If you’re looking for a wearable that balances fitness tracking with smartwatch features, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 is a good choice, especially at its current pre-Black Friday price of $199.99 ($100 off retail).
It only comes in one size—42mm—but it packs a 1.2-inch' AMOLED touchscreen with a crisp 390 x 390-pixel resolution, so you’ll have no trouble seeing your stats and notifications. If you’re into swimming, it’s rated for 5ATM water resistance, meaning it’ll handle aquatic workouts just fine unless you’re diving below 164 feet, which I’m guessing you probably don’t do on the regular.
Beyond the usual smartwatch features like GPS and notifications that work with both Android and iOS (though you can only reply to notifications directly on the watch with Android), it offers a variety of health-tracking capabilities, including monitoring blood oxygen levels, calories burned, heart rate, menstruation and sleep cycles, and more. You also get access to Garmin Pay, live location-sharing, and the ability to download music for on-the-go listening.
Garmin claims the Vivoactive 5 can last up to 11 days on a single charge. In real-world use, however—say, two to three workouts per week and GPS turned on—it averages about eight days between charges, according to PCMag's review.
This model also provides sleep coaching, including automatic nap detection, improved Body Battery metrics, and daily morning reports on your sleep and overall status. You’ll also find guided meditations, over 30 preloaded activity options (plus the ability to customize your own), a wheelchair mode for tracking daily pushes, and wheelchair-specific workouts. However, it lacks a barometric altimeter for tracking stair climbs and on-screen workout animations—features available in other Garmin models, like the Vivoactive 4 ($247.41, down from $329.99).
You can access all your metrics in detail using the Garmin Connect app, which also lets you customize which apps and metrics show up on your watch. Unlike Fitbit, which locks some features behind a premium membership, Garmin offers all its best features for free.
