Garmin Fênix 5x sapphire. A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT

A week ago I bought a new Garmin Fenix 5x sapphire. Around 750Euro. Mind you, not a cheap watch!!

i decided to buy this one after some research. It has an optical HR monitor at the back of the watch. I used a Polar A360 with similar technology. It works for the polar. I like to upgrade myself because the polar doesn’t function well as a regular watch. Next to rowing and swimming I do cross fit training. I like to keep an eye on my hr without wearing the nasty strap around my chest. Hence the Garmin seems a good choice.

What is now the big disappointment. The optical HR monitor doesn’t function. NOT BY FAR. It doesn’t keep up at fast changing heart rates as in HIIT and Cross training lifting and with swimming it’s completely useless.

It is propably fit for darters with a low heart rate which slowly levels up at a triple 20.

Guys, take it from me. DON’T BUY!! A waste of time and money.

0 Teekman over 7 years ago

A week ago I bought a new Garmin Fenix 5x sapphire. Around 750Euro. Mind you, not a cheap watch!!

i decided to buy this one after some research. It has an optical HR monitor at the back of the watch. I used a Polar A360 with similar technology. It works for the polar. I like to upgrade myself because the polar doesn’t function well as a regular watch. Next to rowing and swimming I do cross fit training. I like to keep an eye on my hr without wearing the nasty strap around my chest. Hence the Garmin seems a good choice.

What is now the big disappointment. The optical HR monitor doesn’t function. NOT BY FAR. It doesn’t keep up at fast changing heart rates as in HIIT and Cross training lifting and with swimming it’s completely useless.

It is propably fit for darters with a low heart rate which slowly levels up at a triple 20.

Guys, take it from me. DON’T BUY!! A waste of time and money.

This is amusing, clearly your research was flawed, the 5X HR does not even function whilst swimming and is a known fact and its widely commented that a chest strap is best and most accurate as compared to a wrist monitor.

It's unfortunate that the watch does not meet your needs, however many enjoy the Fenix line and purchased the watch for more than just HR so saying "DON'T BUY!!" and stating that it's a waste of time is NONSENSE and should be prefaced by the term.. 'In your opinion...'

At the moment there is no perfect watch in this class out there but the Garmin devices and ecosystem is not bad at all.

IMHO.

0 Il_Pres over 7 years ago

Indeed the OHR is useless most of the time is the watch is positioned on the wrist. I experimented a bit trying to find a good position, on soft flesh and I've found out that wearing the watch 5-7 cm up from the wrist improves the readings a lot. When you train try to move the watch up the arm and secure it firmly with the band. Find the sweet spot and live with it. Or, buy an optical band like the one suggested in the post above.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I just sold my 5X. It’s not worth of 700€.

Cheap polar M400 has a lot better gps accuracy and 5X not even can’t track overall daily activity, it’s just a step counter. Polar can combine multisport activity to one activity bar, easy to track your daily activity.

And yes, wrist hr don’t work in strenght training. When you sitting still, it works.

Maps feature with preset trails is useless in woods, gps don’t know where you are, and maps are very hard to read.

Altimeter never shows real height. compass loses it’s calibration sometimes.

There’s no good all in multisport watch in market, have to wait few years.

0 Middling_Distancer over 7 years ago

That's weird. I have no issues at all. Good luck!

0 jimoestman over 7 years ago

Very strange. Your comments CrossFd do not describe the 5x I own. Hope you got most of your money back on the sale.

- GPS accuracy works well for me. Just as accurate as my Edge 1000 bicycle computer. Did you try with GLONASS?
- No objections to the wrist OHR monitoring. But I don't believe it works well on any watch. I use a chest-strap if HR is of importance during or after a work-out
- During the course of a day the 5x tracks HR, steps, floors, stress level, and calories in/out and displays most of them with widgets or on watchfaces. It also gives you notification when completing a certain goal. so not just a step-counter.... But in my opinion, activitybars, stress level measures, calorie usage monitors etc. are just gimmicks; estimates based on some blackbox algorithm. Listen to your body instead....
- The Map is the best feature, and if you install custom OSM-maps or some other topo-maps, it would maybe have changed you mind on that argument. The stock maps I have not used yet... but I guess it is a matter of taste.
- Altimeter height error? I presume you tried calibrating manually, or had the auto calibrate settings turned on. What was the margin of error???

Well well. I Hope you find the watch that meets your expectations.

Cheers.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to nmyeti

I second that. Garmin is so far behind in WHR that it really isn’t even worth buying a Garmin product. I had a series one Apple watch that was always spot on, as co-witnessed by a chest strap and palpation. The Garmin is inaccurate. It truly might as well not have been incorporated into the design. Unfortunately the price would have you believe you were purchasing a high quality instrument. Not so in any way.