Amazfit Balance vs Garmin Vivoactive 5: Cheaper but Better
Naila Syifa
Updated January 2025
The Amazfit Balance is a strong contender in the mid-range smartwatch market, offering extensive lifestyle and fitness features at just USD 199.99. The Garmin Vivoactive 5, which is more expensive at USD 299.99, seems to be losing the battle. In this comparison, we'll explore whether the Amazfit Balance can outperform the Garmin Vivoactive 5 in several areas, or if the Garmin Vivoactive 5's premium price tag can be justified.
Key Takeaways
Not only that the Amazfit Balance support more sports modes than the Garmin Vivoactive 5, but it also offers a BIA sensor, maps and navigation features, and a built-in speaker and microphone that the Vivoactive 5 lacks. It also has a larger screen with a higher resolution. The Vivoactive 5's main strengths seem to be the Body Battery and Wheelchair Mode, but they fail to outweigh the more comprehensive feature set of the Amazfit Balance.
Amazfit Balance
Balanced Life, Work, Wellness
✓ 1.5” AMOLED
✓ 156 Sports Modes
✓ Built-In Speaker & Microphone
✓ Zepp Coach & Zepp Flow
Garmin Vivoactive 5
Casual & Inclusive Smartwatch
✓ 1.2” AMOLED
✓ 50 Activity Profiles
✓ Body Battery Energy Monitoring
✓ Wheelchair Mode
Design & Display
Garmin Vivoactive 5
Both smartwatches have a sleek and casual design that is suitable for everyday wear. With a 5 ATM rating, they are also equally water-resistant, making them suitable for swimming and other shallow water activities.
The Garmin Vivoactive comes a bit smaller in 42.2 mm case size, featuring a 1.2-inch AMOLED display with 390 x 390 pixels resolution. The Amazfit Balance, on the other hand, has a slightly larger 46 mm case size and a 1.5-inch AMOLED display with a 480 x 480 pixels resolution, offering higher clarity.
While both smartwatches use a touchscreen and two buttons for navigation and control, the Amazfit Balance replaces one button with a crown. It adds a more classic aesthetic while enhancing the user experience with easier scrolling.
Health & Fitness Features
Amazfit Balance
Basic health and fitness features are similar on both watches, including heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen saturation monitoring, stress level tracking, sleep tracking, and activity tracking. The Amazfit Balance and Garmin Vivoactive 5 also respectively come with Zepp Coach and Garmin Coach, which can provide personalized training plans tailored to your goals.
However, only the Amazfit Balance is equipped with a BIA sensor, which measures body composition like body fat percentage, muscle mass, bone mass, water, protein, and more, allowing you to get a more comprehensive understanding of your overall health and fitness.
The Amazfit Balance also offers 156 sports modes, three times more than the Garmin Vivoactive 5's 50 activity profiles. So, while they equally have mainstream sports like running, cycling, strength, swimming, skiing, yoga, pilates, and tennis, only the Amazfit Balance offers a wider variety of niche sports.
The extensive list includes endurance sports (like triathlon and multi-sport), adventure sports (like mountain biking, BMX, rock climbing, hunting), dance activities (like zumba, ballet, street dance), water sports (like sailing, kayaking, snorkeling, indoor surfing), combat sports (like judo, taekwondo, karate, fencing), and even more.
If you think, "Well, I don't need all those niche sports modes, it's good as long as it has running and cycling", but wait a minute. The Amazfit Balance, surprisingly, still outperforms the Garmin Vivoactive 5 in features specific to those mainstream sports.
For example, for running, the Amazfit Balance has running power. For cycling, it supports connecting to a cycling power meter. For skiing and snowboarding, it has trail navigation and resort map support. Meanwhile, the Vivoactive 5 offers none of those advanced sport-specific features despite offering the corresponding sport profiles. Those features are only available in Garmin's more sports-focused watches like the Fenix or Forerunner series.
Garmin Vivoactive 5
Another feature I appreciate on the Amazfit Balance is the Readiness Score. It calculates your overall readiness for the day based on how well you slept the previous night. It is similar to Garmin's Training Readiness, but the Vivoactive 5 lacks this feature. You can find it on Garmin's higher-end watches like the Fenix 8 series or Forerunner 965.
What's present on the Garmin Vivoactive 5 instead is the Body Battery energy monitoring feature, which has no equivalent on the Amazfit Balance. It tracks your body's energy levels throughout the day based on activity, stress, rest, and sleep data to help you plan your day and rest periods more effectively.
The Garmin Vivoactive 5 also stands out with its Wheelchair Mode, which optimizes the watch's features for users who use wheelchairs. It tracks pushes instead of steps and provides workouts specifically tailored for wheelchair users. The Amazfit Balance does not have a comparable feature.
Despite lacking these two features, the Amazfit Balance seems to still be the superior option in terms of health and fitness tracking capabilities compared to the Garmin Vivoactive 5, especially when considering its significantly lower price point.
Smartwatch Features
Amazfit Balance
Basic smartwatch functionality like smartphone notifications, phone music control, contactless payment, and morning report/morning updates are equally offered by both the Amazfit Balance and Garmin Vivoactive 5.
However, the Amazfit Balance offers more advanced smartwatch features. Thanks to its built-in speaker and microphone, it supports on-wrist calling, music playback, speech-to-text replies, and voice assistants via the built-in Alexa, OpenAI GPT-4o-powered Zepp Flow assistant, or an offline voice assistant. The Vivoactive 5 has no speaker or microphone, so none of these audio-based features are available.
On top of that, Amazfit Balance offers a camera control feature for iOS devices and a notification quick replies feature for Android devices, supporting applications like WhatsApp, Line, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype, and Snapchat beyond just the standard SMS replies.
Meanwhile, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 has no camera control feature and only supports quick replies for SMS on Android devices.
One thing that the Vivoactive 5 has an edge on is its Garmin Pay contactless payment, which supports more banks and regions compared to Amazfit's Zepp Pay, which is currently more focused on European markets.
Maps & Navigational Features
Amazfit Balance
The Amazfit Balance offers more robust mapping and navigation capabilities. It allows you to download free offline maps or import route files for real-time navigation. For skiing and snowboarding, it even provides ski resort maps and trail navigation.
Meanwhile, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 has no maps or course navigation. There is indeed some basic navigation features like Back to Start, which allows you to navigate to your starting point when doing a certain activity. However, it uses a compass instead of visual maps or turn-by-turn navigation, which is a significant limitation compared to the Amazfit Balance.
In addition, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 uses just 3 satellite systems for positioning, including GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. Meanwhile, the Amazfit Balance supports 6 satellite systems, providing more accurate and reliable positioning.
Battery Life
Garmin Vivoactive 5
The Amazfit Balance is again winning when it comes to battery life. It can last for up to 14 days of use in typical usage, up to 25 days in battery saver mode, or up to 26 hours in accuracy GPS mode.
In comparison, the Garmin Vivoactive 5 offers up to 11 days of battery life in smartwatch mode, up to 21 days in battery-saver smartwatch mode, and up to 21 hours in GPS mode. While still decent, the Amazfit Balance clearly outperforms the Garmin Vivoactive 5 in battery life.
Amazfit Balance vs Garmin Vivoactive 5
Final Thoughts
Amazfit Balance
The Amazfit Balance's impressive set of features and capabilities, coupled with its significantly lower price point compared to the Garmin Vivoactive 5, make it a compelling option for those seeking a well-rounded smartwatch that doesn't break the bank.
While the Garmin Vivoactive 5 has its own strengths, such as Body Battery and Wheelchair Mode, the Amazfit Balance's extensive sports modes, advanced health and fitness tracking, robust navigational features, enhanced smartwatch functionality, and extended battery life outweigh the Vivoactive 5's advantages in most areas, making it the better overall value proposition.
If you like to read more on smartwatches, check out our other relevant guides here:
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Author
Naila Syifa
Content Manager at Synced. She crafts insightful content on the latest trends in technology, consumer electronics, and smart home gadgets.
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