Despite having the word ‘Watch’ in the name, the Honor Watch ES is more like a premium fitness tracker.
At IFA 2020 Honor announced two smartwatches, the Honor Watch ES and the Honor Watch GS Pro. The latter is a rugged outdoors fitness watch, while the former is presented by the company as a ‘fashion fitness’ smartwatch. While the first of those adjectives is rather subjective, the second one is clearly demonstrated in the watch, so this could be pretty great for those looking for a handy fitness wearable. Honor has a good track record of wearables, and we ranked its Magic Watch 2 as one of the best smartwatches. This isn’t a successor to that smartwatch — the Watch GS Pro is — but it’s still got many of the features that we appreciated in that device. The Honor Watch ES has far more in common with the Huawei Watch Fit (Huawei is Honor’s parent company). It has the same design, many similar fitness modes and other shared features. We don’t believe it is exactly the same device, but the differences are hard to spot. The Honor Watch ES is available to pre-order right now from Honor’s website in the UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain. It’s not clear if the watch will be available anywhere else upon full release, but given Honor doesn’t have much of a presence in the US or Australia, we wouldn’t expect it to land there. We know the Honor Watch ES price is €99.99 in Europe (roughly $120 / £89 / AU$160), which is pretty cheap for a smartwatch, and about average for a premium fitness tracker if you’d rather consider it that. The Honor Watch ES consists of a rectangular screen, attached to long thin silicone-feeling straps. We don’t know if it’s silicone or another material, but we’ve asked Honor to clarify that. We found the strap fitted pretty comfortably, though due to its long length an extra loop would have been useful for keeping it all tucked in. There are plenty of holes in the band, which likely increases breathability when you’re exercising. The body of the actual smartwatch feels rather long, making the whole device feel as much like a premium fitness band as it does a smartwatch.
