Nice smart watch with a lot of features but trying to do too many things. Does not do how many stairs one does like the vivoactive 4. My wife says it has great color but with me being color blind I did not know until she said something. Trying to charge the watch can be a problem for it has to be in a certain position for it to start charging if push too far in it will not charge.

This was a replacement of my Vivoactive 4 which quit on me. I loved the 4 and love the 5 even more. I love that I can track my meditations, I also like the more indepth sleep report. I especially love the readability oh the screen and how much easier it is to access settings for my activities. Thank you Garmin.

I came from a Fitbit Sense. It was the 3rd Fitbit watch I'd had as a user of ~8 years. There are only two things missing from this that I had before: ECG and Altimeter. The flights of stairs were laughably wrong anyway and I didn't use the ECG often. There are several benefits to the Vivoactive 5 that any Fitbit user thinking of switching will appreciate. Blood Oxygen can be set to track while sleeping or all the time, no separate watchface required. The other is that every data point the watch can get, you can get, without a pay wall. Honestly, that makes me more interested in what Garmin has behind the paywall cause what the watch does natively is impressive. Nothing feels half baked and the battery life is so freaking great!

From 2015 to Feb 2024 I was content to use my vivofit ONE + 2015 cardioband for everything: cycling (HR), rucking for colorado training (HR) and measuring hikes in colorado (steps+HR). Now that I've had a chance to incorporate the Vactive5 into my routine I'm hooked and have found the "body battery" to be very good to allow me to judge when it's time to dial back a bit on intensity. I'm still doing the same workouts, however with the GPS function on Vactive5 I now have data on the rucking (stair climbing with a 55#, i.e., 1/3 bodyweight) pack) workouts and can put everything into Intervals.icu.

I had literally worn my Vivoactive 3 every day since September 2017 and I very much enjoyed it. The battery life was never fantastic but toward the end it was getting worse. I decided to invest in a Vivoactive 5 last month and enjoy the slimmer profile, the awesome battery life, the accuracy of the elevation sensor for my bike rides and the super bright screen. My Vivoactive 5 is my new health coach and so far we are getting along great!

I am happy with switching from my Apple Watch to the Garmin because of the long battery life. It will be great to wear during my hikes next spring/summer and not worry about a charger if I am out for multiple days. I am struggling a bit with having the sleep score measured nightly. Some nights it works and others it doesn’t record, I don’t know what I did that causes to turn that feature off. I miss being able to answer texts or calls from my watch but the biggest selling point to me was the battery life so I am happy with my switch.

I've previously owned Fit Bit charge units and this watch absolutely puts them to shame. The features and quality are superior and the battery life is excellent. Watch face selection is broad but would be nice if more customization was possible to add the metrics I want to the face but the standard options supply most of what I want. Using the watch for HIIT workouts is quite good, running splits and fps features are good. I typically lift weights, do circuits and HIIT in addition to hikes and walks for steady state cardio. The weight function is burdensome so I just use the cardio tracker while I lift to track calorie burn and heart rate. Compared to my FitBits this watch has converted me since the software updates dont shorten life, and the platform seems more robust. Just be careful not to impact the face, I haven't had problems with it but I'm always a bit scared I'm going to scratch it.

I got this as a gift to replace an older Garmin watch. I like a lot about it, the screen, the watch face options, the notifications, it measures steps and many types of exercise well. It does. It measure steps climbed which was a surprise but not a big deal. I have concerns with its stress, variable heart rate, and body battery measurements. They don’t match my experience. It often shows stress while I am asleep. There is a chance this is off because the first two weeks of wearing it were on break from work and so what it took as normal wasn’t but we have been back for two weeks and it hasn’t adjusted yet. I am going to give it a couple more weeks and if they don’t adjust I will just hide all those measurements and ignore them.

I switched from an Apple watch a month ago and I am totally in love with the Garmin. It tracks sooo much more than my Apple watch did and is way more accurate. I no longer get credit for exercising when just walking to and from my car! Haven’t looked back yet and I have Apple everything else.

After 3 months of using vivoactive 5 watches disappear from my phone and as a result no notifications on my watches will appear. Garmin app is installed on my Pixel 7a and every morning I open the app to sync watches, but I receive a notification that I need to add a device! I did 3 months ago! Why I need to repeat this action every day? What happened?! Troubleshooting instructions did not help.