The Garmin Vivoactive 5 ($299.99) sits in the middle ground between a fitness tracker and a smartwatch, monitoring health metrics like heart rate, respiration, sleep, and stress levels, while offering lifestyle features like phone notifications, mobile payments, and weather reports. The fifth-generation model in the Vivoactive series costs $50 less than its predecessor did at launch, and adds an upgraded AMOLED display, nap tracking, a wheelchair mode, and more detailed Body Battery metrics to help you monitor your energy levels throughout the day. As a trade-off, Garmin has removed the barometric altimeter and workout animations featured in the previous generation and downgraded the bezel from stainless steel to aluminum. In terms of bang for your buck, Garmin's Venu Sq 2 ($249.99) is still our Editors’ Choice winner because it offers nearly the same mix of smarts and sensors at a lower price, but the Vivoactive 5 is a compelling alternative for its rounded design and onboard music storage.
Getting to Know the Vivoactive 5
The Garmin Vivoactive 5 features a 1.2-inch AMOLED touch screen with a resolution of 390 by 390 pixels, a big step up from the Vivoactive 4's 260-by-260-pixel screen. Colors and images are vibrant on the Vivoactive 5's display in a variety of lighting conditions, and the touch screen seamlessly responds to input. You can set the screen to always be on, or to illuminate automatically when you raise your wrist, though the latter was somewhat hit or miss for me in testing.
An anodized aluminum bezel surrounds the Vivoactive 5's display instead of stainless steel, a change that may disappoint fans of the line. The case is made of fiber-reinforced polymer, and the band is silicone.
Garmin offers four different color options, all for the same $299.99 price. I tested the model with a Cream Gold bezel and an ivory case. I like the style of the watch; it strikes a balance between sporty and sleek that suits me, and it feels comfortable to wear for days at a time. I would have switched for a different band color if wearing it permanently, but that’s easy enough thanks to a standard 20mm quick-release mechanism that lets you swap in another band of your choosing with ease.
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Corning Gorilla Glass 3 covers the face for added durability, and the watch has a 5ATM water resistance rating. Take it for a swim and it’ll be fine unless you’re diving below 164 feet of water.
Altogether, it weighs 1.3 ounces (36 grams) for the body and strap, or 0.8 ounces (23 grams) without the band. It strangely only comes in one 42mm size whereas the Vivoactive 4 has 45mm and 40mm options (the latter is called the Vivoactive 4S, but it's essentially the same aside from size-related specs). At 1.66 by 1.66 by 0.44 inches (HWD), it’s smaller all around than the Vivoactive 4, which has a slightly larger display at 1.3 inches (or 1.1 inches for the 4S).
Under the hood, the Vivoactive 5 sports no new sensors from the last generation, but software updates enable more detailed sleep coaching including automatic nap detection, more robust Body Battery metrics, a helpful morning report of your sleep and status, guided meditations, a wheelchair mode to track daily pushes and wheelchair-specific workouts, and more detailed recovery guidance.
The lower starting price than the previous model comes with some additional losses beyond the stainless steel bezel. Also missing from this generation is a barometric altimeter to measure flights of stairs climbed, as well as on-screen workout animations. Garmin likely removed these features to help separate the Vivoactive 5 from the more premium Garmin Venu 3 ($449.99) that came out around the same time.
Nevertheless, the Vivoactive 5 offers a heap of holistic health-tracking capabilities in addition to smartwatch features like notification support for both Android and iOS phones (though you can only respond to notifications from the watch on Android), Garmin Pay, safety tracking with live location sharing, and downloadable music from Amazon Music, Deezer, or Spotify.
Like the previous generation, this model has an accelerometer, a compass, a GPS with GLONASS and Galileo satellite systems, a heart rate monitor, and a pulse oximeter that gauges blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). It tracks your calories burned, distance traveled, intensity minutes, menstruation cycles, respiration, sleep, steps, stress level, and more.
For workout tracking, the Vivoactive 5 offers more than 30 preloaded activity options and you can customize your own. I was disappointed when I noticed that the Vivoactive 5 doesn't have hiking as an activity option, but “outdoor walk” showed the metrics I wanted to see, and the GPS did a great job of tracking my trail up to the Ben Lomond Saddle in Queenstown, New Zealand.
In terms of battery life, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 touts 11 days of power on a charge depending on usage. In practice, with roughly two to three workouts per week with the battery-draining GPS turned on, I averaged around eight days of use between charges. That's a big upgrade from the Vivoactive 4, which lasted about three to four days on a charge in our testing, and promises up to eight. In comparison, the rugged Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($799) gets between 36 and 72 hours of battery life based on usage and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 lasts less than a full day on a charge.
While eight days is an impressive battery life result, it's not necessarily a unique achievement among Garmin watches. The Venu Sq2 lasted nine days in testing, for instance, while the Venu 3 has a rated battery life of 14 days.
Setting Up and Navigating the Vivoactive 5
Setting up the Vivoactive 5 is simple: I plugged it in, logged into the Garmin Connect app (available for Android and iOS), paired my phone to the watch via Bluetooth, then followed the prompts on the watch. I found all of the options to download music apps, assign emergency contacts, activate Garmin Pay, initiate a coaching program, and browse possible watch faces overwhelming at first. I skipped a handful of optional steps, such as setting up a safety contact, and finished the initial setup in a few minutes. Rest assured that you can always go back later and set up any features you initially skipped.
Once up and running, you control the watch through the touch screen and the two buttons on the right side of the case. The top button pulls up a list of activities if you want to start a workout. A separate tab atop this screen opens the apps tab, giving you access to things like a flashlight, music, a stopwatch, or your digital wallet. Both the activity and app lists are customizable.
You can press and hold the top button to quickly dial your emergency contact. The bottom button takes you back, or you can hold it to see extra options related to your current screen. Hold it even longer to return directly to the clock face.
While tracking an exercise, the bottom button marks laps or sets. The top button pauses the workout so you can save it, delete it, or just take a breather. I presumed this would be the other way around, so I accidentally paused a few workouts while adjusting to the controls, but I got used to them quickly enough.
Using the touch screen, you can swipe through different views showing a variety of metrics during a workout. During a run, one screen has a dial showing your current heart rate and different target zones, while another screen shows overall time and lap time.
From the clock face, swipe right to quickly access your recently used apps. Swipe up or down to access measurements like Body Battery, heart rate, intensity minutes, and more. Again, this list is customizable with an edit button at the bottom. You can also tap any metric for more details.
The customizable clock faces don’t always respond to specific touches. The screen I selected featured both an analog and digital clock, along with three circles representing your Body Battery, heart rate, and steps. I couldn’t tap these circles for details on those measurements, but accessing this data by swiping up or down from the clock face was easy enough.
You can also access all your metrics in more detail via the Garmin Connect app. Garmin Connect also lets you customize which apps and metrics are easily accessible on your watch, as well as browse fitness challenges that you can sign up for, or check out a handy calendar view of your activity and workouts. It's worth noting that unlike Fitbit, which requires a Premium membership for access to certain metrics, Garmin delivers all of its best features, including its detailed coaching plans for a marathon or 5K, for free.
For more detailed customization and extra watch faces, you'll need to use the Garmin Connect IQ Store. Needing multiple apps for a single device is a bummer, but fortunately, you can access the Connect IQ Store directly on the Vivoactive 5 without downloading it to your phone.
Using the Vivoactive 5
Apparently, watching football stresses me out. I had always suspected that this was true, and now the Garmin Vivoactive 5 has confirmed it. By monitoring heart rate and respiration and comparing it to a baseline gathered over time, after a few days, the Vivoactive 5 had a good idea of when I was stressed, and how stressed I felt.
It counts these stressful moments toward its Body Battery metric, which also takes into account your workout frequency, quality of sleep, and restful periods during the day to help you monitor your energy level over time on a percentage scale. The Body Battery stat ties into the Vivoactive 5's advanced sleep coaching as well. If I was tired or drained, the sleep coach would prompt me to get more shut-eye. After a rough night of sleep, the watch told me to aim for nine hours, a significantly longer duration than my calculated average of seven hours and fifty minutes.
Conversely, after a long night’s sleep, it gave me the OK to get less than normal and recommended seven hours and ten minutes of slumber that evening. I find all of this information interesting, if not always practical. I did enjoy the rare permission to get a shorter night’s sleep, but usually wound up overdoing it and operating at a deficit the next day.
This coaching, of course, also comes from the watch’s advanced sleep-measuring capabilities. By calculating heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels, and respiration, the Vivoactive 5 consistently measured the amount, depth, and quality of my sleep with great accuracy compared with my anecdotal sleep assessment.
It frequently scolded me for short or uneven sleeping, and I knew it was right every time. I actually found myself trying to sleep better to get a different result. Fortunately, all of these measurements come full circle, and the watch would often coach me to do something more engaging after a chill day, or prompt me to meditate and relax after a stressful day (perhaps one filled with lots of football).
The Vivoactive 5 comes preloaded with options for guided meditation, though most offer basic instructions like breathe, focus on a mantra, or stretch with an accompanying timer. I would have liked the option for more guidance through types of stretches, perhaps with illustrations through a workout animation like those available on the Vivoactive 4 or the Venu series.
Still, I enjoyed the excuse to relax during my work day, and that’s the beauty of the holistic approach to Garmin’s software. The Vivoactive 5 knew how stressed I’d been that day, so it knew how drained I was, and how much sleep I'd need to recover. Then it knew how well I slept that night, and how best to approach the next day of activity.
I couldn’t always listen to its recommendations. It told me to chill when I had a big hike planned on a vacation in New Zealand, and again, I’m not going to cancel an activity because my watch said so. And sometimes, after a rough night’s sleep, I felt like I really didn’t need to see my watch’s assessment of it because it would just make me feel that much more tired.
Generally speaking, though, it was a helpful gauge that I used as well as I could to keep my energy balanced throughout testing, and I usually enjoyed waking up to its morning report of how I slept and how best to approach the day ahead.
I’ll note that the Body Battery metric is a software approximation instead of a carefully measured stat. It also never dips below five percent (it clearly should have after my recent 15-hour overseas flight during which I was barely able to sleep), and it doesn’t hold at high percentages for very long.
The other stats it uses to get this number, though, proved quite accurate. Again, its sleep score always seemed spot-on to me. I evaluated its heart rate measurements both anecdotally and against the Apple Watch Ultra 2 (worn on the opposite wrist) for three runs and a weightlifting session. While strength training, the Vivoactive 5 made it easy to record how much weight I was lifting, and it automatically and accurately counted my reps so I didn’t have to manually input this data.
Its heart rate measurements matched those of the Ultra 2 in near-perfect sync. Every now and again, the measurements would be a beat or two off, but generally, they rose and fell together and showed similar graphs in my post-workout stats. When I varied between walking and running to cause a rapid heart rate increase, they both responded promptly. Chest straps tend to offer more accurate heart rate measurements than wrist-based wearables for obvious reasons, but the Ultra 2 is generally on the nose, and the Vivoactive 5 kept up quite well.
A Strong Contender in Garmin's Lineup
The Garmin Vivoactive 5 is an excellent fitness-focused smartwatch that delivers accurate heart rate measurements, actionable health insights, and key lifestyle features. Apple and Samsung smartwatches offer more in the way of connectivity tools and third-party apps, but the Vivoactive 5 has much better battery life. Some will miss the last generation's shiny stainless steel bezel, but the more vibrant display makes up for it. The Garmin Venu Sq 2 ultimately remains our Editors' Choice winner because it has all the same sensors and equivalent battery at a lower price, but the Vivoactive 5 is a compelling alternative with a more traditional round design and a few added perks including onboard music storage, nap tracking, and a wheelchair mode.
With a gorgeous display, long battery life, and bountiful health insights, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 is an excellent wellness-focused smartwatch.
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