# 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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This item is very thorough at collecting overall statistics about a persons health. It is a hreat little tracker if you dont need all the bells and whistles. If you are apprehensive about having all your health stats in the hands of Google like the fitbit and Google tracker, this is the one for you.

The battery is going down at a rate that suggests it won’t last 2 days let alone 11. Also it didn’t come with a charger. Nothing in the box even though it states there should be one. Waiting to hear from customer service. I will update if it’s a positive experience.

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.

The watch looks nice and it's not bulky. It's very similar to the Apple watch just that you can't answer text on the watch. The battery goes low if you are getting all ur notifications. If you're getting it for the training feature it only goes up to a half marathon, so if you're doing a marathon it won't give you suggestions.

I went from an Apple Watch to this Garmin and absolutely love it! You can’t respond to text or answer calls but I never did that with the Apple anyway! The battery on this thing is also amazing! Lasts forever! I was tired of charging my Apple Watch every night! I wore this watch for about 7 days before finally putting in on the charger!

The watch is comfortable to wear. It has enough free faces to pick from that I can read with out my glasses. After a full change over seven days ago I still have 47 percent battery left. The colors are bright and clear. It is responsive to touch and when you turn your wrist to veiw. The band is easy to put on and the extra flap stays down. It seems to count steps and sleep pretty accurately. It can do way more than I will use. I like the watch better than both my fitbits. The app is okay maybe I haven't figured out all it can do yet because I USED to like the fitbit app better until Google took it over. Definitely a great watch for people who want to use the basics plus. I can't say if it's great for you serious health nuts or not.

I moved from a Fitbit to the Garmin VA5. I do like it, but even after a yr I'm still swiping when I should be pushing a button. The Fitbit was much more user friendly. Easy swipes then taps. Easy pause taps during exercise. This watch still has a way to go to simply things. It should be the way of the our phones, easy taps and swipes.

I ordered a vivoactive and after four days of wearing it was clear that it dint accurately track steps, I.e. ran 8 miles and the steps were 13,000. I contacted Garmin support and they were glad to replace it. I Sent it in and 10 days later received a new vivoactive. I wore it two days and the same issue exists. I had an 11 mile day plus shopping and it only registered 20,000 steps. Done with this watch. Don’t waste your money.

I like my watch and would recommend it to others. It tracks a lot of metrics that were confusing at first, but have grown on me and now I appreciate. Overall high marks, very nice products Issues: It is not great at monitoring heart rate. Some time it reads low values and I move my watch a bit and then reading recovers. Maybe it a problem common to all wrist type measurement, so I understand why some people also buy the chest monitor. I plan to, but they currently have a long lead time. It also seems to have some delays in syncing Active Activity with my iOs health app. Might be an iOS issue. Finally, a second charging cable would be helpfuil. I ended up buying a set on-line, and did buy the older stayle USB A since most of my home chargers are this type. But great product overall, Santa might be bringing my wife one.