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

Product Information

Bluetooth enables a smart connection to Garmin Connect Mobile on your smartphone and then to upload workout data – but also to receive call and app notifications from the smartphone. Many other smart features exist, such as music control for the music on your smartphone and pre-canned answers to SMS messages. Added support for Explore Navigation Sync, where one can select lines, waypoints or generic points on the map within the Explore app and start navigating on device. Round-trip course creator (running/cycling) – this has some foibles when in use but is ideal for holiday and exercising or exploring unfamiliar areas. As of 24 July 2018 my recommendation for you is to just use GPS. Turn off GLONASS and turn off GALILEO – for now. That will save some battery. Here is a list of supported banks continually updated by Garmin, for your bank to work it absolutely MUST be on this list: link to garmin.com.

Garmin also has the ability to create complex structured workouts on CONNECT which can then be executed on the watch. Complex intervals can be constructed and there are various add-on functions that improve the workout experience such as alerts and countdown timers. Sometimes complex workouts are a bit too, err, complex and so there is also an on-watch feature to create and follow simple intervals (that’s the feature that competing watches tend to add to demonstrate their support for intervals)

I also followed a route whilst running a nearby trail. I tried the exact same route with the original Fenix 5X when it first came out. The original Fenix 5X just didn’t work; however, the 5S Plus was pretty good. I was also deliberately listening to music at the same time. With the distraction of music the buzzing navigational alerts, buzzing performance condition alerts and buzzing autolap alerts are perhaps too much and I missed my turns a few times. The display was readable even through sunglasses. 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) 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. Fixed an issue where the device would always display the 'Updating' spinner when changing an alarm. No-one is saying, but the hardware fixes to resolve connectivity issues have almost certainly been incorporated. Proof?

The Fenix 5S Plus can broadcast the heartrate it senses from the optical sensor to other equipment eg to some gym equipment or to your bike computer. ie it can act as a standalone optical heart rate monitor. Footpod Compass – you know what it does. But the Fenix compass can be nuanced to, for example, show true North and magnetic North. I’m only making these negative points so you can appreciate the limitations you might encounter. Occasionally those limitations would be a minor inconvenience but if you were riding on new trails every day the 5S Plus would be the wrong device for you. More Intelligent Mapping and CIQ 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.

If you're at all familiar with last year's Garmin Fenix 5S, chances are you won't be able to spot any differences here at first glance. The 5S was introduced with the Fenix 5 line as an option for people who wanted the benefits of the Fenix without the bulk. Measuring 42mm wide and weighing 69g, you're getting the same dimensions as on the non-Plus version here. It's not the daintiest thing, but women especially are going to find it a much better fit. When I transfer funds by phone from my First Direct account to my Starling account, the money is available to use on the watch within 10 seconds. Other banks may take longer. Fixed an intermittent issue where the device could switch to high power mode, and search for GPS and other ANT/BT sensors while playing music outside of an activity.

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. 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. This physiological data, in part, can now also be sync’d between your devices using Garmin Physio TrueUp. Garmin also includes a race predictor. This really tells you what you might be able to achieve if you trained appropriately for the distance in question. A 2:49 marathon would be nice… Forerunner 645 Music Shown

User reviews

Fixed an issue where the device will reboot if using Broadcast Heart Rate with the system language set to Russian. Everything that we got on the Fenix 5S is here once again, but this time Garmin is adding full-colour topographic maps, a feature that was previously exclusive to the Fenix 5X. In 2017, Garmin released the best multisport watch on the market, the Fenix 5, which replaces the popular Fenix 3. And no, there is no Fenix 4, apparently because it sounds like something less than ideal in Chinese… In the summer of 2018, the update, the Fenix 5 Plus, followed, which at first hand looks a lot like the Fenix 5. But there are some differences, and they are the ones we want to take a closer look at in the following. Garmin’s ELEVATE sensor *IS* one of the better ones. Valencell/Suunto and Polar are also as good and debatably even slightly better in some circumstances. (Edit: Polar Vantage new oHR sensor looks AWESOME and may well be the best….we shall see) This is the one thing you will miss out on by buying the 5 Plus or 5S Plus. It’s a highly specialist blood oxygen sensor (SpO2) for intermittent use when acclimatising during climbing. There are also potential medical uses.