Bought 5+ sapphire. Am I mad to return it?

Only you can decide. Why would you have bought the 5+ in the first place given you've already made a case for not needing the additional features!

I prefer the look of the 5+, the extra speed and Garmin Pay will be useful. Just can’t decide now if that’s enough!

If you're asking other people to talk you into it then you've probably already answered the question yourself (e.g. you should return the 5+).

I had forgotten just how much faster my 5+ was until I was showing a friend how to use their 5X. But the thing about that is unless you have both to compare against you will quickly adjust to the speed (or lack of) fairly quickly.
I find Garmin Pay incredibly useful (contactless payments are pretty much everywhere in New Zealand) and I'm even now at the point where I often forget to take my wallet out with me. It's actually the killer feature for me versus the 5 (well that, and the fact that my sensors no longer have drop outs, which isn't an issue you have with the 935 anyway and it's a bit rich to refer to that as a "feature").

BT has worked fine for me with all 3 Bluetooth headphones that I have and I wear the watch on the left with all 3 headphones having right sided bt antennas, but I don't use it much as it kills the battery and one of my headphones has built in mp3 storage anyways.
Maps are meh. They'll be more useful when I travel and want to find a route to run but since most travel is overseas I don't think I'm going to pay the extortionate fees Garmin wants for out of region maps.

Unless you will use Garmin Pay every day there's no justification to keep the 5+. Wait for the "6" or whatever the "plus" version of the 935 will be.

I returned my F5S+

I was very dissapointed with battery life. With only 2-3 shorter runs pr. week, I would get 3 (max) days on battery. That's just not good enough and far away from the advertised 7 days (minus training). But 3 days...!

Another thing - I had the sapphire edition. Yet the display on my FR645 is brighter and more black (F5S+ sapphire had a brown tint to black colors). I had a hard time trying to love my F5S+, but just couldn't accept that FR 645 had a better display and more battery life.

Maybe things get better in 6-8-10 months or so?! But to be honest and looking historically, there's a risk it will not happen. During the late years, Garmin seem to focus more on quantity rather than quality. Just take a look at Edge 1030, Edge 820, Vector 3 and now also Fenix 5+ series. All of these (still) have more or less serious issues that has not been solved yet. Just take a look in their respective forums.

Maybe it's just me, but it is very clear in my head. The F5 (the old one) had it's issues. So when updating to a new model, one would have to be very sure on quality. Yet the battery issues is introduced with the Plus series...!

Are Garmin slowly loosing it...?!

As a sidenote; Polar are about to release their V800 replacement, the Vantage V Pro or M. If the feature set and quality is good, I'd bet many serious athletes will make the jump.

I returned my F5S+

I was very dissapointed with battery life. With only 2-3 shorter runs pr. week, I would get 3 (max) days on battery. That's just not good enough and far away from the advertised 7 days (minus training). But 3 days...!

Another thing - I had the sapphire edition. Yet the display on my FR645 is brighter and more black (F5S+ sapphire had a brown tint to black colors). I had a hard time trying to love my F5S+, but just couldn't accept that FR 645 had a better display and more battery life.

Maybe things get better in 6-8-10 months or so?! But to be honest and looking historically, there's a risk it will not happen. During the late years, Garmin seem to focus more on quantity rather than quality. Just take a look at Edge 1030, Edge 820, Vector 3 and now also Fenix 5+ series. All of these (still) have more or less serious issues that has not been solved yet. Just take a look in their respective forums.

Maybe it's just me, but it is very clear in my head. The F5 (the old one) had it's issues. So when updating to a new model, one would have to be very sure on quality. Yet the battery issues is introduced with the Plus series...!

Are Garmin slowly loosing it...?!

As a sidenote; Polar are about to release their V800 replacement, the Vantage V Pro or M. If the feature set and quality is good, I'd bet many serious athletes will make the jump.

I haven't had the F5+ long enough yet to comment on battery life. The 935 has stellar battery life and reading some of the comments on here I agree Garmin don't seem to be prioritising the main bug fixes with their new Plus line. I don't care about the music player, sort the battery life and other issues first. I don't want to leave the Garmin ecosystem as I have years of data, but I think I will return the F5+ and keep my 935.

I’m for one chose the 5+ for the maps and course/re-routing functionality and because is was smaller and faster than the previous 5x-model. I use navigation all the time as I normally run/ride on new trails in the woods. (breadcrumbs-solution just doesn’t cut it for me)

Can’t speak for the 5s+ , but I have no complaints about the battery life (charge once per week with 4-5 activities recorded.)

Another thing - I had the sapphire edition. Yet the display on my FR645 is brighter and more black (F5S+ sapphire had a brown tint to black colors). I had a hard time trying to love my F5S+, but just couldn't accept that FR 645 had a better display and more battery life.

Your usage of the word "yet" indicates that you expect the sapphire edition to have a better display. But it is actually opposite.

Garmin watches with sapphire glass are known to have a less readable display in exchange for the better scratch resistance. If you don't like that, just buy a version without sapphire and save some money.

Since the 5+ models exist in versions both with and without sapphire glass, it doesn't really limit your choice much (unless of course you want a DLC casing which probably doesn't exist without sapphire glass).

I’m for one chose the 5+ for the maps and course/re-routing functionality and because is was smaller and faster than the previous 5x-model. I use navigation all the time as I normally run/ride on new trails in the woods. (breadcrumbs-solution just doesn’t cut it for me)

Can’t speak for the 5s+ , but I have no complaints about the battery life (charge once per week with 4-5 activities recorded.)

Did you upgrade from a previous Fenix or a Forerunner? Do you feel the upgrade was worth it?