Garmin - vívoactive 5

Nope. Garmin any day

Got it in August no problems so far simple and practical

(former apple watch se user) just switched over to a vivoactive 5. i’ve had it on my wrist for 6 days and i have 53% battery left. the only thing you cannot do is respond to a text message. which was honestly a pain to do with an apple watch because the screen is so small i was typing out individual letters to come up with a response. the vivoactice gives you only notifications of incoming texts and calls. i use it for mostly swimming and it gives me so much data! (swolf, pace, calories & speed) i swim 3x a week for 30 min.

I have the vivoactive 5 and it's fantastic. Great battery life and gives me everything I am looking for in a fitness tracker.

Just get one of the garmin watches with heart rate tracking. Their most budget one with a heart rate tracker, is their vivoactive, and it'll set you back maybe 200 bucks. But I'd personally spend a bit more and get the Forerunner 255. I currently have a 255, and it's fantastic. Battery life is about a week, but I also do a good deal of running. I imagine it'd go up to 10-14 days if I didn't use the GPS function while tracking my runs. It works with the Garmin Connect app, and that doesn't require a subscription at all. It'll also sync your activity data with Strava for additional tracking if you wanted.

Not dumb. I use the flashlight all the time. Never use maps though, in fact I am here to post a question and comment how horrible some navigation is on it. (There's a one way fire road on my house and it literally dictates every single turn it's annoying AF) OP, buy once cry once, get the 970, it's the best OS/ui (they are different watch to watch) and I had a previous Garmin called a vivoactive 5 and it sucked compared to the 970. If you get anything less then that one you're going to always look back and regret if you had just only gotten the 970. Also you are right that it is better than the Fenix if you're going to run, that watch is a lot heavier.

It only had two buttons, which to me created the most nonintuitive navigation. I couldn't believe how bad it was and was confusing to me. but kept reading how great Garmin was, so almost out of frustration went out and bought a higher end watch. Lol Once I did that, now I get it. I just did not like that watch at all. In contrast I LOVE the 970, all 5 buttons and screens.

I wouldn’t be afraid of buying a Garmin watch for open water or pool swims. I have a first generation instinct since the summer of 2020. I’ve worn it everyday no matter what. If you don’t like the look of the instinct, I would look at either the Fenix, Enduro. The forerunner has a bezel but it’s not as raised I feel. Really any of their watches that includes the feature of a raised bezel I gravitate towards. For me, anyways, watches that don’t have that feature end up with a cracked screen like the venu and the vivoactive with the rounded edge of glass hasn’t lasted for me which is why I prefer that raised bezel. Garmin has always been good and replaced them for me in the past but once the warranty is done, there’s no more replacement. Hope this is helpful and keep going.

I recently got into fitness this year and lost about 60 pounds, I got an apple watch to track my activity (I mainly do cardio workouts) but I didn’t like how it looked on my wrist and the fact that it wasn’t that accurate. Also the battery life was trash, I’d leave my new series 10 in the drawer charged and it’d be dead the next day. I bought a new Venu 3S, it’s beautiful, I exchanged a Vivoactive 5 for it and I can say the Venu’s appearance is better and feels smoother however Vivo wins in terms of battery life. Venu dies much quicker, and I feel like the software design of Garmin feels a little lackluster however I’ve grown used to it and I love the comfortability, accuracy, battery life and design of garmin. I wont be going back to Apple, however the new paid subscriptions and having to pay for some watch faces that look decent, and then the watch itself being very pricey feels a bit like a drawback. The strap doesn’t really feel that strong and having to buy more is just more costs, not to mention it didn’t come with a charging block and it requires a USB port, so I have to use my apple one to charge it. All in all, I love the device for fitness and how much better it looks but there are some downsides imo.

I’m surprised as well but my Venu battery goes down quicker than it did with the Vivo, not sure why. Maybe it’s something wrong with the individual devices.

Yes i’m using the same watch face but I don’t know about settings I didn’t alter anything differently from each other as I’ve only had both for a little bit of time. I also didn’t workout with either yet just did walks. I don’t have the vivo anymore so I can’t really compare but I did notice my Venu goes down a bit quicker

This seems very useful! I just got my vivoactive 5 and I love it, but it's my first watch so I don't have an opinion on the matter