Garmin Fenix 5 Plus Multisport Watch with Music, Maps and Garmin Pay, Silver with Black Band

Product Information

Indeed that was fairly typical of the whole run, although the Suunto 9 (blue) probably was a little worse elsewhere. As shown here Garmin 935 (Yellow) – Suunto 9 (Blue) – Fenix 5S Plus (Red) Here, you will get an overview of the specifications of the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus collection and the Garmin Fenix 5, respectively. iHeartRadio CIQ app on Garmin Connect ouch (Rating: 2.5/5, Developer states 500mb limit in July 2018 – #OhDear). Barometric Altimeter – if air pressure falls you are assumed to have gone ‘up’. This could be a flight of stairs or a mountain. Over time there are weather-based changes to air pressure and hence, unless corrected, you can appear to go up or down when, in fact, you are going nowhere. GPS 3D positioning can be used to correct such drift as can you passing through a point on a map with a known elevation.

Pairing headphones was easy and most headphones paired first or second time once the headphones were put in pairing mode. #Yay Firstbeat do very clever things with heart rate data, both ‘simple’ heart beats per minute and the variation between those beats. When coupled with other pieces of your workout data, great insights into your performance can be delivered to estimate, for example, your: VO2max; Lactate Threshold HR (LTHR, AnT); training load; training status; recovery time; readiness to train; performance condition; and MUCH more. Rugged design of stainless steel or diamond-like carbon (DLC) titanium bezel, buttons and rear case But as the name also alludes, this is more of a small bump-up on last year's model than a full jump. At first blush it looks just the same as the 5S, but the watch now comes loaded with new features like onboard music, Garmin Pay and full-colour topographical maps, the last of which had previously been available only on the big bad Fenix 5X. Last but not least – note that Garmin does add ‘special sauce’ to their maps – most notably what they call ‘Trendline Popularity Routing’, which is basically a variant of heatmaps. The main use for this is when you ask the device itself to create a route on the fly (such as roundtrip routing) that it leverages heatmap data to give you routes that people use more often. However, this is only applicable if you create/re-route on the device itself. You can still take advantage of that concept by simply creating the routes on Garmin Connect or Garmin Connect Mobile first, which will use that same data from the cloud.

System requirements

What's not immediately noticeable is the increase in screen size. Garmin has bumped up the display by 20% to make way for those new maps. The larger screen doesn't make a significant difference most of the time, but when you do want to view maps on the watch you've got more space to play with. Garmin Elevate heart rate monitor – we are on about the 3rd iteration of this optical sensor now and it is market-leading but still needs to be further improved Finally, you get to run with the album art possibly shown in all its low-res glory. The sound quality is pretty good if you have good earbuds like the Jabra ( Jabra Elite Active 65t Review ed here in lots of gory detail). Sound quality is determined by a lot of factors. If you are racing and training at hard levels then you may want to know your Lactate Threshold HR (LTHR, AnT, LT2). Above this point things progressively go pear-shaped with your performance yet, if you are well-trained, you will be able to operate in this state for over an hour. Garmin/Firstbeat auto-calculate and update this periodically. It’s a very useful pacing tool, although I find it slightly over-estimates my LTHR. Outdoor and recreation features are covered in a variety of profiles: Hiking, Climbing, Skiing, Snowboarding, XC Skiing, Stand-Up Paddleboarding, Rowing, Kayaking, Jumpmaster & Tactical. The profiles have their own nuances, for example skiing will give you specific RUN stats.

Openwater and pool swim profiles are both available with stroke detection. Openwater has GPS enabled and you can set a custom pool length when using a pool. If you use an outdoor pool you use pool mode. As for compatible devices, here’s the list of devices this will work on. It also will work on most of the handheld type outdoor devices too. If it supports Garmin maps, it’ll support 3rd party maps. Many smartwatch buyers initially want 24×7 heart rate (which you have) and VO2max data but very soon the Firstbeat algorithms deliver you VERY MUCH more insight into what is going on in your body from a sporting perspective.The Fenix 5 and the Fenix 5 Plus watches are medium in size and are best suited for medium wrist sizes. The diameter of the watches: 47 mm. The pre-installed TopoActive Europe map provides navigation directly on your watch for roads and paths in all of Europe. (This function is also available on the Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire). When you want to pay it is straightforward to access the wallet from your customisable shortcut keys, as shown here: