Recommendations please

RichardB how about the 935 same size as F5 but lighter and thinner and with a good battery life

Stay with f5. fr935 is the same as f5 inside with the same battery life. Change only if you want more lightweigth device.

There is a hiking app for the vivoactives. Just not a native one:
Hike2

But that said, you may find the va devices are a step down from a Fenix, ("jack of all trades, but master of none") and you will either love or hate the touch screen. While they do support external HR, they don't support things like the RD pod or advanced features of things like the HTM-Tri or HRM-swim

Having both a VA3 (more than one year) and a F5 (4 monthes), I can say that:

- theoretical specs of VA3 are appealing, but in practice:
# battery last approximatively 5-6 days (without any GPS activity)
# altimeter is far from accurate (cf all the threads related to altimeter issues on VA3)
# when in GPS mode, consumption of at least 15%/hour
# as said, VA3 does not support advanced running dynamics metrics
# less choices of activities (even if plenty of non-native app on IQ store)

finally, after a year of mitigated feeling about the VA3 (battery and altimeter mainly), I went for the F5, and I'm happy

- F5 is much better for battery consumption, altimeter accuracy, support of advanced features, activities ranges...

VA3 is still quite nice and thiner that the F5, and I wear it regularly as a smartwatch, but obviously, for sport recording I always take the F5 now.

If I already got a F5 and search for something else, I won't go to VA3...