Garmin Fenix 5X and Why it's Now My Daily Driver

In this personalized review I talk about the Garmin Fenix 5X and why it's now my new Daily Driver. I've used a lot of fitness devices over the years to track my movement, exercise and workouts and over time they have gotten more and more advanced and become extremely sophisticated in terms of how they collect your activity data. Back in the day they only really counted your steps with not even a screen built into them as you had to sync to your smart phone to see the actual data. Now these fitness / Smart Watches are like little mini smart phone on your wrist collecting your activity in a plethora of ways and communicating that data instantly on their own built in screens.

Most of these Smart Fitness Watches communicate much more than just your health data, since they are linked to your Smart Phone they can share a lot of what's going on with your phone, incoming phone calls, texts, calendar events, most notifications you have set on your phone will also be sent to your Smart Fitness Watch if you want it to.

With all that said, after using many of these devices including the popular Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch I have finally circled back to a Garmin product as the focus with Garmin devices has always been to track your fitness and activity first and foremost. Because of this I feel I get the best and most solid fitness tracking possible when using a Garmin product even if I have to give up a few other bell and whistles a more rounded Smart Watch may offer. I explain this more in the video so make sure to watch it for my Take on the Garmin Fenix 5X and why it's now my new Daily Driver.

Pool Open and New Garmin Fenix 5X Smartwatch Update

A quick update! This is by far the latest I have ever opened the pool but to be honest it was the worst spring and early summer I think we have ever had. At least now it looks like things are warming up. The other problem was my pool sand filter cracked over winter. I let it get a bit too cold in the pool house but it was the original filter and was on its last legs anyway. I had to wait a while to get a new filter and then when I got it installed I found out my pool pump was seized. The joys of owning a pool I guess, they are kind of money pits...

On another note I was also able to get my Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire Fitness Smartwatch working. Garmin was attacked by Ransomware and their entire system was down so no cloud or account or app service where working for 4 days. Because of this I was not even able to setup my new Garmin Fenix 5X Smartwatch setup.

I recommend my clients consider a Fitness Tracking device for tracking information like steps, activity, workouts and calories burned so they can factor this into the food that they are eating. You need to know both your food in and out in order to lose, gain or maintain your weight depending on what your goals are. I have built in an entire section where I discuss Fitness Tracking devices like Smartwatches in my upcoming Get Fit Now Training so make sure to get on the waitlist to be notified on when that launches and also to receive a link to my 6 part video series.

What Fitness Smartwatch am I Giving up my Samsung Galaxy S3 For?

I've been rocking my Samsung Galaxy S3 Fitness Smartwatch for a few years now and it has been a bit of a love hate relationship. I really like the watch, I love the way it looks and feels, it has all the latest Smartwatch features I could want including an awesome screen, lots of downloadable Apps and even the ability to answer and take calls right on the watch via BT.

The problem I have right out of the box with the Samsung Galaxy S3 is there is no way to link an external Bluetooth heart rate strap to it in the settings so none of the installed Apps can us an external heart rate monitor, only the built in optical heart rate monitor can be used with the Samsung Galaxy S3. For some people that may be fine but for me I find built in optical heart rate monitors are very unreliable and inaccurate. Sometimes I don't even get a heart rate reading from the watch.

I did find a work around that required me to use a watch face called Sporty Watch that was able to connect to external BT heart rate monitors and then record a workout and send that data to Strata where I could then sync my data with MyFitnessPal but this is a bit of a clumsy way to manage your fitness. For simple walks and other basic activity where I did not use an external heart rate monitor I would use the built in Samsung Fitness Apps with hit and miss results.

What I am saying is I could get my Samsung Galaxy S3 to work for me but there was a certain amount of work on my end to make that happen and this should really just be seamless and it's not. It can be very frustrating at times.

The last straw was this past weekend when I wanted to record a bike ride and some walks only to have Apps crash constantly and lose my data and Strava decided when it did finally record a bike ride that it was not going to sycn the data anywhere...

That brings us to my decision to drop my Samsung Galaxy S3 and go with another option. I have always liked what Garmin is doing in terms of their Fitness Watches. Their focus is fitness first and being a Smartwatch second. Garmin is big into the outdoors but does support other indoor activities. Garmin also links with a ton of external Bluetooth and Ant+ sensors out of the box and what I really love about Garmin is the software. It has to be the smartest health tracking software out there mainly because it records your heart rate constantly and uses that data to figure out when you are active or not, this seems simple right but it is not a common practice with health Apps, most health Apps simply base your activity on steps which can be misleading because not all daily activity is step based and so if you're performing something that gets your heart rate up that doesn't involve a lot of steps you are missing out on those potential calories you burned.

So which Garmin Watch did I get? I decided on the Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire since it was about half the price of Garmin's current 6 series lineup and for me it has all of the feature I need in a Fitness Smartwatch. I even got mine on sale $100 off for only $399 which is about $600 less than a similar 6 series watch from Garmin.

Once I have had some time to fully explore the Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire I will follow up with a review with my take on it.

Which is the Best Fitness Smartwatch?

The big question I often get from Clients and in general from people online is... "Which Fitness Tracker or Fitness Smartwatch should I get?" This is really a loaded question. It's kind of like randomly asking me what vehicle is best for you when next to no information about you has been told to me. Even if I did know what your vehicle needs are, there are so many options out there to choose from. Which company, what type of vehicle, what price range... This is the same when trying to figure out the best Fitness Smart Watches to consider.

Do you want a fitness watch more for fitness or for it's smart features, may be a little bit of both? How much money do you want to spend? How integrated with other software do you want it to be? Do you want a stylish Fitness Watch or perhaps a Sporty one? Are you going to be doing basic activities or complex and diverse activities? Do you want the utmost in accuracy when it comes to heart rate, steps and GPS tracking? Do you see what I mean here?

It gets even more complicated because it seem that every watch figures things out a little bit differently then the other ones. Some count more steps and distance than others, some will give you more calories for an activity then a different fitness Smartwatch or Tracker. Some allow for external heart rate monitors which is more accurate and some will only allow you to use the built in optical heart rate monitor. And at the end of the day which one is telling you the truth? Maybe all of them are but in their own way...

I have jumped from one Fitness Tracking device to another in my quest to find the best solution for me and just when I think I have found it, someone comes out with a device that draws me in and I have to try it out. Sometimes it works out for me and sometimes I find myself taking a step back but I kind of enjoy all of this fitness tech in the end.

So which is the Best Fitness Smartwatch? Hell if I know, you're probably going to have to try a few out until you find the one best suited to you. If you have no idea where to start, take a look at some of the Garmin and Fitbit products, they have a combination of really solid software and hardware offerings for a variety of needs.

Good luck in your quest and enjoy the journey...

Smart Fitness Watch Update Video - Vivoactive 3

In this Smart / Fitness Watch Update video I talk a lot about Fitness / Smart Watches. I go over some of my experiences using them and what features I look for when I'm considering a Smart / Fitness Watch. Everyone's needs are going to be a lot different for sure! Some people are strictly looking for fitness data, some people love the SmartWatch capabilities like notifications, access to Apps and other tech, and even being able to make a till payment with your Smart / Fitness Watch. And then some people want a Smart Watch with a certain style to it that matches their personality. You may want a little bit of all these things?

I did end up buying a Garmin Vivoactive 3 mainly because my Amazfit Stratos is not working properly when it comes to tracking workouts and for me this is a huge deal breaker. I'm pretty sure something is wrong with my Amazfit Stratos since it worked flawlessly for many month and only recently decided to give me problems. I'm working with Amazfit to try and resolve this problem but so far it's not going well?

I am liking the Garmin Vivoactive 3 but I don't think I will be keeping it since I am expecting to get my new Amazfit Verge very soon and hope this will become my new daily diver Smart Fitness watch.