A low-frills fitness and health tracker

Garmin's Vivosmart 5 fitness tracker is light on excitement, but makes it easy to keep tabs on your activity, sleep, and other key health metrics.

From the Venu 2 GPS smartwatch to the fashion-forward Lily, Garmin makes some of the best and most beautiful wearables on the market. But not everyone cares about advanced features and fashion-forward designs. If you're looking for a simple, easy-to-use fitness tracker, the $149.99 Garmin Vivosmart 5 might suit your needs. It monitors all the basics 24/7, including your activity, calories burned, heart rate, steps, and sleep, plus a few more advanced health metrics like your blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), energy reserves, respiration rate, and stress level. It's a suitable option for newcomers to fitness tracking, but trails our Editors' Choice winner in this category, the Fitbit Charge 5, which has a superior color touch screen, built-in GPS, and contactless payment support for the same price. 

Garmin makes a lot of different wearables, so it can be confusing to differentiate between them. The Vivosmart 5 sits above the $79.99 Vivofit 4, Garmin's most basic fitness tracker, in the lineup. The latter model features an accelerometer to track your steps and sleep, but no heart rate monitor. Compared with other brands, the Vivosmart 5 mostly competes against the aforementioned Fitbit Charge 5 and the $149.95 Polar Unite. 

Aesthetically, the Vivosmart 5 looks pretty standard for a sports-focused fitness tracker, with a polycarbonate case, an acrylic lens, and a silicone strap. It comes in two sizes: small/medium (for wrists between 4.8 and 7.4 inches in circumference) and large (for wrists between 5.8 and 9 inches). You can get the small/medium version in black, white, or mint, but the large model is only available in black. For this review, Garmin sent me the small/medium model in white. 

The tracker component measures about 0.4 inch in depth and features a 0.73-by-0.41-inch (LW), black-and-white OLED touch screen with a resolution of 154 by 88 pixels. It has one physical multifunction button that sits beneath the display. Weighing just 0.9 ounce, the Vivosmart 5 is comfortable for 24/7 wear and so lightweight that I barely notice it's on. 

The screen offers seven brightness levels, but note that the top three settings reduce battery life; to adjust the brightness, navigate to Settings > System > Brightness on the device. Even on a medium brightness setting, the screen is clear and easy to read indoors and outside. There's no always-on option, but you can set the length of time before the display turns off (short, medium, or long) via the Settings menu. To wake the display, you simply rotate and lift your wrist toward your body; in testing, this gesture worked most of the time, but I occasionally had to use alternate methods: pressing the physical button or tapping the screen twice. 

For comparison, the Fitbit Charge 5 features a colorful AMOLED touch screen with an always-on option, a more durable Corning Gorilla Glass layer to protect the display, and a classier aluminum case. The Polar Unite also has a color touch screen, but no always-on option. 

Battery life is one area where the Vivosmart 5 shines. It fell short of the promised maximum of seven days in testing, but still lasted six days with the screen brightness set to Auto and five days on the highest brightness level. The Charge 5 also promises to run for up to a week on a charge, but lasted only three days with the always-on display setting activated in testing. The Unite promises up to four days on a charge, but also lasted just three in my experience. 

Like the Charge 5, the Vivosmart 5 has a 5ATM water-resistance rating, which means it can withstand pressure equivalent to a depth of 164 feet. You can safely wear it in the rain or snow as well as when you shower, swim, dive, or snorkel, but it's not suitable for scuba diving or high-speed water sports. The Unite has a less impressive 3ATM rating, which means it's water resistant up to 98 feet. 

To keep tabs on your activity and health, the Vivosmart 5 features an optical heart rate monitor, an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, and a blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) monitor. The tracker offers a few basic smartwatch features, including music controls, smartphone notifications, weather reports, and calendar reminders. It doesn't support contactless payments, a feature that is available on the Charge 5. 

The Vivosmart 5 monitors your heart rate; Body Battery(Opens in a new window) energy reserves; estimated calories burned; Intensity Minutes(Opens in a new window) (all moderate and vigorous exercise counts); respiration (the average number of breaths you take per minute); sleep; steps; and stress(Opens in a new window) level around the clock. It can also track your SpO2 level (a metric Garmin calls Pulse Ox), VO2 Max(Opens in a new window) , Fitness Age(Opens in a new window) , menstrual cycle, water intake (which you manually input), as well as optionally send you reminders to move and alerts about a high or low heart rate.

For tracking workouts, the Vivosmart 5 offers the following activity profiles: bike, breathwork, cardio, elliptical, HIIT, other, pilates, pool swim, row indoor, run, stair stepper, strength, treadmill, walk, and yoga. That list is fairly limited (there's no indoor cycling option, for instance), and you can add only a maximum of 10 to your tracker's display at a time. You can customize the activity profiles on your device during the setup process and edit your selections at any time via More > Garmin Devices > Vivosmart 5 > Activities in the Connect app.

For comparison, the Charge 5 offers a bit more variety with 20 exercise modes, but supports only six on the device at a time. The Unite stands out on this front with simultaneous support for up to 20 sport profiles on the device and more than 100 options to choose from—everything from baseball to roller skating. 

The Charge 5 offers a more advanced sensor suite, including an electrocardiogram (ECG) app that checks for signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib), a feature typically only found on pricier wearables, as well as a built-in GPS. The Vivosmart 5's lack of an integrated GPS means you need to bring your phone along during outdoor workouts for it to track your distance, location, pace, and speed. In testing, the Vivosmart 5 generally paired with my phone's GPS within seconds, but one time it failed to connect even after several attempts. 

The Vivosmart 5 can automatically detect and track walking and running workouts (to enable this feature, navigate to More > Garmin Devices > Vivosmart 5 > Activity Tracking in the Connect app). In testing, it had no trouble automatically tracking my twice-daily walks with my dog Bradley, or displaying these events on my timeline in the Connect app. 

If you've used other Garmin wearables in the past, the setup process should be familiar. Either way, the Vivosmart 5 is simple to configure and navigate. 

To start, you first need to download the Garmin Connect app (available for Android and iOS) and create an account if you don’t have one. Next, plug it in to charge, press the physical button to turn it on, open the Connect app on your phone, navigate to More > Garmin Devices > Add Device, then enter the code on the tracker's screen to connect it with the app via Bluetooth.

From there, you can optionally enable smartphone notifications so they come through on the device. The app then asks a few questions, including what times you typically go to bed and wake up, as well as whether you want to receive notifications during those hours. For accurate activity and workout tracking, it also asks which wrist you plan to wear the tracker on, a standard question during the wearable setup process.

If you haven't previously set up a Garmin account, it prompts you to enter your gender (male, female, or not specified), height, weight, and birth date. Based on your answers, Garmin sets goals for weekly Intensity Minutes (150 is the default), steps, and fluid consumption. 

The device automatically increases or decreases your step goal each day based on your previous activity. If you enable the fluid consumption goal, the device increases its recommendation based on how much sweat it estimates you lost during tracked activities. If your goals are too difficult or easy, you can edit them in the Connect app via More > Garmin Devices > Vivosmart 5 > Activity Tracking.

You navigate the Vivosmart 5 via the touch screen and physical button. From the main watch face, swipe up or down to scroll through your widgets: Time/Date; Calendar; Weather; Music (lets you control tunes playing on your phone with play, pause, and skip forward/back options); Notifications; Women's Health Tracking (logs your periods and check which day of your menstrual cycle you're on); Hydration (lets you log and monitor your water intake); My Day (shows your step count, Intensity Minutes, and calorie burn); Health Stats (shows your heart rate, stress level, and Body Battery); and Health Stats 2 (shows your sleep duration, Pulse Ox, and respiration). To customize the widgets on your device, visit More > Garmin Devices > Vivosmart 5 > Appearance > Widgets in the Connect app. 

To access the controls menu, swipe right from the main watch face. By default, the controls menu lets you access Find My Phone and Do Not Disturb features, but you can customize it(Opens in a new window) with other tools if you prefer. 

To open the main menu, tap the physical button while you're on the watch face. From the main menu, you can access Activities (to track a workout); Clocks (alarm, stopwatch, and timer); Heart Rate features (to view your current VO2 Max, Fitness Age, and access the Broadcast HR option); Settings; and Watch Faces (there are a dozen digital and analog options). The Broadcast HR feature lets you send your heart rate data from the watch to Bluetooth/ANT+ enabled third-party apps such as Zwift, cycling computers, and fitness machines. In testing, I had no problem connecting the Vivosmart 5 to an Echelon EX-8S to see my heart rate on the bike's screen while I was working out. 

When you're not on the main watch face, pressing the physical button takes you to the previous screen. The button also lets you stop tracking an activity (press and hold for three seconds) or send an SOS for assistance (press and hold until you feel three vibrations). 

When you trigger the assistance feature, the tracker sends a message with your real-time location to your preloaded emergency contacts. The Vivosmart 5 can also detect safety incidents, such as a hard fall, during certain outdoor activities and automatically notify your emergency contacts. As a limitation, you must connect the Vivosmart 5 to the Connect app via Bluetooth for the assistance features to work. 

The Garmin Connect app makes it easy to view and interpret your metrics, but it can be a bit difficult to find the settings to enable and customize certain tracker features. The app lacks a premium subscription tier, which you might view as a pro or con. Many competing fitness tracker companion apps, like Fitbit and Amazon Halo, include a premium tier (which is usually free for at least six months with the purchase of a device) with features such as workout videos, healthy recipes, and guided meditations. The downside is that they also put certain metrics behind a paywall (like 90-day health trends in the Fitbit app(Opens in a new window) and sleep stage data in Amazon Halo(Opens in a new window) ), so you lose access to these features after the free trial unless you pay for an ongoing subscription. 

In testing, the Vivosmart 5's heart rate readings and calorie burn estimates were sometimes slightly off compared with my control device, an Apple Watch Series 7, the accuracy of which I have already verified. That said, I never got any wildly inaccurate readings from the Vivosmart 5. 

During a one-mile run, for instance, the Vivosmart 5 said I had an average and maximum heart rate of 141bpm and 180bpm, respectively. Those readings were low compared with the Apple Watch Series 7, which measured my respective average and max pulse at 182bpm and 197bpm while tracking the same workout from the other wrist. Despite the difference in pulse readings, the Vivosmart 5 and Series 7 offered similar calorie burn estimates for that session: 88 and 91 calories, respectively. 

During a 20-minute indoor cycling class, the pulse readings from both trackers were in the same range, but the Vivosmart 5 said I burned about 51 more calories than the Series 7. During a 15-minute strength training session, the Vivosmart 5's pulse measurements were slightly low, differing from the Series 7 by as much as 19bpm, though its calorie count was in the same range. 

That said, Garmin's fitness tracker offers a few fitness insights you don't get from Apple's smartwatch, including the amount of time you spent in each heart rate zone and your estimated sweat loss (in milliliters). 

When you wear it to bed, the Vivosmart 5 automatically tracks your total sleep duration, as well as the amount of time you spent in each sleep stage: light, deep, and REM. Based on this data, it gives you a sleep score from 0 to 100, a metric that lets you quickly gauge the duration and quality of your shut-eye the previous night. In the Connect app, it offers graphs of your sleep stages, Pulse Ox, and respiration throughout the night. 

The Vivosmart 5's sleep and respiration data are generally in the same ballpark as measurements from the Nest Hub smart display and the Eight Sleep Pod Pro mattress, which i'm currently testing. After one restful night, for example, the Vivosmart 5 said I got seven hours and 58 minutes of sleep; the Nest Hub said I got seven hours and 34 minutes; and the Eight Sleep Pod Pro said I got eight hours. For that night, the devices said I had an average of 13, 14, and 12 breaths per minute, respectively. 

The Vivosmart 5 doesn't track your body temperature, a metric some wearables support. The Charge 5 tracks your overnight skin temperature variation, and tells how much hotter or colder you were than your baseline. The Oura Generation 3 ring goes a step farther, with round-the-clock body temperature measurements. After tracking an outdoor activity with the Vivosmart 5, your workout summary in the Connect app includes a temperature field, but this pertains to the outside temperature, not your body temperature. I mention this because it can be confusing if you live in a warm climate like me. 

Blood oxygen saturation tracking is an important feature in light of COVID-19, so I'm happy this is standard on Garmin wearables. The Vivosmart 5 can measure your SpO2 throughout the day or night; its daytime readings are generally in line with results from other wearables, including the Series 7 and Charge 5. My overnight SpO2 readings from the Vivosmart 5 seem low, but that's likely because I loosen the band at night. Like the Charge 5, the Vivosmart 5 does not support on-demand SpO2 measurements, a feature you get on pricier devices such as the Lily and the Series 7. 

To enable SpO2 measurements on the Vivosmart 5, navigate to More > Garmin Devices > Vivosmart 5 > Activity Tracking > Pulse Ox in the Connect app. Garmin warns that enabling continuous Pulse Ox tracking will "significantly impact battery life." For less of a battery life hit, there's an option to enable Pulse Ox readings only during sleep. Alternatively, you can also just leave the feature off. 

The $149.99 Garmin Vivosmart 5 is a satisfactory if unremarkable fitness tracker. With a simple design and user interface, it lets you keep a close eye on your daily activity level, blood oxygen saturation, calories burned, energy reserves, heart rate, menstrual cycle, respiration, sleep, and stress, plus it offers up to a week of power on a charge. If you're new to fitness tracking or prioritize simplicity, ease of use, and battery life, it might be exactly what you want. At its list price, however, the Vivosmart 5 simply offers less value than the Fitbit Charge 5, which has a color display, contactless payments, and GPS, so it remains our Editors' Choice.

Garmin's Vivosmart 5 fitness tracker is light on excitement, but makes it easy to keep tabs on your activity, sleep, and other key health metrics.

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I'm PCMag's expert on fitness and smart home technology, and I've written more than 6,000 articles and reviews in the 10-plus years I've been here. I unbox, set up, test, and review a wide range of consumer tech products from my home in Florida, often with the help of my pitbull Bradley. I'm also a yoga instructor, and have been actively teaching group and private classes for nearly a decade. 

Before becoming an analyst in 2020, I spent eight years as a reporter covering consumer tech news. Prior to joining PCMag, I was a reporter for SC Magazine, focusing on hackers and computer security. I earned a BS in journalism from West Virginia University, and started my career writing for newspapers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

Smart fitness machines: rowing machines, stationary bikes, strength training equipment, treadmills, and workout mirrors

Wearables: fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, and smartwatches

Smart home devices: air purifiers, kitchen appliances, light bulbs, robot vacuums, smart scales, and more

Pet tech: connected cameras and GPS trackers

My little Florida beach bungalow serves as a test bed for the latest smart home tech, and I constantly cycle through products I'm reviewing. 

I have a smart speaker or display in every room, allowing me to control other connected devices by voice. The Nest Hub on my bedside table lets me set wake-up alarms, control my Wyze Light Bulbs, and set the temperature on my Nest Thermostat. I use the Amazon Echo Show 8 on my kitchen counter to browse recipes, reorder protein powder, and check the weather. 

Because I suffer from allergies, air purifiers are essential. I use the Dyson Purifier Cool TP07, which doubles as a fan and continuously sends indoor pollution data to its companion mobile app. 

A good floor-cleaning robot is also a must. I currently use an Ecovacs X1 Omni and an Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra, two premium models that can both vacuum and mop, empty their own dustbins, and wash their own mop cloths. 

For fitness, I generally have about three large workout machines in rotation at a given time. At present, that includes the Echelon EX-8S stationary bike, the NordicTrack iSelect adjustable dumbbells, the NordicTrack Vault workout mirror, the Peloton Guide strength training camera, and the Tempo Move weight training system. I've also had a Tonal mounted on my wall since 2020. 

Finally, I cycle through wearables like it's my job—because it is. In heavy rotation at the moment are the Garmin Venu 2, a favorite for its bright screen and stylish design, and the Apple Watch Series 7, which I often use as a control device when testing other models.

On the weekends I love riding e-bikes like the rugged, beach-friendly Aventon Aventure for fun and fitness.

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