Garmin Vivosmart 5 is a new breed of fitness trackers with distress button and advanced sleep tracking

A smart fitness band on the wrist, connected to your smartphone, lets you take charge of your wellbeing. It monitors the health and helps you stay connected with instant notifications. Fitbit Charge 5 is arguably the best smart band on the market but it is likely to face fierce competition from the all-new Garmin Vivosmart 5.

Vivosmart 5 is a successor to the brand’s Vivosmart 4 fitness tracker launched in 2018. Four years since, there has been a considerable change in the sensors and features included in fitness trackers that present a more streamlined and affordable alternative to high-end smartwatches. Vivosmart 5 doesn’t choose to deviate much from the original idea of the Vivosmart 4, despite the lapse in time; yet it presents a decent competition to some of the top names on the block. There are a few reasons for this.

Designer: Garmin

It begins with the design. Designed for round-the-clock usage, “Vivosmart 5 is there when you need it, and unobstructed when you don’t.” Packaged in a sleeker form factor with easy to read, 66-percent larger OLED display (from the predecessor), the Vivosmart 5 is Garmin’s most advanced sleep tracking band that includes a sleep score feature. It provides information regarding the quantity and quality of a user’s sleep. Using the smart band, users can track heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and keep tabs on text messages & incoming calls. It is thus made for anyone who wants a simple solution for tracking their well-being and monitoring their oxygen levels and the body battery energy & stress levels throughout the day.

Keeping in perspective its advanced sleep tracking feature, the Vivosmart 5 is made for 24/7 wear. This is made convenient with the rounded band that allows the tracking device to fit snugly around the curves of the wrist. Essential to some adventurists, the new Garmin fitness tracker arrives with a physical button that triggers a safety message on a press. The button may not look too pleasing to the eye sitting right below the watch face, but its capability will definitely add to the Vivosmart 5’s selling point.

In addition to sending out a distress message with the user’s location to predefined emergency contacts, the Vivosmart 5 also provides alerts to the user when it records “abnormally high and low heart rates” than pre-configured by the user. In addition to being a well-being monitor, the Vivosmart 5 is also a capable fitness tracker. To that accord, it tracks the user’s basic activities like calories burned and steps taken. For more stringent ones amid us, it has a range of sports apps built-in for swimming, yoga, running, cycling and more.

Before we are lured into the aesthetics and workable features of the Vivosmart 5, we are instantly alarmed by the fact that it lacks an ECG sensor and doesn’t have GPS built-in. It does support connected GPS so you can connect it to your smartphone to track the speed, distance and route of your run or bike ride, but you’d have to tag along the phone every time. If that’s not too much a hassle, you’re then in for a colorful device for the wrist. Garmin will roll out the Vivosmart 5 in cool mint, white and back colors paired with interchangeable bands to suit your style. Vivosmart 5 is suggested to the retail price at $150 and tout an impressive seven-day battery backup.