I can't say I am enthralled with mine at he moment, owned for one month. Main use is swimming , data totally off, if you don't swim , you may get lucky but that said I think it is generally buggy software that they never seem to get on top of .
I'm very happy with mine, or was again once rolling back to 3.2. 4.2 didn't work for me for swimming. i charged mine last Sunday and have been away until today, 16% battery left. A swim and a few hours walking, lots of checking the time zones, smart notifications etc. Maps, payment, heart rate are all good for me. I feel GPS is slightly disappointing, comparing with my bike Garmin units.
It's very expensive but once I got over that it's great. I managed to stack some discounts and saved a good chunk off the rrp.
??????There are a few bugs reported on here that are very poor to have no solution for. Luckily I either don't use the features or not affected much by them. A browse of the first few pages for active threads will help you decide.
HR works fine during the day. In activities it is less reliable, but I use a HRM strap for that - had to with my old F3 anyway, so I am used to it.
My sleep tracking seems fine.
Battery life is better than with my F3.
I don't use it for swimming.
GPS is as good and bad as the F3 for sea kayaking, walking and running. I don't worry much about pace and distance because I use a Stryd for that anyway.
I don't own a new iPhone, so I haven't had the Bluetooth/ANT+ problems which many others have experienced.
Elevation is fine. It was fine on my F3 too. All models in between have had huge problems - one of my reasons for skipping those models.
I would do it like that: Keep the watch as long as you can still return it to the seller without problems. If within that timeframe the features you need run flawlessly keep it, else return it and get your money back!! Repeat that process until they get the software running as advertised. (Could happen, that sellers get pissed by Garmin software quality issues and customer dissatisfaction and open the eyes of Garmin)
I personally can not be happy with a 800$++ watch full of critical bugs. Honestly, I don't beleave they will ever get all the bugs fixed (or are interested in fixing them).
I agree for the cost (£700 in the UK!), Garmin should be all over these bugs trying to sort them out. The silence sometimes is deafening.
I love the Garmin ecosystem, but they don't do themselves any favours when introducing bugs and not being that active in fixing them. Here's hoping they can improve. I bought and returned a Apple Watch 4 this weekend, as it just felt like a toy even compared to my FR935 let alone a Fenix, but I guess the difference is I have some confidence that Apple would fix critical issues.
I've had my 5+ since the end of July and I'm pretty happy with mine. I've not had any of the reported problems with mine.
Some of the metrics (stress, training load, etc.) take a few weeks to have enough data to be meaningful, but once they do, they seem accurate and helpful. I primarily bicycle, do HIIT workouts, hike and walk. I use a Scosche Rhythm+ HRM band when cycling and working out.
Battery life improved for me after a full cycle of battery use (let it run down to almost zero, then charge over night). Now I charge it when I take a shower which is sufficient to keep the charge between 80% and 100%. I do notice that the battery drains more when a software update is being pushed to your watch from your phone, but beyond that, battery life seems to be was advertised for me.
Sleep tracking has generally been spot on, although it can get fooled by inactivity late at night before bedtime (sit and read or watch a movie). I found that if I adjusted by bedtime setting a little later, it did better at giving accurate sleep timings.
I didn't experience the excesive battery drain (usually around 8 days with activities and custom watch face), the sleep tracking is usually spot on, after the last ANT/BLE update I don't have any more problems with Iphone 8 or headphones BT connectivity. The mapping ability is what I love, it was the main reason I moved to the Fenix 5 plus, it works great for me while kayaking/hiking, the treadmill runs after calibrating my foodpod are also spot on, the strength activity in the gym counts repeats pretty well (if you remember to switch the footpod off first ;p), the smartwatch features work great (which I never could say about Suunto)... and last but not least I like the looks of the watch...
The GPS,.. well it is a watch, you cannot compare accuracy to bigger devices like bike GPS, and also GPS accuracy seems be worse the slower you are moving (which was discussed many times on this forums). Of course Garmin watches don't have the best GPS around, and trees/high buildings can get it off the track very easily.. but I did own the Suunto Ambit 3 Peak, which I think had the best GPS in the watch category (mainly because of the bulky antenna I suppose) but it still wasn't perfect, and sometimes the track went drastically off the path..
Before buying F5+ I also looked at Suunto 9 for a moment.. and well, for example it didn't read my wrist HR (the sellgirl said maybe my forearms were too 'hairy' ;p, the watch had no problems with reading her HR), some other testers I talked with said that the GPS wasn't as good as in Ambit 3, etc... so every watch has its strong and weak sides, it really depends what you expect from it... as for me, I am satisfied, and staying with the Garmin environment for now.
Bought mine at the end of June and it's been a bust. 2%/hr batter drain with BT so I don't use it as a smartwatch. And twice it began losing ANT+ connection to my HRM and Stryd, forcing me to do a hard reset. Last week I did a run with only OHR and it very quickly pegged at 155 BPM even though I was doing an easy run in the neighborhood of 120 BPM. After ~30 minutes it then began displaying reasonable values.
