I hate the look of the Apple Watches, so I was excited to try this. It does what it says. My complaint is that when I lost it, I cannot ping it- like an Apple Watch. No tracking if lost or stolen. Can’t shut the watch down. No pin to protect it, etc. So whoever finds your watch has access to the information stored on it. Paying extra for security and peace of mind is worth it- as I found out the hard way.

I have had my Garmin Vivoactive 5 for about two weeks now, and I am loving it. Although I've ran into the issue of it not holing a charge. I will charge it to 100% all night, and put it on in the morning. By the time it's 6:00 PM, my watch is at 10%. I truly love the product, I just wish it would stay true to holding a charge for 11 days.

It's just really hard to use any of the watch face features. sometimes it's hard to get the time to appear. It's a watch. I will say that the monitoring features are really really good except for that it doesn't seem to have any pulse ox monitoring features that I know of.

I bought this watch two years ago and noticed a gradual decline in function. The keeper stopped keeping and the band would loosen. The watch fell off randomly and started to fall off at night resulting in inaccurate sleep metrics. Garmin replaced the keeper 4 times. The battery life declined over time and the connectivity became inconsistent. The watch gets 3 stars because when it was fully operational, I loved it. The sleep metrics, workout information and ability to customize workouts and watch faces is excellent! I also enjoyed the peace of mind with the fall detection that will notify my emergency contacts in the case of a sudden impact.

Terrible. Don't waste your time. I have turned off every optional item (pulse ox, face display, Wi-fi etc) and I can't get the battery to last more than 25 hours. I've read several Reddit posts. I've contacted Garmin directly. There is a real battery issue I had previous Garmin watches most recently the vivoactive 3. The vivoactive 5 is a lemon.

OOooo my I am loving my Garmin Vivoactive5 which has so much to offer and I am still learning about it today Sept. 30 2026 and I love the videos on particular functions that I am needing to learn about. It was on sale so I was able to afford and I do a lot of exercise from golfing, peddling and walking residential areas. So I am very pleased with my new Garmin.

Great watch, easy to work.

Doesn't always sync and charging doesn't always show but this is far more reliable than my previous Fitbit

I like it but it reads my heart rate low. There is much more useful data than with my 6 year old Vivoactive 3 which is still working well. My problem with it is the low heart rate function. On my Vivo3 I regularly get up to my max, sometimes a few beats beyond it with no problem as I am very fit for my age. Even using my Garmin HRM-Dual cardio chest belt with it, the Vivo 5 still reads 20-30 bpm low. That's not acceptable.

So far I like my new Vivoactive 5 BUT I bought it mainly for sleep monitoring. I was disappointed that the sleep score algorithm will not assign a goal below 7 hrs, and it can't be set manually. Since I began using a CPAP for sleep apena about 20 yrs ago, I have never slept that long unless sick or using soporific medications. Six hours is more typical for me. Seven hours of sleep is "sleeping in". Unfortunately this goal restriction will negatively affect my sleep score and "body battery" values when, if fact, there is no reason to. I don't know if a reduced score due to shorter than goal sleep will mask the effects of other sleep quality parameters (REM/Deep/light ratios, HRV etc) or if the score reductions are linear with the actual goal -time difference. I can live with the latter by simply changing my definition of what a "good sleep" score is, but if masking occurs (sleep duration effects change non-linearly) those scores are pretty useless to me and that is why o switched to Garmin. I am disappointed that Garmin does not recognise that some people do not require as much sleep as others while some require a lot more. Seven hours may be a "typical" limit for avoiding sleep deprivation, but denying that there are people that have perfectly healthy sleep less than that seems a bit presumptive. All populations have statistical outliers.