First Impressions

Odd, after I changed the recording to every second, I went out and repeated the same path that gave good tracking earlier with smart recording, and this time it was all over the place. Maybe all the satellites went over the horizon or something.

Continues to be erratic on tracking. There's of course a long thread on tracking already, so I'm not going into detail here.

It doesn't count stairs nearly as well as my F3. There's a firmware 2.4 bugs thread that also mentions that.

The display is darker than my F3 sapphire. I put them side by side on my wrist, no backlights, digital watch screen with white background, and whichever way I turn/twist/tilt my arm, the 5x is darker. I switched positions on my wrist, and the same thing. The white background is not as white or bright on the 5x. This wasn't something I noticed before I did the comparison, so it's not really bad, but noticeable.

I still find it odd there's no native digital watch face with a colon between the hours and minutes.

After 48 hours which included lots of fiddling around and about 30 minutes of GPS, the battery is 82%. That's encouraging.

The maps look good and are accurate for the tiny bit of the planet I've been on the last 48 hours, and while I don't really have a use for it myself, it's a cool function that helps make me justify the upgrade to myself.

For me, the OHR continues to function great, just walking around, on an elliptical machine, and lifting weights. I haven't done any running, I imagine that would jostle it more.

The F3 had a silver bezel which made scratches harder to see. I'm wondering how the dark bezel on the 5x will do with scratches.

I returned the first two F3's I got for various things that didn't work well, but I'm keeping this 5x.

There is a difference in screen "brightness" compared against the F3; I suspect it's the color depth increase. Nothing comes without cost. I don't find it objectionable but it's there and I've noticed it.

I'm at 55% power right now, it's Thursday, and I last plugged the watch in last weekend. It looks like I will get roughly a week of "average" use out of it including activities, which is almost spot-on what I got with my non-HR F3. I'm impressed -- I expected to lose 20% in duration between charges due to the always-on HR monitoring and yet if there's a penalty at all it appears to be nearly-zero.

I'm now getting the performance widget update (after a week of use) and like it.

More on power consumption once I have a couple more weeks in on the watch.

1st impressions? Meh, I feel Meh. Everything was fixed that was wrong with the F3HR (nominally), but still, meh.

• OHRM is meh. It basically is doing what the 3hr did...just with a lower power mode reading your HR throughout the 10min intervals....still comes up with the same sub-par results. The lock-on is also no better that the F3HR, still takes forever to pick up a reading.
  
• Altimeter works...but the watch still can't count flights of stairs. Seriously, I ran 30 standard flights of stairs today (that was to failure), it has counted 8.
  
• Steps seem off. I wear on my left wrist and made sure the watch knows I wear it on the left...still feels underperforming.
  
• The GPS is loads better and the auto stop function is crisp.
  
• I really love the physical feel of the watch, in particular the lack of a pronounced HR bump. I'm wearing the watch as tight as I wore the F3HR and it provides zero discomfort.
  

Yet, for the $700 I spent...I literally feel like all I bought was an improved F3HR and not something new. No one has made the claim (including Garmin). The maps are nice, but right now...i'm giving it another two weeks. I got mine from REI, so the piece of mind I have in returning it is there. I just feel they dropped the ball with this, not to mention offering the SAME WATCH but with plastic and $200 cheaper AFTER releasing this line was disingenuous. Seriously, the Forerunner does EVERYTHING the F5 line does, just in a body that might get bruised faster, and that isn't a problem for someone like me, I don't abuse my tech (even though I wouldn't want this watch either).

I feel for you, not getting good results on the features that you need makes anything that does work irrelevant. This is why REI, or any retailer with a generous return policy is a big plus for something like the 5x. Each of us has different must-haves and expectations. My main needs are the mapping features, ohrm during activities + acceptable gps and altimeter accuracy on trails. The daily fitness stuff and OHRM outside of activities don't make my list. Mapping and ohrm during activities has been great for me. If the gps/altimeter accuracy is ok, I'll gladly keep it. Hopefully, we'll get an update before your REI return window expires that resolves the issues you're seeing.

Happy camper so far. 5x wears better and more comfortable than my 3HR. Maps load quicker and is certainly more detailed, courses are quick to load vs. my 3 HR.

Problem encountered so far: cannot rename course from the watch. I tried to edit the course name a few times it would say Saved but the name was not updated.

Looking forward to testing it out trail running this weekend. I was hoping to see the actual named trails on the map but it has not been showing up in theCourses that I load.

The new forerunner doesn't do maps. Yes, it's cheaper, but it's $100 less than the F5 and plastic-cased, not $200 less since the mapping is not there. Basically you're paying a $100 premium over the F5 for the F5x for the additional storage (to enable mapping.)

Just got mine yesterday at the close of business(worried I'd miss it's delivery since I had it come to my work as UPS normally delivers for us around noon, yesterday, it was 5:28!! Eek!)

Love: new font, brighter screen, crisper pixels??? I dunno but I love it so much more than my 3 HR display! Solid improvement!
Faster processor or updated watch face, whatever it is, the face features of my chosen IQ custom face don't lag on wrist gesture activation like my 3hr sometimes did.
Watch looks nicer. Sleeker bezel. Matching buckle.
Customization on virtually every setting, activity, tracker details, notifications, etc. It's like redic how many choices we get. Overwhelming to some extent.

Meh: Maps. Not wowed by them. Maybe it's the small area for viewing or the small font on the map but so far, meh. I think it might be that I just need to get used to them and how they are displayed. I'm sure wrist based navigation is gonna be great. And it was the feature I need most from the 5x, so maybe my expectations are a bit high.

Bummer: I'm a low body fat female with small wrists. I think the lack of a sensor bump causes a whole lotta light to escape, which obviously is noticeable in the dark, I thought this might be an issue but only time will tell if it affects my HR data. I sleep pretty soundly so I don't think the light escaping will bother me. Did not have this problem with the 3hr but I also could feel the bump and lit left an impression on my arm when worn, whereas the 5x does not.
Stairs/floors. I'm not even sure it's reading them at all. I live in a spilt foyer home and I've done the stairs a dozen times already this morning and yet....I have a double slash zero stairs value on my CG app for my watch. Not reading some of them I can deal with being that it's a split foyer home with 8-14 stairs on each level so maybe not "floors" in the tradition sense per set, none however....that's a problem.

I think it overall is a worthy upgrade over my 3hr, so I'll be selling that shortly to help offset the cost of upgrade. And I only had that watch 1.5 months. I came from a Sunnto Spartan and that was a dismal failure, IMHO, so far I've been pretty happy overall with the Fenix series. Keep it up, Garmin!

Thought to jump in with my first impressions.
+Speed of the UI, this alone was worth the upgrade from F3HR.
+Maps and routing seems to work better than I dared to expect.
+Battery life seems to be on par or better than F3HR
+OHR works much better than F3HR for 24x7monitoring because of the more frequent sampling. I do not use it for activities.
+Slightly more comfortable on wrist than F3HR
+New training insights, still not enough data for all of it but what is available looks great
+Display is easier to read in pretty much every situation than F3HR display. Especially during pool swim.
+Wife did not notice a switch from F3HR to F5X :p

-GPS looks to wander more than F3HR. But only two outings so far so could get better after a while. Anyway much better than Suunto Spartan Ultra was out of the box so we'll see if it improves or not.
-Lap button does not record manual laps during workout or multisport training. It should be short press for manual laps and ~1 sec long press to switch sport/end workout. Too easy to unintentionally switch sport or end workout.

Overall looks good so far.

Great

Coming from Fenix 3 HR Sapphire and just setup my new 5x for the past hour and haven't used it during activity yet. My initial impression are pretty positive so far:
- noticeably faster than Fenix 3!
- map & its control works as well as I can expect for the form fact and load quickly
- noticeably sharper screen
- so many more programmable hotkeys & hotkey combos now! I've always used it alot for timer & stop watch and wishing the Fenix 3 had more hotkeys
- so far no hiccups or bugs during paring & setting things up, looks promising to be mostly bug free during activity

Overall I feel that this is a worthwhile upgrade from the Fenix 3 and the high price is somewhat justified if one can use half of its feature offering.