Garmin Vivoactive 5 GPS Watch Evaluate

Backside Line

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 is a flexible GPS smartwatch designed for energetic life. It blends health monitoring, good options, and dependable battery life in a smooth package deal. Its vivid AMOLED show affords glorious visibility, whereas the light-weight design ensures all-day consolation. It’s the thinnest and lightest watch in our lineup. Its smooth design and hardly noticeable weight earn it a spot in our lineup of greatest GPS watches.

Geared up with a extremely correct GPS and lots of exercise varieties, the Vivoactive 5 precisely tracks operating, biking, swimming, energy coaching, and extra. Well being monitoring is a serious focus of this watch. Actually, it leans extra towards a health and well being tracker than a GPS look ahead to backcountry use. It comes geared up with coronary heart fee monitoring, coronary heart fee variability, sleep insights, stress monitoring, and Physique Battery power monitoring to offer a complete view of wellness.

Whereas the Vivoactive 5 is nice for front-country use and recording well being metrics, it lacks some options wanted to depend on it within the backcountry. It doesn’t come geared up with an altimeter or the flexibility to navigate utilizing the watch. Its average battery life is just not sufficient for day-long actions, nevertheless it adequately powers the intensely vibrant display for day by day use.

For these in search of a well-rounded health smartwatch with robust well being monitoring and on a regular basis utility, the Vivoactive 5 is a high contender.

How We Examined

We put the Vivoactiv GPS watch to the take a look at – taking it on sweaty path runs, epic backcountry ski adventures, and simply carrying it round day-to-day. After huffing and puffing with this look ahead to a pair months straight, we’ve killed the batteries extra occasions than we will depend, tracked our miles by means of all types of terrain to see how correct it truly is, and strapped in for hours on finish to verify it doesn’t drive you nuts.

Accuracy

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 provided dependable GPS accuracy all through our exams on a loop of identified distance and testing in several terrain varieties. 

The one space during which it struggled was in dense tree cowl. There have been some skips and jumps within the monitor, and the gap was barely off. That is widespread in single-band GPS watches, nevertheless it was notably noticeable within the Vivoactive 5. 

Whereas it lacks dual-frequency GPS, the Vivoactive 5 nonetheless performs properly for many customers. Its stability of accuracy and battery effectivity makes it a reliable alternative for informal runners and health lovers.

Battery Life

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 claims an  11-day battery life in commonplace smartwatch mode, although we discovered that real-world utilization varies extensively throughout our testing. 

It was exhausting to make this watch final greater than 5 days with day by day GPS recording of 1-1.5 hours and common smartwatch use. Garmin claims the Vivoactive has upwards of 17 hours of steady GPS use. We discovered that to be a unicorn scenario stat. The true-life exams proved it’s decrease. Battery saver mode helps prolong utilization, however the Vivoactive is just not our high choose for all-day actions or spending a number of days between dependable charging.

Consolation & Wearability

The Garmin Vivoactive is the lightest and slimmest watch in our lineup. 

Weighing in at 35 grams, we hardly seen it on our wrists. It’s one of many thinnest watches we’ve examined with a thickness of 11.1 mm (.43 inches). Whereas its 1.2-inch show dimension is commonplace for a lot of different watches, the general dimensions are extraordinarily slim. 

When you’re somebody with slender wrists, you’ll love this watch. It’s snag-free on backpacks, gloves, and sleeves. This can be a nice low-profile watch to put on and neglect it’s there.

Options

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 comes with sufficient options to make it an ideal day by day health and wellness tracker. It has a vibrant 1.2-inch AMOLED show, providing sharp visuals and a light-weight design. 

The watch helps over 30 sports activities modes, together with operating, biking, swimming, and extra obscure sports activities like gaming and platform tennis. The Vivoactive additionally tracks coronary heart fee variability, sleep, and stress. It additionally options Garmin’s Physique Battery, which helps monitor power ranges all through the day. 

Nevertheless, this watch is clearly meant to be a health tracker fairly than a smartwatch or backcountry-oriented GPS watch because of the lack of some key options. It doesn’t have smartwatch options like offline music, Garmin Pay, or the flexibility to reply to messages. It additionally lacks an altimeter, offline maps, routes, and breadcrumb monitoring. 

The Vivoactive 5 is a stable alternative for these in search of an all-around health tracker with some good capabilities, although it will not be adequate for these after extra specialised features.

Ease of Use

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 affords a user-friendly expertise with its intuitive interface and straightforward navigation. 

The touchscreen is responsive, making it easy to scroll by means of menus and settings, whereas the AMOLED show ensures clear readability in varied lighting circumstances. With solely two buttons, the choices for navigation are streamlined with a lot of the manipulation occurring by means of the contact display. 

The watch pairs with Garmin’s long-standing and well-designed companion app for in-depth evaluation of well being metrics and exercises. We liked having the ability to customise the exercise varieties and watch face instantly from the watch and it’s simple to navigate to show the exercise metrics you’re after. 

The simplicity of the design is nice for these new to health trackers. Whereas it lacks some superior options, the Vivoactive 5 affords a clean, environment friendly consumer expertise for these in search of an easy-to-use health smartwatch.

Ought to You Purchase the Garmin Vivoactive 5 GPS Watch?

When you’re on the lookout for a easy, streamlined health tracker, the Vivoactive 5 is your watch. When you’re on the lookout for a burly watch with a battery life for recording actions for days at a time, chances are you’ll look elsewhere. 

The Vivoactive 5 excels at day by day well being and wellness however is rapidly out of its depth for navigation and even most smartphone options. The battery life is in the course of the pack, and we needed to cost extra incessantly than others in our lineup. 

Nevertheless, for day-to-day use the place entry to charging is widespread, the Vivoactive 5’s smooth profile, trim design, and low weight are exhausting to beat. If in case you have a skinny wrist, this can be the right day by day watch.

What Different Watches Ought to You Contemplate?

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 GPS watch is a superb possibility for the fitness-focused out of doors go-getter. Try extra of our examined and reviewed favorites in our full GPS watch gear information.

Garmin Forerunner 165 Evaluate: With an analogous battery life however barely extra options, the Forerunner 165 is a trail-ready look ahead to a virtually similar value.

Garmin Intuition 2 Photo voltaic Evaluate: If the battery lifetime of the Vivoactive 5 left you wishing for extra, the Intuition 2 Photo voltaic can report for days at a time repeatedly, due to its glorious battery and photo voltaic charging watch face.

Coros Tempo 3 Evaluate: One other nice possibility for somebody not trying to spend some huge cash, the Tempo 3 has nice battery life for lengthy days on the go.