Garmin’s new Vívosmart 5 faces tough competition with an empty bag of tricks

Garmin has just released its latest fitness tracker, the Vívosmart 5, a wearable designed to track sleep and activity essentials and deliver notifications over the phone. It replaces the Vívosmart 4 which is already 4 years old. But in four years, the new tracker hasn’t changed much from the previous version, while competitors like the Fitbit Charge 5 have made significant headway.

When Garmin released the Vívosmart 4 in 2018, it had advantages such as a then-rare blood oxygen sensor and the typical Garmin set of detailed health metrics that surpassed most competitors. Now, the same-priced Fitbit Charge 5 fitness tracker also has blood oxygen sensors, as well as electrodermal sensors (to measure stress), GPS, and the ability to take ECG readings—everything the new Vívosmart 5 lacks.

I spent the weekend sleeping, exercising and tracking my body’s vitals with the Vívosmart 5 ahead of its official launch to take a quick look at the device and see if Garmin’s detailed data and in-house metrics could make it worthwhile. buy. Since this is a pre-release version, some known bugs have been found in it, but nothing has prevented us from getting a clear idea of ​​​​its capabilities.

Minor physical changes

The Vívosmart 5 looks just like the 4. It’s a thin silicone fitness band with a small black and white OLED screen. The strap fastens like a traditional watch strap, just like its predecessor, except the straps are now interchangeable by simply pulling out the tracker. It looks seamless and you have to take it off your wrist to get the tracker.

The screen has increased by 66 percent, but this does not make it bulky. Even with a wider screen, it’s still a narrow device. Garmin has also integrated a physical home/back button below the screen where the tactile button used to be. The plastic button requires deliberate pressing, so I’ve never had any erroneous button presses while using the device.

The animation on the screen is smooth, touch response is good. However, this is a small screen, about an inch long and half an inch wide. So while menu widgets and text fit well, longer notifications like emails or texts require some scrolling. A maximum of eight short words can be displayed on the screen at a time.

Activity Tracking

Vívosmart 5 can track heart rate, blood oxygen levels, stress and breathing rate throughout the day and night. There are 14 activity tracking modes, including but not limited to HIIT, yoga, strength training, and breathwork. Garmin also allows you to track your menstrual cycle in the companion app.

The activity and sleep tracking data was close to what I got on my Apple Watch Series 7 and the Google Nest hub for sleep detection. Vívosmart’s heart rate data and associated calories burned were consistent with Apple Watch activity readings, but the deeper analytics that a Garmin device is typically chosen for are missing.

Because it’s a simpler tracker, calories, heart rate, and heart rate zones are the only data you’ll collect while you exercise. There is no built-in GPS, so you’ll have to carry your phone with you if you want location data to be logged during your run or cycle. And you won’t find an analysis of your anaerobic and aerobic performance as you’ll find with Garmin’s more robust wearables, such as the Forerunner lineup.

Vívosmart has a Garmin Body Battery metric to help you estimate daily recovery and exercise, but it’s not as reliable or prescriptive as Fitbit’s daily readiness feature. As opposed to simply displaying a score from zero to 100 percent like Garmin’s, Fitbit also recommends specific workouts for your days, depending on whether you feel you need to focus on intense, moderate, or recovery-oriented activities.

However, Fitbit charges $10 per month for this, along with other data and content, as part of its Fitbit Premium subscription plan — a subscription model Garmin says it won’t play as a growing number of wearable device manufacturers are saying.