Garmin Vivoactive HR scores 3 bikes out of 5.
My beloved Pebble watch started to die shortly before the company was destroyed by one of its greedy investors. I had planned to replace it with a new Pebble, seeing as this watch/piece of wearable tech was one of my all-time favorite devices. I couldn't believe the company ended just like that. It was the business story of horrors. Here I was, with an amazing device I loved, that became increasingly unusable every day. The screen started to pixelate and garble. Apparently this was the one flaws of pebbles, something that eventually happened to all of them. I felt pretty lucky, since mine lasted years longer than my boyfriend's. Still. Time to get a new device.
I spent hours upon hours reading reviews online, comparing features, and looking as devices in stores. I settled on a Garmin Vivoactive HR, in hopes to offset the expense of the device by having it serve as a watch and bike computer in one. From everything I read, the device's one flaw was inaccuracies with it's sleep tracking, which wasn't a concern for me. Sleep tracking was the one thing I didn't care to venture into.
I started writing a review for this watch when it was still new. I'm glad I waited over a year to finally publish it, as my feelings for it have warmed with time. It seems to work a little bit better with every update. I've had a lot of issues with this watch. I'll start by pointing out that I generated 17 threads thus far on the Garmin forum, trying to understand inconsistencies with this watch that haven't been addressed on the web. For instance, buttons on different windows respond differently. The two physical buttons on the bottom of the screen do the exact same thing with every window except one, the "review workout window." On all other windows the left button is a back/exit and the right a forward/toggle. For some reason the review workout screen, they do nothing. The touchscreen is also variable. For example, on the "review workout" touchscreen, the "no" option cannot be selected. Other users agree with my observations, but in over a year no one can explain why they are like this.
It has several other weird inconsistencies. If I use the "live track" option when recording a workout, the device won't sync to the app on my phone afterwards. If I am lucky, I can sync just by turning off live track and restarting both the device and my phone. If I am not lucky, I have to unpair the watch, restore it to factory settings, turn it off, clear app cache and data on the phone, uninstall the app, restart the phone, and then reinstall and pair the two devices all over again. Pairing the watch to my phone used to be a complicated dance that often took hours on hours of attempts until it would finally, randomly, connect. Luckily, I haven't had this issue for several months now. I imagine these annoyances might just as much be due to my phone as the device.
Still, the Garmin software itself seems bizarre. The Garmin Connect app for the desktop needs to be updated almost daily. Frequent updates are par for the course these days with phone apps, but not so much with desktop apps. It's annoying to have an update for Garmin every time I try to use my computer at home. The mobile app is the most fun to use out of the whole Garmin experience, although it's strange to me why Garmin Connect online is inconsistent with the mobile app. Take a look at the 2 calendars below. They are both for the time period, but I can see all sorts of daily data on mobile. Is there any reason Garmin opted to not have all this juicy, colorful data viewable from a desktop browser? I'll never know.
My biggest gripes with the watch are it's functional inconsistencies. One day it stops syncing, the next day it unpairs. I used to have to go to the watch, Garmin Connect Online, Garmin Connect Mobile, and Garmin Express all at the same time to disable my "move bar". Then, the second I have to reset any settings, which is frequently because all of the software is so buggy, the move bar enables again. And don't even get me started with this move bar!
“The red bar on the epix, fenix 3, Forerunner 920XT, vivoactive, vivofit, and vivofit 2 is referred to as the Move Bar. The bar will be displayed after one hour of inactivity. This bar builds in length the longer you are inactive. The first red bar equals one hour of inactivity. Each additional bar equals 15 minutes of inactivity.”
There is all this data out there indicating that just moving a little bit, but frequently and throughout the day, is healthier than being highly active for long periods of time paired with long periods of inactivity. So, I get the intent of the move bar. Apparently, people need to be reminded to get up and move around. Me, I have the opposite problem. There are often times when I need to concentrate, or at a minimum, focus on one thing for a even a short period of time. That's great if I can move around while doing so. Our culture is a sitting one though, and I really struggle staying put. This makes the move bar all the more annoying. First off, the move bar doesn't adjust to any other activity you do. I could have just ridden 100 miles on my bike, which takes me several hours. I could be home, taking a shower, getting dressed and eating some food (things the move bar timer doesn't sense). The move bar can vibrate before I even get a rest. However, the move bar is most frustrating when it vibrates when I am sitting and have little choice about it. The move bar goes off when I am in the dentist chair, at the theatre, sitting in traffic, stuck in a meeting, on an airplane with the seatbelt light on, and all the other times when taking walk would be quite welcome, but quite inconvenient. I hate the reminder. It's not for me. I don't need it and I don't care about walking or "steps" or whatever the trend is these days. I wish it were less of a hassle for me to clear. It's bad enough there there is no watch face that doesn't include the red move bar line into it's design. I just don't care.
One true problem is the hardware's temperature sensitivity. The unit is rated to work in conditions to -4, but mine can't handle temps below 10 or 15 degrees. The screen freezes and the devices stops tracking. Once the device continued to track with the screen froze, but I lost all my data the 5 other times I skied in cold weather this year, even though I had the device tucked in a pocket where I hoped it would stay warm.
Now, you might be wondering why I gave it a 3 bike rating with all these complaints. It's a buggy, annoying piece of technology, sure, but it's also pretty fun. I have always been fascinated with tracking my own activity. Garmin does this well. Garmin tracks what I want to track better than any other competitor I've seen. Nearly every wearable tracker these days is step-based. Since my activities are cycling, skiing, and gym-based, step counters counter my activity. Garmin tracks what I want; distance, elevation, speed, weather, heart rate, maps and more. The newer software interface is colorful, fun to look at, and motivating.
Take a look at some of the images below. It is really gratifying to see data like "you've logged more cycling activities than 99% of other users (all ages, male and female). Who knows how many commuters use Garmins, but it feels like a nice pat on the back regardless. I also get to see a super low resting heart rate, and it helps me to feel healthy and strong. I enjoy how the new interface gives you a snapshot of the day or the week. I enjoy the graphs of various attributes over time. The Pebble is a better piece of hardware, but I never had so much juicy sports data as I do now.
The Vivoactive has a great battery life for my level of use. It lasts almost a week for my typical activities, a couple of days when I am riding for hours on end. Not only that, it charges very quickly. It charges fully in about an hour. If I wake up in the morning and notice I let the battery die, I can charge a couple of day's worth in the few minutes it takes me to get dressed. Syncing with My Fitness Pal, Strava, and MapMyRide has been flawless. I get awesome videos from Relive, too. Relive pulls data from Strava, which uses data from Garmin.
And I trust my data. I can't say if the "calories burned" data is at all accurate, but it is consistent and predictable at this point. I burn about 300 calories commuting to work in one direction. I burn anywhere from 350 to 550 calories taking a boxing class, and the burn is consistent with my perceived effort. The heart rate tracking seems true. The wrist monitor is consistent, and tracks continuously. It also tracks a low heart rate, something my old monitors couldn't do. My older Polar, Suunto, and Sigma tended to lose connection when my heart rate dropped below 60. What it can't do is manage sudden surges in heart rate. When I am biking to work, I can see the wrist monitor under report when I suddenly put out a big effort. Compared to commutes when wearing the watch with a chest strap, the wrist monitor seems to lose accuracy above 130. When my heart is pounding at 160bpm or above, it may report a 40 or 50 reading. At least the inaccuracies are easy to spot. I don't mind this, as it's know that wrist monitors do a better job tracking the heart rate at rest anyway.
I went on a couple of ski trips with other people who had other Garmin GPS devices. While the devices never agreed, they were consistently close within a couple hundred feet, both in distance and elevation. One device would tend to rate the elevation higher than me, so while neither were probably perfectly correct, they all seemed consistent.
This watch has been a hassle, but the activity tracking is fantastic. It works as a bike computer, too. I just strap it on the handlebars like it's a bike and pedal on. Overall, I am glad I made the purchase, but I am going to do a lot of research before I'd buy one again.