Affiliate Disclosure: All links earn commission
Reading Time: 8 minutes
The Garmin Fenix 5 plus series is announced today and available to pre-order and shipping will start in late June/early July 2018.
This is MUCH more than the hardware fix I expected a few months ago and incorporates new hardware competencies, new firmware and new aesthetic details.
Garmin Fenix 5 plus – Common Features
The whole range boasts ALL of these impressive new features
- Garmin Pay – Garmin’s bank partnerships are ever-increasing but a little behind in singing up in the UK/Europe. All the Fenix 5 plus series are ready for Garmin PAY
- GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO – First enabled on the Foretrex and Edge 130 models. Likely to be single band Galileo which may or may not bring improvements to GNSS positioning and navigational accuracy. Galileo satellites are potentially MUCH more accurate than the USA’s GPS satellites
- Pre-installed TopoActive maps – optimised maps for tracking and navigation available for all geographies
- Turn-by-Turn (TBT) navigation – leveraging the TOPO maps
- Trendline Popularity Routing – essentially this is behind-the-scenes heatmap-based routing leveraging masses of Garmin Connect data. This is already a top-end feature on the Edge 1030
- Garmin Explore portal – We’ve recently seen Garmin TrueUP start to sync our physiological data across our devices. Now the Explore portal can can share routes and waypoints with selected connections
- Music playback functionality is now the same as the Forerunner 645 and Vivoactive 3 Music and supports iHeartRadio and Deezer premium to add music files to your offline music library of up to 500 songs on your Fenix 5 plus.
- ClimbPro – Rather than your full elevation profile, ClimbPro illustrates a specific climb.
- Sapphire crystal screen – this was previously an optional feature as a premium but is now included as standard, albeit at a higher, standard price.
Let’s look at some details of each model…
Garmin Fenix 5s Plus – Details
The baby of the Fenix 5 range has grown up…
The Garmin Fenix 5s Plus has 3 designs options: white with silver bezel; Black with black bezel; and white with Rose gold bezel. Also of note is the 1.2inch 240 x 240-pixel screen which is an upgrade on the previous Fenix 5s in terms of size (and hence pixels…the pixel density is the same). Battery life is reduced to 7 days from 9.
- Case size 42mm
- Weight 69g
- 1.2-inch display and 240 for 240 pixels
- Sapphire crystal domed glass
- 20mm QuickFit bands. The Fenix 5s Plus comes with a black band and white bands for the silver and rose gold models
- Stainless steel buttons
- Waterproof up to 10 ATM
- Smart notification with quick answers directly from the watch (you can reply to SMS messages with pre-canned responses eg ‘Yes’ ‘No’ ‘In meeting call back’)
- Storage: 16GB for maps and activities, 4GB for music
- Built-in navigation sensors include three-axis compass, gyroscope and barometric altimeter plus GPS, GLONASS and Galileo.
- Battery performance: up to 7 days in smartwatch mode and 8 hours in GPS mode with music
- Pre-installed activity profiles for all your sports and adventures with a few new activities.
- Wifi and Bluetooth enabled along with Garmin Connect Mobile support
- Numerous FirstBeat functions eg training status, training load, VO2max and recovery advisor
- ANT+ support for power meters, cadence sensors, chest HR straps, etc.
- Integrated 24×7 pulse measurement.
- GroupTrack and LiveTrack – your groups can track each other or your family at home can track you via a smartphone connection
- Fiber-reinforced polymer case + silver stainless steel bezel and back
- Fiber-reinforced polymer case + Rose gold bezel and white case
- Fiber-reinforced polymer case + black stainless steel bezel and black case
Garmin Fenix 5 Plus – Details
The Garmin Fenix 5 Plus has design options: black with black stainless steel bezel; and titanium bezel and titanium back plate – both with a sapphire crystal screen. Battery is reduced to 12 days from 14 days.
- Case size 47mm
- Weight 87g (titanium version – weight 76g)
- 1.2-inch display and 240 for 240 pixels
- Sapphire crystal domed glass
- 22mm QuickFit bands. The Fenix 5 Plus has a black band and the titanium variant an orange band
- Stainless steel buttons
- Waterproof up to 10 ATM
- Smart notification with quick answers directly from the watch (you can reply to SMS messages with pre-canned responses eg ‘Yes’ ‘No’ ‘In meeting call back’)
- Storage: 16GB for maps and activities, 4GB for music
- Built-in navigation sensors include three-axis compass, gyroscope and barometric altimeter plus GPS, GLONASS and Galileo.
- Battery performance: up to 12 days in smartwatch mode and 8 hours in GPS mode with music
- Pre-installed activity profiles for all your sports and adventures with a few new activities.
- Wifi and Bluetooth enabled along with Garmin Connect Mobile support
- Numerous FirstBeat functions eg training status, training load, VO2max and recovery advisor
- ANT+ support for power meters, cadence sensors, chest HR straps, etc
- Integrated 24×7 pulse measurement
- GroupTrack and LiveTrack – your groups can track each other or your family at home can track you via a smartphone connection
- Fiber-reinforced polymer case + stainless steel bezel and back
- Fiber-reinforced polymer case + titanium bezel and back
Garmin Fenix 5x Plus – Details
The Garmin Fenix 5x Plus has black stainless steel bezel with a black case. Also there is an onboard pulse oximeter to measure blood oxygen levels tht is built into a modified ELEVATE sensor unit. An impressive 20-day battery also boasts 33 hours on GPS in extended life modes.
- The pulse oximeter is NOT the same as MOXY which measures muscle oxygen. Pulse oximetry is also a ‘health’ feature as well as an athletic feature with some uses whilst stationary at altitude
- Case size 51mm
- Weight 96g (2g lower than Fenix 5x)
- 1.2-inch display and 240 for 240 pixels
- Sapphire crystal domed glass
- 26mm QuickFit bands. The Fenix 5X Plus has a black band only
- Stainless steel buttons
- Waterproof up to 10 ATM
- Smart notification with quick answers directly from the watch (you can reply to SMS messages with pre-canned responses eg ‘Yes’ ‘No’ ‘In meeting call back’)
- Storage: 16GB for maps and activities, 4GB for music
- Built-in navigation sensors include three-axis compass, gyroscope and barometric altimeter plus GPS, GLONASS and Galileo.
- Battery performance: up to 20 days in smartwatch mode and 33 hours in GPS mode (see next section for details)
- Pre-installed activity profiles for all your sports and adventures with a few new activities.
- Wifi and Bluetooth enabled along with Garmin Connect Mobile support, of course!
- FirstBeat built-in with training status, training load, VO2max and recovery advisor
- ANT+ support for power meters, cadence sensors, chest HR straps and others.
- Integrated pulse measurement on the wrist you have the full overview of your current heart rate, the course during the last 4 hours, as well as the average daily and 7-day value.
- GroupTrack and LiveTrack built into the Fenix 5s Plus
- Fiber-reinforced polymer case + Black stainless steel bezel and back
Garmin Fenix 5X Plus – Battery Life
You might expect that the 5 Plus series has ‘better’ battery life than before. Generally it does NOT have better battery life than the Fenix 5, although the Fenix 5X Plus is the exception with some highly credible battery stats, as shown below.
| Smartwatch Mode | GPS Mode | GPS+Music | UltraTrac | |
| Fenix 5S | 9 days | 14 hours | – | 35 hours |
| Fenix 5 | 2 Weeks | 24 hours | – | 60 hours |
| Fenix 5X | 12 days | 20 hours | – | 35 hours |
| Fenix 5S Plus | 7 days | 11 hours | 4.5 hours | 25 hours |
| Fenix 5 Plus | 12 days | 18 hours | 8 hours | 42 hours |
| Fenix 5X Plus | 20 days | 32 hours | 13 hours | 70 hours |
I guess we don’t need to know why battery life is slightly worse but it will be linked to factors like: new battery; new processor; better power management components. The 4.5 hours with the 5S Plus and music is maybe a tad too low for comfort from experiecne with similar devices. But the 32 hours of Best GPS mode in the 5X Plus is market leading for UltraRunners. Even looking at the 18 hours of GPS use with the 5 Plus then that’s probably enough for many people in an Ironman (18 hours will be less in reality once sensors are paired and features enabled)
Videos
Garmin Fenix 5 Plus – Pricing and Availability
Fenix 5 Plus series starts from £599.99 rising to £999.99 for the most expensive Fenix 5X Plus model.
That’s $700 to an eye-watering $1,150
| US$ Base (Eu) | US$ Sapphire/titanium | £ Base | £ Sapphire/titanium | |
| Fenix 5S plus | 700 | 800 | 600 | 700 |
| Fenix 5 plus | 700 | 800-850 | 600 | 700-750 |
| Fenix 5X plus | – | 1150 | – | 750 |
Garmin Fenix 5 Plus – Opinion
We now have what appears to be the most complete sports smart watch – for a price.
Very many of the big boxes that were previously unticked have now been ticked. OK there is not a true, cellular, live-streaming from the Spotify service but Garmin have made very significant strides towards such goals.
The enhanced and expanded navigation-related and mapping-related functions look highly promising. Course creation in Garmin Connect, as with many competing offerings, is somewhat flaky. Let’s see what happens there as well. The Group Track and Live Track functionalities are fine but the former relies on your friends having compatible watches and the latter relies on your having a smartphone connection with mobile data.
Galileo has the potential to be a game-changer with positional accuracy and a knock-on effect of this could be to improve INSTANT PACE when running. I have a nagging doubt about this as, apparently, dual-band Galileo and a redesigned antennae are both required and the former appears NOT to be implemented in the 4 plus.
There are also many nuances waiting to be highlighted with a full review to follow. Will instant pace accuracy be improved? Are there any new screens, like in the 5X image above? Will the 5S be able to power mapping functionality with CIQ3 apps?
Putting those caveats aside, these are 3 awesome watches.
Sources: garmin.com via appelmoessite, activejr
