Brash Marine Reviews Garmin Fenix 5

As your training regimen gets more complex, the tools required to help you along will need to be more advanced. Outside of measuring time for a set distance and rest times for intervals, a regular watch is not conducive to running, swimming and cycling. A smartphone does jack up the amount and breadth of data that you can collect, however swimming with a phone is not practical and will probably ruin your phone.


Enter the Garmin Fenix 5.


Appearance, Body and Size

The Fenix 5 has perfect size. It’s not so small to make you think you may have accidentally put on the wife’s watch and not so big that you feel like you’re wearing Flava Flav’s clock on your wrist. The watch has an almost two-inch circumference and is a little over half an inch in height. The size and layout of the face and bezels is aesthetically pleasing and can be worn not only for however you get your fitness in but for semi-formal events. It’s also durable as hell, able to take a licking and keep on ticking.


Screen

While it may look like a regular watch, the Fenix 5’s screen is a display like you might find on your smartphone. But rather than a touchscreen, the Fenix 5 is controlled with buttons on both sides of the watch. Garmin has gone the practical route, choosing to refrain from getting too wrapped up in technology. This makes the Fenix 5 far more practical than a touch screen watch with the same capabilities. Have you ever tried to mess with your phone with super sweaty hands? It ain’t happening.


The display uses a transflective liquid crystal to enable the watch’s auto brightness feature, making the Fenix 5 easily readable in direct sunlight. In areas where the display doesn’t instantly brighten up or is too dim to read, there is a backlight to assist you. The screen resolution is a bit low compared to other smart watches, marking the sole negative with the Fenix 5’s display. At 218x218 pixels, you may feel how Android users feel when looking at iPhone pictures.


Features

The watch has a number of features that can contribute exponentially to not only training, but to recovery as well.


  • Using both GPS and GLONASS, the Ruskie version of GPS, all of your geolocation bases are covered. And thus far have been relatively accurate, recording my 10k route to sixteen meters of true.
  • The Fenix 5 measures VO2 max level which is, in short, your overall fitness level.
  • An all-day stress monitoring update to the watch allows you to see not only the presence of stress, but the intensity of it and the recovery reactions. You can’t eliminate stress altogether, but this feature on the Fenix 5 helps you create a balance between stress and recovery to assist in healthy wellbeing.
  • The Fenix 5 is extremely user friendly. There’s no need to connect it to a computer to get all of your data or load training plans. Everything loads off of the app so you can see your results once you sync the watch to the phone with your latest training session.
  • There are tons of available accessories, making the Fenix 5 customizable as hell. From strap-on heart rate monitors to temperature sensors, brackets for your bike’s handlebars to myriad selections in wrist straps, the watch itself is just the beginning.

While the Fenix 5 is a great watch and likely the best running watch that I have ever owned, it is not without its faults.


  • The heart rate monitor is not that accurate and is somewhat inconsistent. Measuring my heart rate with the watch versus directly with my pulse at times the Fenix 5 would be off by as much as 15 BPM and sometimes be only off by 1 BPM. Pairing the watch with the Garmin HRM chest strap improves the heart rate monitoring consistency and accuracy greatly. It also provides a quicker heart rate read, due to location of the monitor. If you want to stay on the wrist, the Garmin Forerunner 235 has a superior heart rate monitor at half the price.
  • The Fenix 5’s VO2 Max tends to overestimate your VO2 Max. Pairing the watch with a chest strap gives better VO2 Max data. Of course, it’s not as good as if you were to get a lab test done, but definitely better than the wrist measurement alone.
  • The interval distance setting on the watch needs to be able to get down to smaller distances. As it stands, the smallest intervals you can get are fifty meters and eighty eight yards. You can go on the Connect IQ app and make the distances needed smaller. But if you didn’t make the training session in advance and don’t have your phone with you when you’re getting ready to start your workout, then you are SOL.
  • Another accuracy issue lies with the sleep tracker. Sometimes it seems spot on while others it is way off. I have gone to sleep around nine, slept peacefully through the night and woken up at five, only to find that the sleep tracker read that I had only gotten three-and-a-half hours of sleep total.

Battery Life

The battery on the Fenix 5 is great, lasting up to two weeks as long as you are not using the heart rate monitor or GPS. If you are using the heart rate monitor or GPS, the battery is rated for twenty-four hours. The good thing is that the battery charges pretty quickly through a small USB port on the back of the watch.

Overall the Fenix 5 is the best activity tracking watch out there, despite its few faults. Paired with a chest strap and a running pod or power pod, you are gonna get some pretty accurate data about your fitness levels and activities.

The Fenix 5 rates a 9/10.

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