Garmin vívosmart 5 Review (2026): Still Worth Buying?

Garmin vívosmart 5 is getting old, but there's still one thing it does remarkably well: pack a lot of Garmin's health tracking into something that barely feels like a smartwatch.

At just 24.5g in its smaller size, it's comfortable enough for 24/7 wear and gives you continuous heart rate, Body Battery, stress monitoring, Pulse Ox, respiration, Sleep Score and everyday activity tracking. Better yet, Garmin doesn't require a subscription to unlock the useful data inside Garmin Connect.

The health-tracking side remains the reason to buy it. Professional reviews generally found heart-rate performance respectable, especially during steady exercise, and Garmin Connect offers far more detail than you'd expect from such a small band. Sleep tracking is useful for spotting longer-term trends, although owner feedback shows it can mistake lying quietly awake for sleep, so individual sleep stages and scores shouldn't be treated as clinical measurements.

Its hardware hasn't aged nearly as gracefully. The tiny monochrome OLED looks basic beside today's inexpensive AMOLED fitness bands, there's no Garmin Pay or onboard music, and most importantly there's no built-in GPS. Runs, walks and bike rides depend on your phone. There are also recurring owner reports of incorrect distance measurements despite having connected GPS active.

Battery life is rated at seven days, which is realistic with conservative settings, but Pulse Ox can cut that dramatically. Reviewers commonly saw roughly three to five days with heavier blood-oxygen tracking.

That leaves price as the deciding factor. In Canada, we've seen the vívosmart 5 around C$180–200 at regular retail but as low as roughly C$79 on clearance.

At C$200, it's hard to recommend in 2026. At around C$100 or less, however, it's a very different story. For someone who wants Garmin's excellent health ecosystem without wearing a full-sized smartwatch, the vívosmart 5 is still a surprisingly useful little tracker.