Huawei Pura 70 Ultra review

Display

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra features a 6.8-inch screen with a premium LTPO OLED panel of 1260p resolution, dynamic 120Hz refresh rate, support for 10-bit color depth, and HDR capabilities. It should be capable of up to 2,500nits of peak brightness.

One of the key selling points of the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra is the special version of Kunlun Glass called Crystal Armor, which is made of a highly transparent amorphous diamond carbon material. It is 300% tougher than the regular Kunlun Glass and should offer unmatched scratch resistance.

We completed our usual display tests, and the numbers are solid. The panel offers 632 nits of maximum manual brightness and 1231 nits of maximum automatic brightness.

The minimum brightness at point white was 1.6 nit.

Refresh rate

The screen has a resolution of 2844 x 1260px, making up for 460ppi density. You can choose between Smart resolution (dynamic adjustments), High (native) 1260p or the low 854p for battery-saving purposes.

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra offers three refresh rate options - Standard (60Hz), High (120Hz), and Dynamic (auto switch with up to 120Hz).

According to Huawei, the screen should be capable of dynamic refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz based on the content on the screen. In our experience, however, the integrated refresh rate counter only recognized 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz refresh rate modes but it could be incorrect as we have no reason to doubt Huawei's claims.

The High and Dynamic modes used 120Hz in compatible apps and interfaces and switched to 60Hz for those that don't support it, including video playback.

Finally, the Standard 60Hz mode is self-explanatory - you get a consistent 60Hz refresh rate all around.

HDR and streaming

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra supports HDR Vivid, which is recognized as HDR10 by all hardware scanning apps. It also comes with Widevine L1 DRM support, which should allow high-res HDR streaming.

Netflix offers SD streaming only, while other apps may go to Full HD. HDR was not available in any of them, though.

But if you use those apps via the GBox virtual machine, you will also get maximum resolution and HDR10 streaming. This applies to Netflix and YouTube, too. Of course, that would depend on the smartphone model that Gbox chooses to emulate.

By the way, Huawei does its HDR video playback just like Apple - meaning in a very flexible way. It's not necessary for the content to be displayed full-screen for HDR to work. It can just work on the portion of the display that has the video playing, which is a bit of a odd experience the first couple of times you encounter it.

Battery life

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra is powered by a large 5,200mAh battery, which supports fast wired and wireless charging. Other big contributors to the battery life performance are the LTPO OLED screen and the 7nm Kirin chipset.

The battery life numbers we got are solid. The Pura 70 Ultra scored an Active Use Score of 12 hours and 29 minutes. It aced the call and video streaming tests and performed above average on the web and gaming tests.

Charging speed

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra supports Huawei's 100W SuperCharge and 80W Wireless SuperCharge. The retail bundle contains the new 100W power adapter and a proprietary 6A-rated USB-C-to-C cable.

The 100W charger comes with two USB ports - A and C. This way, you can use this fast charger on laptops and tablets, not only on smartphones. Note that you cannot use both ports simultaneously.

The bundled charger and cable refilled 29% of the battery in just 5 minutes, 58% in 15 minutes, and we captured 90% of battery charge at the 30min mark.

A full charge took 48 minutes, which is not terribly fast for a 100W charging power rating but we were at 90% at the 30-minute mark so that's decently fast.

Naturally, the Pura 70 Ultra supports Smart Charge, which learns about your charging habits and drops the charging speed once it reaches 80%. You can also choose the safety mark yourself if you prefer to avoid it being fixed at 80%.

Huawei Pura 70 Ultra supports 80W fast wireless charging, but you need to purchase Huawei's 80W stand or car charger plus an additional 100W+ plug. The phone also supports 20W reverse wireless and up to 18W reverse wired charging. You need to activate the wireless option from within the Battery options.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra offers stereo speakers. It is a hybrid setup, where the earpiece acts as a speaker with two sound outlets (front- and top-facing), and there is a dedicated bottom speaker.

While the bottom-firing speaker is louder than the earpiece, the sound balance is great, and we have no complaints.

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra scored an Average mark on our loudness test, which is slightly lower than the P60 Pro. The audio quality is very good - there is enough bass, the vocals are very good, and so is the high frequencies presentation.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.