GPS sports watches are great, as they track your activities while giving you a big screen to see loads of data in real-time. Problem is, not everybody wants that – some just want a nondescript bracelet that can monitor their fitness and nothing else. While the Vivosmart has always been a nice option for this type of fitness tracker, it is pretty old, with the last generation having come out four years ago. Fortunately, that changes now with the release of the Garmin Vivosmart 5.
That’s right, Garmin is giving the wrist band form factor another chance, which should be a welcome break from all the sports watch and smartwatch models they’ve been releasing all this time. It’s low-profile, it’s got a nice collection of features, and it’s got a relatively affordable price – just the perfect trifecta that some people may prefer over more expensive sports watches.
The Garmin Vivosmart 5 is a bracelet-style fitness tracker with a monochrome OLED screen on top (66 percent larger than the previous version), allowing you to get the low-profile form factor of a wrist band while still keeping you informed of the most pertinent metrics. It can track all basic activity metrics, such as steps, intensity, calories burned, and heart rate (it has an integrated wrist-based sensor), with the ability to choose specific activity profiles for walking, running, strength training, and more, so it can tailor the measurements based on what you’re actually doing.
A good load of functions from Garmin’s sports watches make their way here. It can, for instance, keep track of your body’s energy levels, so you know when it’s a better idea to just rest up for the day, while a pulse ox sensor can spot check your blood oxygen saturation at any time you want. The darn thing can also monitor your stress levels, your breathing cycles, and, of course, your sleep cycles, so it can perform whole health monitoring if you enjoy that with your fitness trackers.
The Garmin Vivosmart 5 still doesn’t have built-in GPS, although it can connect to your smartphone’s GPS to log your positional information, along with the rest of its recorded data. Suffice to say, this has all the tracking functions that most people use, albeit with the need to use a third-party device (your smartphone, in the case of the GPS). It also offers smart notifications for Android smartphones (texts, calls, and alerts), incident detection, and auto-messaging for emergencies.
The fitness band comes with 5 ATM of water resistance, so you can actually wear it in the pool and in the shower, as well as any water sport you decide to engage in (so long as it isn’t deep sea diving). It comes with seven days of battery life, too, so you only need to plug it in once a week, making it very convenient to use as a daily tracker. The actual fitness tracker, by the way, is just that box that houses the screen at the top of the band, allowing you to simply take that off and plug it into a different bracelet to change up your look for the day.
The Garmin Vivosmart 5 is available now.
- Easy-to-use, comfortable smart fitness tracker, once setup through the Garmin Connect app, has a...
