Garmin vívosmart 5 review

On top of that, the fitness features are great, too. There are preloaded fitness apps and exercises, GPS on the compatible Garmin Connect app on your smartphone, and 5 ATM water resistance so you can wear the Garmin vívosmart 5 in the shower and for swimming.

Purchasing a smartwatch is a big decision, even for one such as the Garmin vívosmart 5 which is considered budget. So read on to find out if this smartwatch is the one for you.

Jump to:

• Garmin vívosmart 5 review: summary
• What is the Garmin vívosmart 5?
• How much is the Garmin vívosmart 5?
• Garmin vívosmart 5 design
• Garmin vívosmart 5 features
• Garmin vívosmart 5 set-up: how easy is it to use?
• Garmin vívosmart 5 vs Fitbit Charge 5: which is better?
• Our verdict: should you buy the Garmin vívosmart 5?
• Where to buy

Garmin vívosmart 5 review: summary

The RadioTimes.com team love the look and feel of the Garmin vívosmart 5. The smartwatch we tested had a black, textured silicone strap with a small, acrylic face and one rectangular button at the bottom of the touchscreen. The strap is easily adjustable and, most importantly, it didn’t look cartoonishly big on our tester’s wrist.

Some smartwatches, for example, the Honor Watch GS 3, are built for bigger wrists, and it can be a pain when it spins around on your wrist and can make it difficult to pull your sleeve over it. Not the Garmin vívosmart 5 — this smartwatch was wonderfully lightweight and compact.

For £129.99, you can get your hands on the small/medium Garmin vívosmart 5 in black, white or cool mint. The large Garmin vívosmart 5 is surprisingly the same price, yet only comes in black.

Price: £129.99 at Garmin, plus UK retailers such as John Lewis, Amazon and Currys

Key features:

• Body battery energy monitoring
• Pulse Ox sensor for blood oxygen (SpO2)
• Sleep monitoring
• Stress tracking
• Women’s health
• Preloaded fitness apps
• 5 ATM water-resistant

Pros:

• Extensive health features
• Assistance5 for incident detection
• Compatible with iOS and Android devices
• Social media notifications
• Week-long battery
• Easy set-up

Cons:

• Connected (not built-in) GPS
• Limited fitness activities
• No music storage
• Touchscreen is not super responsive
• No contactless payments

What is the Garmin vívosmart 5?

The Garmin vívosmart 5’s predecessor, the Garmin vívosmart 4, was released back in 2018 as a simple, easy-to-use fitness tracker. Priced at £79.99, it comes in four colour variations (silver with grey band, midnight with black band, rose gold with berry band, and silver with azure blue band) and includes features such as sleep monitoring, blood oxygen monitoring, body energy levels, and timers for certain activities like walking and yoga.

Four years later, in May 2022, the Garmin vívosmart 5 dropped. It’s a much more advanced (and slightly pricier) version of the vívosmart 4, yet similarly focuses on monitoring your health and tracking your fitness.

The Garmin vívosmart 5 smartwatch pairs with the Garmin Connect app on your smartphone so you can see everything in one place: your heart rate, respiration, hydration and activity all pop up on the main page, along with your stats for each day, plus women’s health details like your menstrual cycle if you decide to set this up.

The smartwatch user can select a preloaded challenge to gain a virtual badge, for example, choose to walk 15k in the month of June or join a weekly steps challenge, or they can customise their own challenge.

The wearer’s fitness and health news can be accessed on the app, and the calendar breaks down what the wearer did in a day. For example, on 23rd May, our tester walked for 25 minutes, completed two Relax and Focus and Cardio sessions, had a heart rate of between 93 bpm and 132 bpm and drained their body battery by -14.

What does the Garmin vívosmart 5 do?

The Garmin vívosmart 5 has a range of different functions. Here’s what you can expect.

• Body battery energy monitoring
• Pulse Ox sensor for blood oxygen (SpO2)
• Assistance5 for incident detection
• Sleep monitoring
• Stress tracking
• Women’s health like tracking your menstrual cycle
• Preloaded fitness apps
• 5 ATM water-resistant
• Hydration tracking
• Respiration tracking
• Fitness age
• Seven-day battery life

How much is the Garmin vívosmart 5?

The Garmin vívosmart 5 has an RRP of £129.99. The smartwatch comes in four variations: small/medium (19.5mm x 10.7mm x 217mm) which fits wrists with a circumference of 122-188mm and comes in three colours: black, white and cool mint. The large version (19.5mm x 10.7mm x 255mm) fits wrists with a circumference of 148-228mm, and only comes in black.

It’s easy to swap out the straps on the small/medium model: simply pop out the screen and slide on another coloured strap. The bands are an additional £24.99 each on the Garmin website.

All four variations are £129.99 at Garmin, and come with a two-year warranty. You can also pick up the Garmin vívosmart 5 in all colours from Amazon for the retail price £129.99, and Currys offer a two-year guarantee on the Garmin vívosmart 5, too.

• £129.99 at Garmin
• £129.99 at Amazon
• £129.99 at Currys

Is the Garmin vívosmart 5 good value for money?

The overall functions and quality of the Garmin vívosmart 5 justify the £129.99 price tag.

The Garmin vívosmart 5 comes with a two-year warranty. This isn’t immediately obvious when you unbox the smartwatch. However, you can find all of the information on the Garmin website.

It’s not necessary to buy add-ons to get the most out of the Garmin vívosmart 5 like it is for its main competitor, the Fitbit Charge 5 (which we’ll come onto in a moment). The Garmin Connect app is free and easy to set up, and that’s where you access all of your health and fitness data, as well as connect with other Garmin smartwatch users.

The Garmin vívosmart 5 is pretty durable. The silicone is stretchy and would be difficult to snap. However, the band section around the screen is extremely thin; a positive as it’s easy to swap the bands, and a negative as the sides don’t feel very secure.

Although most Garmin smartwatches have Gorilla Glass screens, for example, the Garmin Forerunner 945, the Garmin vívosmart 5 has an acrylic screen. The acrylic keeps the smartwatch lightweight (the small/medium watch is 24.5g and the large is slightly heavier at 26.5g), however, the Gorilla Glass is much more durable.

Now in its seventh generation, Gorilla Glass is a brand of chemically strengthened glass which is designed to be thin, light, and damage-proof. The Garmin vívosmart 5’s screen gets smudged easily and, if you hold it to the light, you can see fingerprints all over it. That being said, we’ve tried and failed to scratch the screen.

Let’s compare the Garmin vívosmart 5 to its predecessor, the Garmin vívosmart 4.

The Garmin vívosmart 4 has a smaller screen which is a lower resolution and isn’t as bright as the Garmin vívosmart 5; the 4 also doesn’t have a touch screen, whereas the 5 does. The Garmin vívosmart 5 naturally has more advanced features, such as incident detection, and a wider range of preloaded fitness and health apps. Priced £50 more expensive than the Garmin vívosmart 4, we think the Garmin vívosmart 5 is worth the 50 quid.

Garmin vívosmart 5 design

The Garmin vívosmart 5’s aesthetic is best described as minimal.

There are 12 watch faces to choose from, and this makes up the smartwatch’s lockscreen. Like everything on the Garmin vívosmart 5’s display, these watch faces are black and white.

The Garmin vívosmart 5 isn’t super responsive, and we found that activating the smartwatch by twisting your wrist up and toward your face, and double-tapping the screen, didn’t work as well as pressing the button at the bottom of the screen. The touchscreen, too, isn’t sensitive. Our tester had to press fairly hard to drag and to tap.

If you set the brightness to ‘Auto’, the display brightness adapts to the light. You can also manually change the brightness ('1-7', '7' being the brightest), and the Garmin vívosmart 5 warns you that the brighter it is, the more it’ll drain your battery. The same happens when you change the vibration from ‘Auto’ to ‘High’.

The black silicone strap is textured, which means it stays still on your wrist — so no spinning here! It’s incredibly lightweight, and our team could wear it for days at a time and barely notice it was on their wrist.

There are three other colour variations to choose from, too: silver with grey band, midnight with black band, rose gold with berry band, and silver with azure blue band.

Garmin vívosmart 5 features

As we’ve mentioned previously, the Garmin vívosmart 5 has health features in abundance, and the fitness functions work brilliantly, too.

When completing one of the preloaded activities, for example, an outdoor walk, you can set interval workout and rest times, and then the watch vibrates to remind you to follow each one. With other activities, such as breath activity, the smartwatch displays written instructions coupled with vibrations. The lack of audio is something our tester actually preferred, as they find it startling when a smartwatch talks to them (particularly in public). However, you might prefer to hear instructions rather than read them.

We found other features like incident detection particularly impressive for a budget smartwatch. To send an SOS, press and hold the smartwatch’s button until you feel three vibrations. Once triggered, the tracker sends a message with your real-time location to your preloaded emergency contacts. The Garmin vívosmart 5 can also detect incidents, like a fall, during outdoor activities, and will automatically notify your emergency contacts. For these assistance features to work, however, you have to be connected via Bluetooth to the Garmin Connect app.

Back to health, the Garmin vívosmart 5 automatically tracks your sleep if you wear it while having a bit of shut-eye. It monitors your total sleep duration, as well as the amount of time you spend in each sleep stage: light, deep and REM. Based on this data, the smartwatch will give you a ‘sleep score’ from 0 to 100, so you can see the overall quality of your kip.

The functions on the Garmin vívosmart 5 load quickly and efficiently — zero complaints here.

Garmin vívosmart 5 set-up: how easy is it to use?

From box to wrist, the Garmin vívosmart 5 set-up was effortless.

The grey packaging is neat and simple: the front and two sides show a photo of your chosen watch, the name of the model, and its size, whereas the back has the Garmin logo and a QR code to pair with the Garmin Connect app.

To connect your smartphone to the Garmin vívosmart 5 smartwatch (which is compatible with iOS and Android), simply scan the QR code on the back of the box, then install the Garmin Connect app, and enable ‘Allow new connections’ in your smartphone’s settings. Next, create an account on the Garmin Connect app, browse for your smartwatch, then, on your smartphone, type in the code which shows up on the smartwatch. You’re all done in less than 20-minutes.

You can add information like your gender, height, weight, sleep schedule, goals and location to enable the smartwatch’s features.

The box contains the Garmin vívosmart 5 smartwatch, a quick-start manual, safety and product information, and a 1m charging/data cable. There isn’t an option to buy a plug.

Garmin vívosmart 5 vs Fitbit Charge 5: which is better?

The Garmin vívosmart 5's biggest competition is the Fitbit Charge 5.

The Fitbit Charge 5 is the closest rival to the Garmin vívosmart 5. What the Garmin vívosmart 5 lacks in certain features, for example, built-in GPS, music storage, always-on display and contactless payments, the Fitbit Charge 5 boasts.

However, Fitbit charges a premium subscription (£7.99 a month or £79.99 a year) to access functions such as sleep and stress tracking, and fitness challenges, whereas the Garmin vívosmart 5 offers these for free.

With some functions lacking in the Garmin vívosmart 5 (which the Fitbit Charge has) and the Fitbit Charge 5 charging you to access features which are available for free with the Garmin vívosmart 5, let's turn our attention to other similarities and differences between the pair.

Both fitness trackers have an RRP of £129.99. However, you can purchase the Fitbit Charge 5 for £119 at Currys, and for £113 at Amazon.

The Garmin vívosmart 5 and Fitbit Charge 5 come in multiple colour variations. You can get the Garmin vívosmart 5 in silver with grey band, midnight with black band, rose gold with berry band, and silver with azure blue band, and you can choose between black graphite with stainless steel, lunar white with soft gold stainless steel, and steel blue with platinum stainless steel for the Fitbit Charge 5.

Where the Garmin vívosmart 5 has a black and white display, the Fitbit Charge 5 has a colour one.

However, you can only purchase the Fitbit Charge 5 in one size, yet the Garmin vívosmart 5 is available in 'small/medium' and 'large'.

The Fitbit Charge 5's screen is more durable than the Garmin vívosmart 5 as it's made from Gorilla Glass, whereas the latter is acrylic.

With this in mind — and despite us enjoying the Garmin vívosmart 5 — we think the Fitbit Charge 5 is better value for money, especially as you can get Fitbit Premium for free for three months.

Our verdict: should you buy the Garmin vívosmart 5?

Yes. If you’ve read this review and think the Garmin vívosmart 5 is for you, we’d recommend you go for it.

The Garmin vívosmart 5 is perfect for anyone who wants to keep an eye on their health and track their fitness. It’s also for people who know they’re likely to keep their smartphone on them when they’re out and about, as the Garmin vívosmart 5 has to be connected to the Garmin Connect app to enable GPS and functions like incident detection. Also, the Garmin vívosmart 5 is unable to do some ‘everyday’ functions like contactless payments.

• Design: 4
• Value for money: 5
• Features (average): 4
  • Functions: 4
  • Battery: 4
• Ease of set-up: 5

Overall star rating: 4/5

Where to buy the Garmin vívosmart 5

The Garmin vívosmart 5 is available for £129.99 at UK retailers such as John Lewis, Currys, Amazon and Garmin.

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