Smart changes fix what used to be a finicky touchscreen
Like many of Garmin’s rugged GPS watches, the Vivosmart 5 uses a combination of a touchscreen and a physical button. That means you can swipe when it makes sense, like scrolling through menus. It also means you can reliably use the button to head back to the home screen and previous menus, as well as stop an activity. It’s intuitive to use and eliminates practically all the frustrations I’ve had with previous Vivosmart models.
. That doesn’t mean Garmin or third parties won’t come out with additional options down the line, but it’s something to keep in mind.Otherwise, if you liked the Vivosmart 4, the Vivosmart 5 will feel familiar. Instead of completely overhauling the design, Garmin tweaked the overall vibe. Where its predecessor was elegantly chic, the Vivosmart 5 is casually sporty.
Instead of adding sensors, the Vivosmart 5 actually gets rid of one: the barometric altimeter. That said, it’s not a huge loss. All that means is you can’t track floors climbed, and in my experience, this is a notoriously inaccurate metric and not helpful for the average person. Otherwise, you have your standard mix of accelerometers, an SpO2 sensor, an ambient light sensor, and an optical heart rate sensor.Most of the changes Garmin made are smart choices.
The trickier thing about trackers with connected GPS is that negligible differences on short runs tend to balloon the longer you go. For instance, I run-walked 2.3 miles with a friend and the Vivosmart 5 logged it as 2.43 miles to the 2.3 miles logged by the Series 7. A 0.13-mile difference isn’t so bad if you’re not running for long, but these gaps on tethered GPS trackers tend to widen over a longer distance.