Garmin Vivosmart 5

Reliable fitness tracking for the price ; Week long battery life ; Comfy gym-ready fit

Screen is too small for most notifications ; Limited smartwatch functionality

The Vivosmart 5 is Garmin’s latest answer to the Fitbit Luxe and Charge 5. It’s a slim-form-factor band design wearable designed for runners that want a discreet wearable to track their weekly workouts and 5km runs or cycles. While it’s far from the...

Well designed interface Extremely light and comfortable Auto activity tracking Particularly good sleep tracking

Monochrome display No on-board GPS Polycarbonate lens rather than toughened glass

The Garmin Vivosmart 5 is a lightweight, lean fitness tracker for anyone who values data above looks. It's not as chic as a Fitbit Luxe or Inspire 2, but packs a whole lot more info and insights at your fingertips, with even more available in the...

Uncomplicated design ; Great entry point into Garmin Connect ; Packed with advanced tracking features

No GPS ; Relatively pricey ; Poor sleep tracking ; Pulse Ox drains battery life rapidly

Garmin's dive back into the fitness tracker market is a welcome one, offering a simple yet metric-heavy entry point into its ecosystem. At the same price as a Fitbit Charge 5, though, its lack of GPS, as well as sleep tracking inconsistencies and...

Lightweight, comfortable fit ; Streamlined, swappable design ; Comprehensive tracking features ; Seven-day battery life

Underwhelming display ; Slightly fiddly interface ; No built-in GPS tracking

Its lightweight design might be forgettable, but if you can deal with the dinky screen and lack of built-in GPS, the streamlined Vivosmart 5 offers a lot of tracking smarts for a relatively affordable price

Extensive health features, such as women's health ; Assistance5 for incident detection ; Compatible with iOS and Android

Connected (not built-in GPS) ; Limited fitness activities ; Touchscreen not hugely responsive

Yes. If you’ve read this review and think the

Lightweight and comfortable ; Large display ; Automatic activity tracking ; Three safety features ; 24/7 heart rate monitoring ; Advanced sleep tracking

Fickle wrist-flick activation and touchscreen ; Connected (not built-in) GPS ; Limited activities ; Relatively pricey ; Not actually that simple to use

The Garmin vívosmart 5 is a good but not great gateway to fitness tracking, with plenty of flashy features but a lack of user-friendliness that you’d expect from a “simple” device.

Detailed Garmin Connect platform Comprehensive sensor array Lightweight and comfortable Accurate health and sleep tracking

Disappointing battery life Generic design

“The design of the Garmin Vivosmart 5 won't make you look twice, but the comprehensive Garmin Connect platform makes this a fitness tracker a standout.”

Affordable. Easy to use. Now with connected GPS. Bigger, brighter, and more reliable OLED touchscreen. Abnormal heart rate detection. Incident detection. Syncs with Strava. Garmin Connect and Move IQ is the best.

No onboard GPS. The field for entry-level, sub-$200 trackers is a lot bigger now than it was four years ago.

I found the Vivosmart 5 to be pretty reasonably priced, and as a nerdier person, I like Garmin’s Connect app much better than Fitbit’s. (Garmin also doesn’t lock most of its best features behind a $10-per-month subscription.) If you’ve been looking for...

All-day heart rate, respiration, SpO2, and stress tracking Good battery life Automatically tracks certain activities Emergency assistance features

Black-and-white screen with no always-on setting Minor accuracy issues in testing No built-in GPS Doesn't track heart rhythm or skin temperature variations Lacks contactless payment support

Garmin's Vivosmart 5 fitness tracker is light on excitement, but makes it easy to keep tabs on your activity, sleep, and other key health metrics.

The button is much improved Menu navigation also improved Comfortable to wear You can now swap out bands

Pricey considering the simple display Hard to read notifications due to small text

Ultimately for me, it was a nice break to wear the Vivosmart 5 after weeks of testing feature-laden fitness smartwatches. The heyday of the fitness band may well be behind us, but there’s something to be said for a gadget that’s not trying to be a mini...