Lucy Melford: More on the new Garmin fitness watch

I did of course read extensively about what I might buy to replace my Fitbit Versa 3. I wavered for a bit over whether I should get a Garmin (who put function above elegance) or a Withings (who placed elegance above function). I plumped for Garmin, because I wanted to view as much fitness information as possible on the watch itself, and not rely mostly or entirely on the phone app crunching the metrics to give me meaningful analyses and commentary. In fact I wouldn't have had those analyses and commentary with the Withings app unless I'd stumped up for a subscription. It was yet more expense. Garmin made no such extra charge.

So instead of my wrist sporting something rather posh from Withings, the much plainer Garmin Vivoactive 5 is strapped to it instead. The Garmin watch looks unexciting by comparison - until you activate the crisp and colourful display that shows all the information I was looking for, and more. It's like this:

There's a lot more; just keep scrolling. I won't bother showing more pictures of this display - there are plenty of online reviews to read, all of which show what you can see as you scroll through the various metrics, or press the buttons. In this respect, the Garmin watch absolutely trumps any Withings watch, and rather knocks the Fitbit Versa 3 into a cocked hat.

What about the Garmin phone app? Is it nicer than the Fitbit app? Well, it aims to present those analyses in an attractive and colourful way, with supporting details that you can use to understand how to get fitter, and measure progress. I'd say it succeeds admirably. But whereas Fitbit's aim was to get you mildly hooked into fitness - though a laudable intention in itself - Garmin goes further, and its remit is not at all casual. A Garmin device will push you into getting properly fit.

The comments and assessments I see on the Vivoactive 5's watch screen and on the app are frank and unequivocal. Well, I prefer a no-nonsense appraisal, and I'm going to pay attention to what is recommended. The main issue at the moment is that I'm not getting enough sleep. I can see from the graphs how insufficient sleep is affecting my energy levels. So I'm responding. I've decided to make changes to my daily routine to make it easier to quit late-night activities - such as photo-editing - before midnight and get to bed. No more working on till two in the morning!

I have to say, I'm glancing at my Garmin watch much more than I ever looked at the Fitbit watch. It encourages regular consultation. And it's a doddle to get data off the watch and into the app, and do more than merely glance at it.

The Garmin presents the data in words, charts and graphs of various sorts, some of the graphs showing different kinds of data superimposed on each other, to show clearly how one thing has an effect on something else. It also gives me automatic morning and evening summaries, mainly in words, and very much to the point. Besides this, I can take and save a Health Snapshot of various metrics at any time, to have a data record I can keep. Perhaps I will set up a series of new spreadsheets, to record aspects of my improving fitness. I feel inspired.

The emphasis is not only on steps taken, my heart rate, and how well I am sleeping. I now have information on such things as stress, breathing, blood oxygen, and my energy level. The watch constantly computes a stress score. If I'm having a difficult moment and my stress level is high, I know I can take some slow, deep breaths to bring down my stress level, and the watch will show the effect in real time. In fact the watch display always offers an appropriate breathing exercise to restore calmness and tranquility. I especially like a feature called Body Battery, which brings certain metrics together to reveal what my reserve of energy is as the day progresses. This is a very useful guide. If my energy reserve is depleted (as it has been today) I can top it up, and the effect will be seen on the watch in real time.

On the whole, I think this new Garmin watch will be twice as effective as the Fitbit was in getting me on my feet and moving around. It's a more serious health and fitness tool, and because of that I won't feel daft if I consult the watch pretty frequently to monitor my current state and see what needs attention.

Of course, firing up the watch a lot means reduced battery life. Even so, I've only charged it once so far, and that was five days ago. As I write this, I still have 34% charge left. I expect to be down to 20% by the end of tomorrow. So - the way I'm using my watch - it'll need recharging every six or seven days.

I got eight days between charges with my Fitbit Versa 3, a little better. But then I used the Versa 3 less: it quickly became simply a device for telling the time. I left all the data analyses to the phone app, taking only a quick look after the morning sync. I'm bound to study what the Garmin shows me with rather more thought.

Telling me the time will however remain a major duty for the new Garmin watch. That's why I was trying out various watch faces, to get the best one for my particular problem - dodgy vision when not wearing glasses, as is the case when I'm in bed for some sleep.

I think I've now settled on the face to be used from now on. As first installed, it looked like this:

That's a nice, uncluttered watch face for daytime use. But I needed to improve its legibility for night-time use without glasses on. So I edited it, leaving only the main minute positions, and changing the colour of the hour, minute and second hands:

This was easier to see at night, when everything is out of focus. But the hour and minute hands needed differentiation: if I woke up during the night, I didn't want to confuse 'twenty past two' with 'ten past four'! Also, a yellow seconds hand was too distracting: the original white would do. Thus:

Now it's easy to see which are the hour and minute hands, and the toned-down white seconds hand is no distraction. Oddly enough, this resembles one of the first watches I considered for the Fitbit Versa 3 back in 2021, as seen below: