Garmin 010-01733-00 Fenix 5X Sapphire - Slate Gray with Black Band

If you move, bike, swim, walk on the road or treadmill, run, hike, you name it, its in there, buy this; PERIOD. As someone who cycles regularly I have had a number of cycle computers and use Strava for all my rides. The amount of information you get or can get from this watch, all in one place means you need nothing else. For biking it is possible to wirelessly connect a cadence and speed sensor, the watch tracks heart rate as long as its on your wrist. Its basically a Garmin GPS so it tracks, accurately I might add, your distance, speed, average speed, peak speed and it tracks it all in splits. AND THE THING HOLDS A CHARGE FOR MORE THAN A DAY!!!! I take it off once a week at work whether it needs a charge or not, plug it in, about 30-45 min later its fully charged and ready to go. Now I may not be as active as others but thats at least a 15 mile ride or 5 mile walk every day and it still lasts at least 3-4 days. I can say with all confidence, there isnt another tracker out there that gives this much functionality with the same or more battery life. The best function of this watch, which I have yet to use is the return function. Start an activity, get lost and the watch gives you turn by turn directions back to where you started. AMAZING, in one word thats what this device is, simply amazing. YES, almost a grand is a lot for a watch but this is sooooo much more than just a watch and worth every penny, if you have the means to buy this watch and consider yourself an active person do not bother buying any other (GPS,activity tracker, sleep tracker) watch.

2/14/22 UPDATE. I hate to do this, but I have to update my review based on a watch that only lasted two years. While working, Ive loved my Garmin Fenix and have recommended it to many. In fact, just last week I showed it off to a group of students in a Quality Control course Im teaching. The discussion was about analog versus digital. I pointed out the exceptional quality control of the hardware but emphasized that digital technology would limit the useful life of the product. Fenix is a high-priced piece of technology that will never become an heirloom. Well, Fenix must have heard me because one week later it died. Life cycle: 2 years. Reading service reports from other users around the Internet, it seems that the battery no longer charges, but Im not qualified to do that diagnostic. The watch is just dead. Garmin customer service is nice enough, but they are charging $200 to fix or replace the watch. I have watches that Ive had for 50 years that still work like new. I even have a watch from my grandmother that is nearly 100 years old that is still ticking. None of these watches came close to the premium price of a Fenix watch. Replacing this with the latest version would be close to $1,000. Not going to happen. Ive been a decades-long Garmin fan, but this pops a hole in my loyalty. Rather than spend $200 to have it fixed, I think Ill apply that $200 on something I know will last longer. As much as I hate to say it, that something is likely an Apple Watch. Bottom line, for as long as it lasts, this is an exceptional piece of equipment in every way. But, dont count on it lasting for more than a couple of years. PRIOR REVIEW I’ve had my eye on this watch for two years, but could never justify the price; until an Amazon Black Friday deal made this the best value ever. Thank you, Amazon. Yes, I see Garmin has the Fenix 6 replacing the Fenix 5, but I can’t see any justification for the $500 price difference from what I paid for the 5. Besides, the 5 is amazing. One week into it, and I’m blown away by the quality and features. At this point, most limitations can be blamed on new user errors and learning curves. So far, I’ve used it to track walks, hikes, strength, and sleep. For walks and hikes, exceptional; especially like the integration of Garmins core competency: GPS. The strength tracking app seems limited, inaccurate, and cumbersome. Would like a feature that allows me to program workouts on a computer, then download them to the watch. As it is, I program exercises one character and button at a time. Even then, it either gets the numbers of reps wrong or doesn’t count any at all. Hopefully, user error. But I’ve exhausted the manual and support boards, so am concluding that the strength module is the main limitation of the watch. Another feature I would appreciate is a good app for TRX workouts. The steps tracking seems to have a bit of AI in it, resulting in a daily “damn watch” curse each night. I started with a reasonable 7,500 steps per day goal. But, each time I exceed the step goal, Garmin ups my goal. Exceeding each progressive goal each day, the watch now has me at a goal of 15,000 for tomorrow. Damn watch; when is that going to end? One of these days, I’m gonna run out of steps. Of course, being a bit facetious there; I appreciate that the watch is smart enough to keep pushing me, and hope to be able to find the steps necessary to meet each new goal. The sleep tracking is also good. An improvement over my last smartwatch. A possible limitation is that I’m a horrible sleeper, and the watch doesn’t seem to be able to figure me out. I can usually sleep for a few hours before a 2 or 3 a.m wake-up has me up for a couple of hours. Sometimes I’m able to get a second round of sleep in. For example, asleep by 11, wake at 2, lie awake for 30 minutes trying to fall back asleep, give up and read a book for a couple of hours, fall back asleep at 4 or 5, wake up at 8 a.m. The watch only records the second sleep segment. On the one night that I mostly slept through thanks to a sleeping pill, the watch provided a full record. This record also provided a good lesson: while the sleeping pill helped me remain unconscious, I only had light sleep; no deep sleep or REM sleep. Unconsciousness does not equal sleep. Another big bonus is that Garmin seems to have conquered a limitation that kept me from buying an iWatch: fully charged in less than an hour, and stays charged for days. After my first four days, it still had 35% battery life. Compare that to the daily, and sometimes twice daily, charge for competitive offerings. A big downer about the charge is that it requires a proprietary cable, which deserves a “those bastards” demerit. I’m a Garmin fan with four other Garmin devices, which all use standard USB cables. The only justifiable reason for forcing me to buy proprietary cables that can’t be used for any other device, including those made by the same company, is “because that’s what Apple does.” Another benefit of the Fenix 5 over the iWatch: the macho factor. The iWatch is dainty; my little sister loves hers and it goes great with yoga pants. In comparison, the Fenix 5 looks and acts as tough as a military-grade tactical watch. Hurrah, and all that. Bonus, it fully and seamlessly integrates with my iPhone. I’ll check in occasionally to report on my thoughts as I use it more. Meanwhile, putting aside some issues, the combination of tough quality, super performance, seamless integration, and the current price make this an excellent value worthy of a 5 ranking.

This is my third Garmin watch in about ten years. I was a little nervous to buy it refurbished but I couldnt justify the price of a new one. Its great because I cant tell the difference. It looks and acts brand new. It has a lot more activity options than Im used to which is fun. I havent used them all. I mainly use walk, bike, and run, which have worked flawlessly. Eager to try strength, hike, and the navigation tool. I use the GPS every single day on an evening walk and I have only really had to charge it once in the week that I have been wearing it. Still, I could have probably gone a few more days without charging yet. The battery is great, in my opinion. The watch is built tough. Its not too heavy but you can definitely feel it. Its a good size and weight for what I would call a medium sized wrist. Not to mention the watch is just beautifully designed. It came with two rubber straps that I didnt think I would like but honestly I do. They are great. I bought a black stainless steel band to wear to work and it makes the watch look professional. If you are on the fence just do it. I love this watch.

Overall Garmin watches and the associated app are excellent. The Fenix 5 is as full a featured watch as you could hope for and it is very user friendly. The battery life is fine and charging is quick. However as with any GPS device and a wrist heart rate sensor, you will have accuracy issues. My buddy and I with the exact same Fenix 5 watches doing the exact same run were off by nearly about 2/10s of mile over an 8 mile trail run....definitely livable. However if heart rate is important to you do not rely on the wrist sensor. It is off wildly. Accuracy is consistently 30 BPM high and fluctuates like crazy. Youll need to buy a Garmin HRM strap and that will set you back an additional 80 bucks. Id just go ahead and buy it with the watch. HR is by far the most important training stat there is for anyone wanting to consistently train

I went from the Garmin Fenix 3 to the 5X and while I love the watch in general, mine has a flaw with the charger. Sometimes the watch will connect and disconnect continuously from the computer. Sometimes it wont connect at all. And if I get it to connect I have to be extremely careful and not touch it or it will lose the connection again. Garmin admitted there was an issue with this response: I am sorry we have currently noticed that there is an issue with the fenix 5x charging port. We are working on a fix but until we have a new batch all of the devices will have the same issues. I have added you to the case so we will contact you when we have a resolution. Until then, when you connect the device to the computer, you will not want to touch it so it will remain connected. It has been about 6 weeks now and they still have no updates on when this issue will be fixed. If you want a flawless watch, you may want to wait before buying. Once the charging issue is fixed Ill upgrade this to a 5 but until then it is a PITA to sync with my computer. ============================================ Update 11/10 Ive had my replacement watch for about a month now. Garmin support flip flopped again and said there was no known issue with the charging port and that my watch would be replaced. I paid for an advance RMA and I think they sent me a brand new watch. The new watch has not exhibited the same issues with the charging port and I have been quite happy. I am upgrading this to 4 stars and not 5 only because of the extreme hassle I had to go through and time it took for Garmin to take care of me, the customer.

This suffers from Garminitis. Its a great piece of hardware crippled by horrible software. To make things even worse, Garmin went full-android. The few things Garmin watches actually did right (ex. continuous heart-rate graph, heart-rate range with warning, etc) now require buggy 3rd party apps. Worse, you HAVE to create a Garmin account to configure basic features. When walking, my watch randomly declares Goal like some confused toddler during a soccer game. The problem is that you cant shut this toddler up except by creating an account and configuring the feature there. Otherwise, the watch randomly decides your goal for walking (different each time) and starts screaming in glee whenever it feels like it. Every time this happens, Im reminded how much I hate Garmin and every single executive who runs it. Another great feature of this watch is that it will betray you at every possible opportunity. Want it to count steps? Sure. Except it randomly will lose track of the reset-time (ordinarily midnight). The clock-face will show the right time, but the step-count wont reset at midnight and WILL reset randomly during your walk. Buy a $20 step-counter instead. The GPS map sounds pretty handy, right? Except that its way too undetailed to be of any use, you cant upload proper maps without using Garmins awful program on windows (no linux support, of course), and youll need to carry around a 200 page manual while hiking just to figure out how to navigate the map. Which brings me to another point: this watch is about as easy to configure and use as the worst version of Windows crossed with the worlds buggiest Android implementation. There are 300 levels deep of menus for everything, no button behaves as you think it should, and few things actually do what theyre supposed to. In the name of allowing the watch to do anything, Garmin has ensured it can do nothing. Be prepared to spend full-time managing and configuring this watch to get it to maybe sort-of do what you think it should. Maybe youll even have to write your own android-app. Heck, Im surprised they even included a clock face instead of requiring a 3rd party app. Garmin should not be allowed to write software. The constitution should be amended to say this. They should just produce chips and basic hardware, release open-specs on them, and leave everything else to people who actually have brains. Other than that I love the watch. Its big, hefty, and people seem to think its expensive. Works great as a paperweight too, but I already have a bunch of other Garmin products for that.

Love This Watch. Im not a big review writer but I must tell everyone that this is a great watch. I must first tell everyone that I purchased a Fenix 5 and sent it back, because the menu button didnt work. Then I purchased a forerunner 935 because of reviews that I had read. I really liked the 935. Functionality is exactly the same as the Fenix 5. I kept it for nearly a month and then decided that the plastic look just wasnt for me. I decided to upgrad to the 5x strictly for vanity reasons. It looks better. While I was concerned about the size I actually really like the larger size. Im a big guy and it doesnt look too big. Its also not heavy, like I thought it would be. I think I have looked at every fitness watch on the market. I hate the thought of charging a watch. I travel a lot and am absent minded so I will just forget. With daily exercise and no gps, I charge the watch about once ever 14 days, which works for me. I almost never take this watch off. I swim, shower and do everything else and it just works. Just getting into the different apps and watch faces. My wife has a Fitbit and I just cant understand how people charge a watch every other day and take it off to shower. I shower at the gym and would definitely lose it. In all honesty, I could live without the notifications but they also work really well. Anyway, I love this watch. Ill update my review of I find any issues.

I decided to go with Garmin instead of the Apple Watch (series 6 as of this review) primarily due to the battery life. Im not looking for smart watch features like Apple Pay, or Listening, or touch screen. I wanted a purely Data analyzing beast of a watch to monitor my heart rate, VO2, recovery rate, training performance, and historical record for cycling. I have a Polar heart rate monitor with a chest strap and the Fenix 5 doesnt capture the peak levels as accurately, the averages over a 10,20 and 40mile ride are exactly the same. I love the data collected by the Fenix watches but the battery life on this watch was not as advertised. I put in 3 rides (10,20, and 40) and 1 walk and the watch was drained after 5 days. This is very disappointing for such an expensive watch. Will charge to full again and test another week to see if the numbers remain the same. Overall love the data disappointed with the battery life. UPDATE (11/24/2020) -- wrist heart rate monitor stopped working. I even went to settings, sensors and accessories, wrist heart rate monitor, and set it to auto. No green lights showing up on the bottom and the heart rate monitor is dead.

Been in a rut and needed to get going again. Was due for a new watch and thought - this would be perfect. Have many running friends who all swear by Garmin products. This would be my first purchase so I read many reviews and selected the Fenix 5x. Man - very very happy. Yeah - it takes about two days to get used to everything. The widgets...how to move them around or eliminate them...how to make your runs, walks, hikes and weight lifting activities work best. So far been on several runs and had my cell phone with me to calibrate. I believe the Garmin specs are more realistic too btw. The sleep monitor I have always been curious about. Im a light sleeper and it shows. Love the heart monitor. I keep an eye on that and it is intriguing on how it naturally fluctuates. Love how I have goals with the system synced to my cell. So much good info. Love how I can overlay heart rate against pace time or distance. Note - I did download a face and I do love it. I recommend watching videos to help with that (Youtube). Highly recommend.

I have not had previous smart watch to compare the Fenix against. I had a couple low priced fitness bands that were not really that useful. I have been resumed triathlon training and this watch if really good. I was last training in the Timex Ironman watch time period. I would say the Swim external HR strap is a must have for accurate work out logging. The external HR strap is essentially flawless, event the temporary storage of data while the watch is submerged. The running dynamics analysis is not necessarily actionable information for me, but it is some what interesting. Rowing, running, swimming I had really no good HR data from the wrist based function. Walking and sleep recordings seem to the limit of wrist based readings. I do not use much of the technology in the watch regarding notifications, messaging but assume they would work well. The time to charge is the best of my previous 3 exercise bands. The watch is rugged with the sapphire face. The size is a little larger than I would prefer, but for mapping functions on runs in different locales it seems to be a good trade off. The computer and watch software works well for my needs and automatically updates my work place exercise logging for quarterly cash program. After the research and ultimate choice of watch, I have no regrets about this device.