Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Garmin vívosmart® 5, Fitness Tracker, Long-Lasting Battery, Simple Design, Black

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2023

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

I tried a "smartwatch" that was too sophisticated to comprehend and promptly returned it.
This is a good, accurate fitness tracker with just enough bells and whistles for my basic needs.

--Good battery life before it needs recharging.
--Comfortable to wear (once I replaced silicone band with a Velcro one)
--Accurate information and easy to access and read the info

I have had good luck with Garmin products in the past and I expect the same with this.

9 people found this helpful

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L. McGuire

A solid fitness watch plus

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

This is my 4th version of this watch, and I'm pleased with each one and its enhancements over the previous one. Step gait is customizable, so it's accurate. While it reduces battery life, I like the feature that notifies me when I'm too far from my phone (I've tried to leave the house many times without my phone). The battery life sacrifice is worth it to me. The workout options work well, including weight training - although it doesn't always guess what I'm doing correctly, it can be edited and the app will highlight muscles worked. The 5 went back to a button for mode switches, which is easier than tapping on the 4. Respiration and detailed sleep scores are added to the 5, which are nice to have. The watch face on the 5 has more options, although I haven't found one that I like yet - would like to have the same as the 4, with time, battery life and steps progress. The only 2 things I don't like better are the inability to easily check battery life and size - each watch is just a bit bigger than the last. And the size catches on sleeves and tends to get scratched easier, as its more exposed. But overall a good Garmin product for the athlete who doesn't need ultra detail for workouts, but wants some good feedback.

21 people found this helpful

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AG

Solid basic fitness tracker

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2023

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

My health plan has a wellness benefit which requires a fitness tracker, with the two compatible options basically being FitBit and Garmin. Having owned four fitbits and becoming sick of their issues, I decided to try Garmin. And so far I am much happier. If you're unaware, these trackers generally come with a 1-year warranty, and with four fitbits I found a strikingly consistent pattern of them becoming completely non-functional in the 14-17 month timeframe. Right on schedule for you to buy a new one is undoubtedly how fitbit views this (if they aren't actively breaking their trackers via updates after the warranty period has passed). Also, the fitbit charge 2 was basically released to the public almost completely broken, with massive syncing issues that weren't fixed for almost 6 months after release (and customer service s non-existent).

Lest this review start sounding like one for fitbit (which it kind of is) I am month 15 with the Garmin and it has not had any issues whatsoever. Syncs effortlessly with garmin app every time. No data loss. The display is bright and readable even in strong sunlight. The band is original and sill in great shape (fitbit owners are taking note of all these points). The tracker is waterproof so you can swim with it. Battery life is right around 1 week (I generally sync about once a day, not keeping my phone's bluetooth on 24/7, which helps battery life for both tracker and phone). The sleep tracking, calorie tracking, and heart rate tracking are fine (tends to read a bit low on my heart rate when doing serious workouts). One of the bigger drawbacks is that the gyrometer is pretty strict about what motion gets tracked as a "step." Anything apart from the front-to-back swaying motion of your arm while walking is unlikely to get tracked. So, a decent amount of steps mowing the lawn or using a shopping cart or doing martial arts (for examples) don't get tracked. Overall, this is a good tracker and I feel like garmin is not selling products that it plans to break just after the warranty expires. Garmin owners often report having their trackers for several years or more, which will make me a loyal customer if so, because the tracker has all the features I want at a competitive price and is good quality.

28 people found this helpful

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C. C

Not a great fitness tracker, but fits my need

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2022

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

UPDATE 2024
Still works well. One thing Inoticed: there is no point to turn on the all day blood oxygen tracking since that is not accurate at all.

ORIGINAL 2022
There are tons of detail and scientific review for this fitness tracker out there already, they all basically sums up it being: overpriced mediocre semi-accurate fitness tracker.

It is a 5 star for me due to below. However, it may not be what you want. Do your research first before purchase.

1. It is smaller than my previous Garmin 5x Sapphire
2. I wanted to stay in Garmin eco system
3. Changeable band (2 Fitbit died years ago all due to bad band and unchangeable)
4. I need some tracking for heart rate, step count and blood oxygen, do not need it to be super detail
5. Long battery life
6. Does offer phone call notification

17 people found this helpful

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Paul_Mackoon

Terrible!

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2024

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

I bought this as a replacement for my Apple Watch (which I only used during gym hours). I never used my Apple Watch as a smart device but as a fitness tracker so this Garmin seemed to fit the bill.

First off, the 7 day battery clam was way off. I got 4 at best and that only lasted a month. After that it barely made it through a day.

I mainly do strength training and the vivosmart has a rep counter BUT jeez it’s wildly inaccurate. I’d say, at least 90% of the time, its rep count are significantly lower or higher than the actual amount.

The sleep tracker was terribly inaccurate as well always displaying far fewer hours than I actually slept (compared to my Apple Watch which was always more accurate).

Finally the App is unnecessarily complicated and extremely SLOW.

As a person who prefers to wear mechanical watches rather than a smart one, I think I’ll bite the bullet and just get a new Apple Watch.

2 people found this helpful

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SKS SF

Buggy firmware, limited SpO2 options, and the wristband gave me a rash

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2023

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

Cons:
* I get voicemail notifications for old voicemails all the time. Garmin tech support was useless in assisting me with this.
* Bluetooth connection drops frequently, even when my phone is in my pocket and my watch is on my wrist.
* The VS5 only has 3 options for SpO2 tracking--off, 4 hours while you sleep (during a random window that the watch decides on), or 24x7. I don't know why they don't add the option for SpO2 monitoring while you sleep--that would give you good data on sleep apnea, but it wouldn't run your battery down like the 24x7 option does. Also, SpO2 levels are consistently 2-3% lower than the pulse oximeter at the doc's office.
* After a few months of use, my band has gotten weird--the texture is off, and it gave me a rash on my wrist, and it got too stretchy (see next point). I clean the band regularly with soap and water. Luckily, There are plenty of replacement bands available for cheap, and so far so good--no rash.
* The watch module was falling out of the band far too easily. I don't know if the band was always so stretchy, but the replacement bands seem to hold the watch module more firmly. It would have been nice for Garmin to include a lost watch function in the app--something that would alert you when your watch comes out of range (the watch will alert you when your phone is out of range, but that's useless if your watch module falls out of the band), and also give you a log of the times and GPS coordinates when your watch came in/out of range.

Still...it's better than paying some BS subscription to Fitbit. But a few firmware changes and fixes could make this watch amazing.

***Update*** I bought another VS5 and it suffers from the same bluetooth connection issues and redundant voicemail notification problems as my original VS5 (which had these issues with both an iphone 8 and iphone 13), so this is a design issue, not something specific to my particular VS5. Very frustrating.

10 people found this helpful

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TheLink

Nice Upgrade to the Vivosmart 4

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2022

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

This tracker is a great upgrade to the Vivomsmart 4 in many ways. I can only think of one disadvantage for this tracker. The pros definitely outweigh the cons for this device.

Pros:

This tracker uses the charging cable similar to the Venu and other watches. I've had these watches in the past and this charging system makes charging very easy because the cable fits into the connector in either direction, similar to a USB-C connection.

The display on the tracker displays a lot more information than the VS4. This makes it much easier to see the data and metrics you're after when needed.

The charge on the tracker lasts a long time. I can easily see it getting 7-9 days between charges, depending on energy saver settings.

Having a physical button to stop activities is a major improvement over the VS4. You have to phyiscally press and hold the button to stop the activty. The VS4 had issues with haptic touch at times which made ending activities frustratiing. The physical button also makes it very easy to navigate through the tracker as needed.

Having the option to change bands as needed is an awesome, long awaited feature for the Vivosport line. Being fixed to one band was frustrating because if it gets damaged or breaks, you had to replace the entire tracker. That is no longer the case with this tracker. You can easily swap bands out as needed, which will probably prolong the life of the tracker, as a whole.

Con:

The overall size of the tracker is a bigger than the VS4. I preferred the slim and smaller profile of the VS4 because I always wear a watch on my left wrist. Wearing the VS4 was great because it was sized like a bracelet. I have found that after-market bands for the VS5 do slim down the tracker. I'm actually wearing a slimmer band now and I'm much happier overall with the footprint of the tracker.

Overall, I'm impressed with the tracker and hope to use it for many years, trouble free. These Garmin trackers have a pretty good track record for dependability and reliability, so I hope that this one is no different.

41 people found this helpful

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Carolyn A. Long

It comes on in the middle of the night!

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2023

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

I’ve been using the vivosmart 5 for a few months and it’s not perfect. This is actually the second one, since after several long troubleshooting calls they said the first one was defective. I returned for exchange and they sent back the watch face only, not with the band, so I had to call again to get a band which was replaced for free.
I continued to have the same problem with the second one, which was at night, during the “sleep hours” which I had previously set up on the Connect app, it would randomly come on when I moved my arm (“gesture”) or touched the screen. A bright light shining in your face in the middle of the night is super annoying! So, I called again and the agent asked me to take a video of the problem and email it. No response. They told me “eventually the watch will get used to you answer settle down.” It was inconsistent…some nights it would come on with gesture and some night not. And it will always come on if you touch the screen twice, no matter what mode you've put it in. More phone calls and finally an agent told me that the Garmin Connect app on the phone had to be running in the background at all times and be within Bluetooth range of the watch (30 feet). If you swipe the app closed on your phone, the watch cannot sync to information such as sleep hours, weather, etc. Later, I talked to a different CS agent who said the app did not have to be running for "sleep hours" to work, but it did have to be open and I must leave the location setting for the Connect app on "always" for the weather feature to work. She also said I should sync the watch to the phone daily and it was designed to come on both when you push the button and when you touch the screen twice, even in the middle of the night if it accidentally touches some other part of your body.
Regarding steps, the counter on the watch always reads much higher that the built-in counter on my phone. I called Garmin again to ask why and they explained that the watch doesn’t count steps, it actually counts arm movements. So, if you’re grocery shopping and you keep your hand still while pushing the cart, no steps. If you’re folding laundry or lifting hand weights, you get steps.
I have found that keeping the watch in “gesture on” mode (which is the default) you burn through the battery pretty fast and have to recharge more frequently. So every morning I reset to “gesture off” mode and the battery will last a week. Even with gesture off, if your finger (or some other body part when you’re sleeping) touches the screen twice it will turn on.
The main watch face can show up to three “widgets” (in addition to date and time which are fixed) but there are actually seven widgets and you have to tap to scroll through to see the ones you are most interested in tracking. There’s no way to customize the main screen to lock your favorite widgets in place.
So, I’m a little frustrated that it took three months and numerous phone calls to get this figured out. Even after reading the full downloadable users guide I have questions about functionality. It’s the only smart watch I have tried and I’ll keep it since it pairs with the Garmin Edge 530 on my road bike and I can watch my heart rate on my road bike computer. Bicycle activity mode on the watch is probably helpful if you don't have a bike computer - it seemed to match up with my Edge 530 - but if you want to see your heart rate displayed on the Edge device, you need to set it to "Broadcast".

3 people found this helpful

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Steve

Stopped working after 5 months

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2024

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

I like the product, but it only lasted 5 months! What a disappointment. It’s warranted for parts and labor for a year, but why would I need to wait for repair when they should just replace at no charge? Question is, do I even want to get another if this may happen again?
UPDATE: After buying another vivosmart 5 from Amazon, and after my complaint, I was contacted and was able to return for a new one. So, I sent it in, and a week later I got the only the vivosmart 5, but with NO band!!! I decided to keep the new one I received from Amazon, so I lost $160 plus the $160 from the first one that only lasted 5 months! Yes, I lost money! I know what you’re thinking! So now I have one with a band and one without, so when the one I’m waring dies in 5 months, I already have a replacement! I’m sure in time when both stop working, there will be another company that has a better one to buy!

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G. Peterson

Good overall

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2024

Color: BlackStyle: Fitness TrackerVerified Purchase

I like the display on this watch and that you can see it outside…which is why I didn’t buy another Fitbit. One drawback I really don’t like is you can’t select to receive only text messages on your watch…either you get all the alerts you get on your phone or nothing. My previous Garmin and my Fitbit let you choose. Also, regardless of how rested I feel in the morning it always says my sleep was not restorative…so sleep tracker doesn’t seem to be accurate.

2 people found this helpful

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