Garmin Vivoactive 5: Updates Kill the Battery
Seven months in, the 11-day battery became a one-day battery, and it happens every time there's a software update. Garmin know. Their own support page says so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6jVepZuFIc
THE VERDICT
Still the right watch for me, but with a caveat nobody mentions at the point of sale. Out of the box the 11-day battery is real and it tracks everything I want. Then a software update lands and the battery dies inside a day, hikes stop recording partway through, and it takes a couple of weeks to settle rather than the 24 to 48 hours Garmin's support page promises. Across seven months that's a handful of ruined mornings, not a dealbreaker, but you should know it's coming.
Buying a watch for its battery life and then watching that battery life disappear is a specific kind of annoying. That's what a Garmin Vivoactive 5 update does, and seven months in it's the one thing I'd want to know before switching.
The reason I moved off an Apple Watch was simple arithmetic. The Apple Watch gave me 24 hours at most, so I was charging it twice a day: once after I woke up, and again before bed so it could track my sleep. Garmin advertise 11 days. That's not an improvement, that's a different category of product.
And for a while, it was exactly that.
What happens after a software update
Every time an update lands, the 11-day battery becomes a one-day battery. Not degraded. Gone.
It isn't just my watch. My mum has the same Vivoactive 5 and gets the same drain after an update. The forums have people reporting it on other Garmin watches too, so this isn't a faulty unit, it's how the thing behaves.
Software updates cause a temporary spike in battery use while the watch reindexes data, rebuilds databases and resyncs. For most people it settles in 24 to 48 hours.
That quote is from Garmin's own support page. So they know, and they've documented it, which is more than most companies do.
The problem is the last sentence. For most people it settles in 24 to 48 hours. That has never been my experience, or my mum's. For us it's closer to a couple of weeks before the battery goes back to normal. Two days of degraded battery after an update is a reasonable trade for a database rebuild. Two weeks is a different proposition, and it's the gap between what the support page says and what actually happens that I'd want flagged before buying.
The part that actually costs you something
A flat battery is irritating. Losing the data is worse.
Short workouts are fine. A 25, 30, 40 minute session in the gym tracks perfectly, every time, update or not. But on a long hike, the watch stops tracking partway through, around mile two. You look down expecting a recording and it isn't there any more.
That's the one that stings, because a hike is exactly the thing you bought a fitness watch to record, and you don't find out it stopped until it's already over.
Garmin Vivoactive 5 battery, as advertised
Smartwatch mode up to 11 days
Always-on display up to 5 days
Battery saver mode up to 21 days
GPS only up to 21 hours
Display 1.2in AMOLED, 390 x 390
After a software update roughly 1 day, in my experience
The always-on display costs you more than half the battery, dropping 11 days to 5. I leave it off. If you need the screen lit permanently, halve every number you've read about this watch, including the ones above.
So is it still the right watch?
Yes, and I want to be fair about the scale of the problem. Out of seven months of ownership, this is a handful of frustrating mornings. Set against charging an Apple Watch twice a day, every day, for years, that's still the better deal.
The Vivoactive 5 is fitness first and smartwatch second, which is the right way round for what I wanted. The Apple Watch is the opposite. If you're buying to get healthier rather than to read texts on your wrist, that ordering matters more than the feature list.
Would I go back to Apple? Maybe, if they ship one with battery life that isn't measured in hours. For now I'm keeping this.
What I liked
✦ 11 days is real, when the watch is left alone. That's the whole reason to buy it and it delivers.
✦ Fitness first. The tracking is the point of the product rather than a feature bolted onto a phone accessory.
✦ Short and medium workouts track flawlessly, every single time.
✦ Garmin document the update behaviour publicly instead of pretending it doesn't happen.
What I didn't
✦ Every software update flattens the battery for weeks, not the 24 to 48 hours the support page promises.
✦ Long hikes stop tracking around mile two. Losing the data is worse than losing the charge.
✦ It isn't one bad unit. My mum's does it, and the forums are full of other Garmin owners saying the same.
✦ The always-on display costs you more than half your battery, which makes the headline number conditional.
Should you buy the Garmin Vivoactive 5?
Buy it if you're tired of charging a watch twice a day
Coming from an Apple Watch, the battery life alone justifies the switch, and the fitness tracking is better for the thing it's for. Just go in knowing that update weeks are bad weeks.
Think twice if you're a serious long-distance hiker
If your main use is multi-hour hikes and the recording is the point, the tracking dropping out at mile two after an update is a real risk to the thing you actually care about.