Garmin Fenix 5 Plus Multisport Watch with Music, Maps and Garmin Pay, Silver with Black Band

Product Information

This section is more concerned with accuracy. I could present a case for the Fenix 5S Plus’s optical HR being RUBBISH or BRILLIANT. I’ve just said my piece, so these charts from the Fenix 5S Plus are provided to be illustrative of what you might expect – some of the worst parts of the performances will easily be replicated FROM ANY OPTICAL HR DEVICE ON THE WRIST. Run HR Accuracy Much of the other interest in this section comes with what other sensors can be paired TO the Fenix 5S Plus. But the main thing to note is that the earlier non-Plus version of the Fenix 5 had CONNECTIVITY PROBLEMS. These are now resolved with the Plus series. ie don’t think that you will get a few less features by going for the non-Plus version…that’s true but you will also get stuff that doesn’t work. GET THE 5 PLUS NOT THE 5 non-PLUS Headphones You must have a computer – Mac or PC (or even Linux). You cannot do this from an iPad or such. It’s technically possible to do it from an Android device with the right cables, but you’re on your own for that! Everything that we got on the Fenix 5S is here once again, but this time Garmin is adding full-colour topographic maps, a feature that was previously exclusive to the Fenix 5X.

Dual Grid – Displays your current location in your configured coordinate grid in addition to latitude/longitude Stores music directly on the watch, so that you do not need to take your smartphone or mp3 player with you to listen to music on the go. It can store up to 500 songs and play music from streaming services like Spotify and Deezer.

Price comparison

Openwater and pool swim profiles are both available with stroke detection. Openwater has GPS enabled and you can set a custom pool length when using a pool. If you use an outdoor pool you use pool mode. So with all that in mind. Let’s look a bit more at the accuracy of GNSS/GPS/GALILEO, heart rate and elevation/altitude. GPS Accuracy – GLONASS, GALILEO and GNSS Functions Barometric trend indicator with storm alert – at a defined rate of change in pressure, a storm alert is issued ie does not require smartphone connectivity The ‘more complete routing experience’ is a kinda obvious statement. Previously there were NON-intelligent breadcrumb trails and nowthere is all the intelligence of a car’s satnav to re-route you over proper roads & trails when you make a wrong turning. Overlay on top of that all of Garmin’s pre-existing functionality around compasses, round trip routing, barometric+GPS altimeters and you soon start to have a pretty cool outdoors tool. There are plenty of other ‘clever’ heart rate based settings. For example, you can pair a chest strap but if you forget to put it on then the Fenix can default to use its optical HRM (or not..you choose). If you use a chest strap then you can record HRV values into your FIT files to later analyse.

Here is the same roundabout more recently with the 935 and Fenix 5S Plusboth using GPS+GALILEO. Once again the Wahoo (GPS) is there too and is as good as the Fenix. If you don’t know exactly what it is already then it almost certainly will be of no use to you whatsoever.

If there is a Sensor Hub_v*** folder, place the gupXXXX.gcd file into the \GARMIN\REMOTESW folder of the device. Please note, not all Beta releases will include an update. Some sources say June 2018 announcement and availability almost immediately afterwards. That would be my bet but it could be in the fall/autumn for retail availability. Garmin Fenix 6

As a consequence of that firmware downgrade I have not yet done my GPS test route and so don’t have a GPS-only %age figure for those of you (us) that like that sort of thing. I am waiting to get some pesky races out of the way and also hoping that Garmin tweaks the firmware in the meantime. Putting OWS to one side, the Fenix 5S Plus seems in line with the better, recent Garmins in terms of GPS performance. That means it is NOT MARKET-LEADING and needs to do better for the price-point. The addition of maps is moving the Fenix forwards in broadly 2 ways: a more complete routing experience; and openness to smarter, location-based CIQ apps. A More Complete Routing Experience Last but not least – note that Garmin does add ‘special sauce’ to their maps – most notably what they call ‘Trendline Popularity Routing’, which is basically a variant of heatmaps. The main use for this is when you ask the device itself to create a route on the fly (such as roundtrip routing) that it leverages heatmap data to give you routes that people use more often. However, this is only applicable if you create/re-route on the device itself. You can still take advantage of that concept by simply creating the routes on Garmin Connect or Garmin Connect Mobile first, which will use that same data from the cloud. I’m only making these negative points so you can appreciate the limitations you might encounter. Occasionally those limitations would be a minor inconvenience but if you were riding on new trails every day the 5S Plus would be the wrong device for you. More Intelligent Mapping and CIQAll your data is sync’d to Garmin Connect online and the same sort of thing is available on that platform. And it’s all free. Although this software is believed to be reliable, it has not yet been released for production and should be used at your own risk. Note:Garmin have experienced some bad OWS GPS performance in Summer 2018. This should now be resolved. GNSS capability encompassing GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO satellite constellations. More satellites increase the chance of accuracy being obtained but using more than the one GNSS system will increase battery usage. GPS can be used to determine your 2D position and your elevation with 3D positioning. Garmin niftily allows the oHR to broadcast from your Fenix 5S, effectively turning the Fenix 5S Plus into a heart rate monitor for other equipment such as when you are in a gym or riding a bike with a separate bike computer.