I love the “new to me” features with this watch. Compass, hints, morning reflection, and encouragements throughout the day. More features than I expected with this upgrade.

It is easy to use but does need to be charged daily. Also would be nice if the time was listed in hours and minutes not by just hands. Does work in the pool while a teach a water fitness class.

Terrible watch. Does not keep a charge really want my money back. Apps are not correct. Does not catch a true depiction of my sleep or body. False advertising/ cheaply made and extremely disappointed

Recently purchased this Garmin Smart Watch and the Keeper stretched to the E point that the watch strap is not properly secured, and presents a serious safety issue. The purpose of a watch band keeper is to secure the excess length of the watch strap, preventing it from catching on objects, snagging, or wearing down quickly. The current Keeper is a Complete FAIL ...and I hope Garmin Support will respond properly with free replacement Keepers when I have time to call.

I bought the VivoActive5 a few weeks ago. I was looking for a vast improvement from my previous FitBit devices, most especially when it comes to being water resistant. I paddle board, kayak and go to water parks. My previous FitBits over the past decade could just not hold up at the water parks. After some searching I found the Vivoactive 5. I’ve loved the additional features and that I can log my paddle board trips as I do it mainly for the workout. However, this week I went to a water park and have mixed opinions on its performance. Several times it got hung up and wouldn’t clear a screen. At one point it just kept bouncing back and forth between screens without returning to the “Home Screen”. I finally had to Google how to hard reset the watch to get it to start working again. In the hours it took to get my watch working again I missed countless steps and also had a pretty bad panic attack as I had flashbacks to my past FitBits. Luckily I bought an extended warranty because if it happens again I’ll likely return it. Otherwise I’ve really enjoyed the upgrade to Garmin.

I've owned a few Garmin watches and this one has been the worst. With only 2 lasers on the back it often times won't track, well anything. It's pretty and smaller, which is great, but definitely needs to have the 4 lasers like all of my other watches.

I have had Garmin products for at least 10 years. I had the vivofit 3 and 4 and loved them, but I had bought several 4's and they kept dying on me after I changed the batteries. So, I decided to give the Vivoactive 5 a try. I love it! I love the features and I love the GPS!

# Garmin vívoactive 5: Great Fitness Watch, Terrible Sleep Tracker ## Rating: 2/5 for Sleep Tracking I’ve been using the Garmin vívoactive 5 for sleep tracking over several weeks, and while it’s a solid fitness watch, the sleep tracking is fundamentally unreliable. If accurate sleep data matters to you, look elsewhere. ## Major Sleep Tracking Failures ### 1. **Completely Misses Sleep Periods When You Change Locations** The watch frequently fails to track entire sleep sessions if you move to a different bed or room mid-night. Multiple times, I woke up in the middle of the night, moved to a different bedroom, went back to sleep for 2-3 hours, and the Garmin simply stopped tracking—pretending I was awake the entire time. This isn’t a minor glitch; it’s a fundamental flaw that makes the data useless for anyone dealing with fragmented sleep. ### 2. **Cannot Distinguish Between Sleep and Watching TV** The watch regularly mistakes lying still on the couch watching TV for sleep. On multiple occasions, it logged 1-2 hours of “sleep” that was actually me lying down watching Stranger Things or other shows. If the device can’t tell the difference between unconscious sleep and conscious TV watching, what’s the point? ### 3. **Fails When You Remove the Watch** If you take the watch off during the night (for a shower, for example), it ends the sleep session entirely. No recovery, no second tracking period—just missing data. This happened multiple times and makes the watch unusable for anyone who might need to remove it briefly during the night. ### 4. **Co-Sleeping Interference** When my toddler slept in bed with me, the watch’s tracking became even less reliable. Movement from another person seems to confuse it, leading to either missed sleep periods or wildly inaccurate wake time calculations. ### 5. **Inconsistent Data Accuracy** Comparing the Garmin’s data to my actual sleep experience revealed huge discrepancies: - **Dec 14**: Watch showed 3h 45m of sleep ending at 3:26 AM. Reality: I was awake 2:30-6:00 AM (3.5 hours), then slept until 8:30 AM. The watch missed an entire sleep period. - **Dec 15**: Watch claimed I went to bed at 10:51 PM. Reality: I was watching TV until midnight. - **Dec 17**: Watch showed no data at all despite wearing it all night. When your sleep tracker can’t even get the basic start/end times right, the detailed sleep stage data (deep/light/REM) is meaningless. ## What Actually Works To be fair, the watch does work reasonably well when: - You sleep in the same bed all night - You don’t remove the watch at any point of the night and reapply it - You’re sleeping alone - You go straight from awake to bed (no TV time) In these ideal conditions, the sleep stage breakdown seems plausible, and the efficiency calculations are probably in the ballpark. But who has perfect sleep conditions every single night? ## The Bigger Problem The fundamental issue is that the Garmin treats sleep tracking as a simple motion + heart rate algorithm. It has no way to verify whether you’re actually asleep or just lying still. It can’t handle anything outside its narrow assumptions about how sleep “should” look. For someone trying to address chronic sleep issues—the exact use case where accurate tracking matters most—these failures make the watch actively unhelpful. You can’t identify patterns or measure progress when the data itself is fiction. ## Bottom Line **Buy this watch if:** You want a fitness tracker with decent battery life and you only care about general sleep trends (e.g., “I usually sleep 7 hours”). **Don’t buy this watch if:** You need accurate sleep data for medical reasons, sleep therapy, or tracking actual sleep patterns. The tracking is too unreliable to be useful for serious sleep ----- **Tested with:** Garmin vívoactive 5 **Testing period:** December 2024 (2+ weeks of nightly use and external journaling) **Use case:** Sleep restriction therapy for chronic middle-of-night insomnia​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I am coming from a fitbit - I like this it has more on watch features but I do wish it had a microphone so I could ask alexa to do things around the house and respond to texts. I love how the watch looks and feels I did get a new band for it though. Overall it takes some getting used to after using fitbit but I like it!

My 5th Vivioactive watch over the last 12 years. Used for cycling, swimming, SUP, hiking(walking) pickleball and lots of other workouts and activities. This watch has quickly become a disappointment due to how it’s sensing and recording my workouts. My 4 was very accurate compared to the 5. Not sure if it’s the sensor or the software.