It was a sad day a little one month ago when I returned my Garmin vìvosmart HR to the Best Buy store... my trial period had ended. During the holiday season, Best Buy, and many other stores have extended return policies. Ergo, for nearly two months I enjoyed the technology behind the Garmin heart rate data and many other aspects. The competition among +Garmin, +Fitbit, +Withings, +Jawbone, and +Misfit is amazing to watch. Each of these organizations continue to raise the bar for the common athlete and normal person simply wanting to stay motivated in order to eat more ice cream. Oh yeah, the idea of living a healthy or rather, living a healthier life, is what really brought me to purchase my first fitness tracker back in January, 2013. The three years following continues to bring much interest, intrigue, learning, and fun from the fitness realm of trackers and smartwatches. From my purchases the Fitbit and Garmin have been the leaders of this niche market; however, +Fossil purchasing +Misfit for $260 million could bring exciting, new features and better functionality from their product line in late 2016, who knows...
Final Review of the +Garmin vìvosmart HR
For the purchase price of $149.00 this smartwatch is a pretty sweet! I felt the HR (heart rate) statistics were accurate when compared to the Fitbit Charge HR or the Fitbit Surge. The touchscreen was sensitive and even changed screen when interfaced with water droplets from rain, in the shower, or while swimming. The text on the screen needed improvement. The text is easier to read than their first model, yet for OLED technology Garmin will do much better with the next model (one hopes).
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| Garmin vìvosmart HR |
Notifications
It notifies you of text messages, yet there are difficult to read and clear. I found myself simply turning off this feature. The calendar notifications were inconsistent, so I had to keep my iPhone nearby to make sure not to miss of meeting notification.
Workout Modes
When you go into a workout mode the screen background changed and text become pronounced and easy to read. I liked the customization offered by the accompanying app to tweak the data as needed.
Back-light & Screen
The screen was okay. It is strange to use the watch with a horizontal view while on your wrist and at times it does feel awkward. At night the back-lite screen does okay, just okay, I was hoping by now more organization would give the consumer an option, like Pebble smartwatches, to control the brightness level. The original Fitbit Force, the current Charge, and Charge HR OLED offer a much brighter screen.
Ecosystem
The leaderboard, social interaction, and app navigation needs work. Garmin offer feature overload on their Connect website, yet, the device is named the Garmin vìvosmart HR and the HR data is not even on the primary screen of their app, nor on the website. When heart rate being one of the primary selling points they need to do more with the thousands points of data collected daily.
Recommendation
If you have not already purchased a fitness tracker, I would wait for the vìvofit 3, which is scheduled to go on sale during Q2-2016. Smartwatches are not all they are cracked up to be. It is a much, much smaller screen than your smartphone and I often found myself just turning off the annoying notifications since they are static. If I read a text message on a watch, well, I want to reply from that interface, right? Here's a nice review of the upcoming gadgets by +Garmin written by Valentina Palladino - Garmin brings wrist-bound HRM to new vivoactive HR, adds to vivofit line
The new vìvofit 3 will offer awesome fitness feedback with a one-year battery life. Now, what will Fitbit bring to the market in Q2-2016, well, we don't yet know :) Good luck with your healthier lifestyle and remember what I learned in college from a good friend, "Why exercise if you cannot eat ice cream?"
Sincerely,
Peter
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| The Garmin vìvofit 3 |
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