligning itself toward satellite signals.

For runners and cyclists, the WATCH Fit 5 Pro includes trail metrics like split elevation, route navigation, and virtual cycling power to monitor real-time performance.

Last but certainly not least is Professional Golf Mode. Sure, golfing isn’t as big in some parts of the world, but it is slowly gaining traction. If you’re a golfer, then the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro could offer you something that requires third-party apps on other smartwatches like Apple’s.

That includes distance measurements and a green view heat map powered by vector maps from over 17,000 golf courses worldwide. So regardless of whether you’re here or abroad, the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro should give you the data you need.

Everyday Edge

All that’s good and all, but what about the most basic things? We get so caught up in the big features that we forget the little things that really matter, for example, battery life and compatibility.

If you rely on your smartwatch to monitor your health, then having short battery life kind of defeats the purpose, right? For the Apple Watch Ultra 3, it’s 3 days on a single charge. For the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro? It’s 10 days. And that number isn’t from controlled testing either, that’s 10 days of real-world usage.

Unlike the Apple Watch Ultra 3, or any Apple Watch for that matter, the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro isn’t locked to EMUI. You can use it regardless of your smartphone’s operating system.

To be fair, if you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 still makes a strong case for itself because of how seamlessly it integrates with iOS, along with the long-term software support Apple has always been known for.

Since we’re already on the topic of software, both the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra 3 work seamlessly with the popular fitness app Strava. But what you won’t see on the Watch Ultra 3 is GCash WatchPay and Angkas. GCash WatchPay lets you pay using your GCash account, while Angkas tracks your ride, all without having to pull out your phone.

Price

This is where the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro makes its strongest case.

You’ve heard us yap about the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro being a third of the price of the Apple Watch Ultra 3, but we never gave any figures. Since you’ve stuck around till the end of the article, we’ll reveal the price as a reward for sticking around.

As a baseline, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 retails for ₱54,990, meanwhile the HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro only retails for ₱13,999. Hell, that’s not even a third of the price. You could buy four HUAWEI WATCH Fit 5 Pro units for the price of a single Apple Watch Ultra 3.