Fenix 5 Thoughts

lucky1976 over 8 years ago

I just got the F5 Thursday and have been playing with over the weekend. I did three runs at 15 miles, 5 miles and 6 miles.

I wore all hours of the day.

The battery life seems to be find.

I noticed the Bluetooth strength is very weak compared to my forerunner 230.

I took a look a 2 runs with the same route on different days, one with 230 and F5 and the F5 had a lot of sharp cuts when turning corners while with the 230 are more rounded.

I notice the running pace to be different the 2 devices. F5 seemed to jump or slow to change, some times I feel like I am going slower but watch say differently. With the 230 "felt" more accurate or what I was use to seeing as I have run 3000 miles with the 230.

RHM Tri with the F5 seem to be lower then the HRM with the 230 but I cant say that its off with the F5.

I love the look of the F5 compared to the plastic 230.

I have 30 days for return so I want to try it out a week or so before deciding to return or not.

Is the GPS and BT on the F5x have the same issues as the Fenix 5?

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

I think the F5 actually seems quite similar so far to my FR235 GPS performance wise. Pace seemed stable and perhaps even a bit more reactive at times. There was at least one time it lagged a bit and showed too low pace momentarily to catch up later but I've seen the FR235 do the same. GPS pace can have its bad moments. I'm going to use Stryd for pace but I was surprised that pacing worked fairly well from the watch alone.

The Bluetooth range to phone is lower (only 5m) but it gets the job done sending workouts, notifications etc.

Optical HR seems to be showing a more stable value and doesn't show too low for the first 10minutes like the FR235 did.

This after running the whole weekend with it. Will continue testing, but so far it's actually better than I expected based on all the negative comments I read here.