Garmin vívoactive HR GPS Smart Watch, Regular fit - Black

I started out looking for a wearable (watch) to track my swimming. I looked high and low for almost two years, finally landed on this one. It tracks my lap swims, and much more. It's not perfect, but GOOD ENOUGH. That's the summary. If you want more details, read on.1. Swim tracking: A lot of people ask about this. Yes, it's water resistant and that's good enough for normal swimming not diving. That was the main reason why I bought it in the first place. I do lap swims regularly, and wanted something to 1) count my laps, because I ALWAYS lose count after about 7 or 8 laps. You lap swimmers out there can probably relate. Besides counting laps, it counts strokes by accelerometer, length time, and SWOLF score. Let me just put this out there first: it's not perfect. It has shown to 1) under-count my lengths sometimes if I pause it right at the end of a length; 2) over-count sometimes if I don't pause it AND sit at the end of the length for too long. But, it all tend to even out in the end. It's definitely got room for improvement as far as its sensing capability. But it's still better than me losing count in my head, and at least this way I have some good approximation of how many laps I've done. I WISH Garmin would let the swim app track heart rates during a swim. I understand the accuracy issue due to muscle flexing, but at least let it be an option with the understanding that it may or may not be 100% accurate. Interestingly, one time I purposely started my session without running the swim app, the watch's move-IQ was able to detect the activity being a swim, AND it recorded my heart rates for the whole session. It didn't record my laps or strokes. The heart rates were "reasonable" for what it is. I got nothing to compare it against other than the feel of my own pulse, but I think their inaccuracy claim is overblown. They should really let people decide to track heart rates for swimming. So, as it is right now, it's either tracking your laps, strokes and time but no heart rates, or the opposite. A little disappointing but not a deal breaker. Like I said, it's good enough. Tips: use the left button for pause when trying to catch a breather; use the right button to stop the session. The touch screen would not work properly when wet, but will once dried (finger must be dried too).2. General activity tracking: to me, these come as a bonus. And they are great. I can track my walks, elliptical sessions, bicycling, etc. The step sensor is GREAT. It's far better than any other that I've seen. It tracks my steps pretty accurately, even under the following conditions: 1) in bumpy vehicles (no false positives), 2) with my watch hand holding on stuff (does not depend on my arm swinging), 3) GPS or no GPS signal. The stairs detection is hit and miss. I would say that it tracks my going down better than my going up, but for the most part, it's good enough. It probably misses 1 or 2 floors going up per day (I go up about 10 to 15 floors on an average day). Bicycling it's fine, but I'm not a serious cyclist. For those who are more serious about cycling, you should get the extra sensors for your bike. It detects my bike speed using GPS well enough as far as I know.3. Heart rate tracking: I track my heart rate 24/7 with this device. It gives you good insight to your activity levels, resting heart rates, and helps with sleep detection and tracking (I'll elaborate on this in the next section). On dry land, comparing it with my other heart rate sensors, this watch's optical HR sensor seems to be excellent. I'd say it's well within plus or minus 2 bpm. Why you'd need anything more accurate than that, unless in a medical necessity, is beyond me. The great thing is, it's always there. My only wish is for Garmin to let me track HR during a swim (see above).4. Sleep tracking: You tell it about your normal sleep hours, and it tries to keep track how many hours of deep or light sleep you get during, based on your movement or heart rate (?). Now, I've recently connected it to the Android Sleep app, and it offers more functions. I haven't dug deep into that, yet, but it looks pretty promising. But simply being able to set near silent vibrating alarms without waking up everybody in the house is very beneficial.5. Other "smart watch" functions: It's important to keep in mind that this is NOT intended to be a smart watch with activity tracking, but an activity tracker with some smart watch features. It has rudimentary smart watch functions like getting notifications for your incoming calls, emails, text, calendar events etc. You can't take a call with it. You can't do anything to the messages other than reading the cut-off version. But, I find myself looking at my phone far less than before (besides the checking the time part), because now at a quick glance I can decide whether I really need to whip out my phone to begin with. It's not as distracting as a phone. Bottom line about this is, set your expectation accordingly. It's not a fruit watch, but its limited smart phone functionality is just good enough as a supplement to my phone.6. Other observations and tips. 1) About the screen's brightness and readability. A lot of people seem to be concerned about this. Under bright conditions, especially under sunlight, this device is SUPER readable. The brighter the better. So don't worry about that. It's under darker conditions that you might have a problem seeing it. My tip is to change the screen's background color to white instead of the default black. On an LCD, this should even provide slight battery saving as well. It's more readable with black letters on white background. They should've made this the default setting. With this, I even turn down my backlight brightness from default 3 to 2, and the timeout from 10 sec to 5. 2) Battery life. It's good. While I've never let it drop below 20% before recharging, my estimate is that even with constant HR monitoring, Bluetooth and sleep tracking, I can easily go 5 days on a single charge. It depends on how many activity apps you run, of course. The other factor being how many vibrating alerts I get during the day for stuff like incoming (and outgoing) emails. I wish they tweak the notifications to not vibrate on outgoing emails. The vibration uses a lot of battery I'd imagine. On a busy work day, the watch's battery can probably last for more than 3 days on a single charge.In all, even with the minor issues I mentioned above, I love this little device. Unless you are seriously picky about every activity tracking or you need a full-featured smart watch, this would be a great device to have.

I have owned a Pebble, UP24, lately had Apple Watch Sport and Moov. The Moov is a good device if you want to go cheap and get good data, and even coaching. Great company.The Apple Watch is a very nice piece of hardware. No complaints. Beautiful screen. Great integration with iphone. But, it needed an upgrade, and out came the Series 2. Looks good. Improved performance and stuff like waterproofing etc. However, with taxes and Applecare the product will cost close to $475. Lovely device, but pricey for what you get.Enter the Garmin vivoactive HR. Got the device during black friday weekend for $169. $169! 1/3 of the price of an Applewatch. Thought I would try it out and see if some of the reviews around the net were correct. I believe that they were. The watch connected to my iphone quickly. The software is quite good. That is to be expected, given that they have been doing this for some time and have a number of high-end devices for runners, triathletes et al. (cf the Fenix, could have gotten the Fenix for the same price as the Apple Watch with a Sapphire watch face, open swimming and heartrate collection during the swim, but I am not that involved).The Garmin worked well, without a hitch. Tracking steps, sleep, et al has all be very good. Battery life has been great! Recharging is FAST! I have not had the opportunity to do a lot of workouts with the unit, but I will be using it with a external heart rate monitor for strength training. Going to do some biking and swimming. I have no complaints about the watch.When I first started using it, comparing it to the AppleWatch, the screen was very disappointing. In a dimly lit room it was plain hard to see. However, the backlight will give you enough light, when you use it, to see the time etc. I was a bit frustrated, but then started to check the watch, under a variety of conditions and found that the screen was just fine if there was any light in the room. No, it is not bright, but when there is light in the room, it is good. I like it. So, I remember when watches did not have lights, (you actually had to turn the light on to see the watch), and this is also true of the Withings Steel. The point of this is that this is not really a problem unless you are in the dark. Then you have to use the backlight and that is only fair. But I do not find this to be much of a problem.The watch is a great fitness device. It has lots of features which should be very useful to the average athlete. The software is very good. The battery life is great. The screen is more like a regular watch, not a lovely OLED screen, so do not buy this if you think it will look like a apple watch, or other smartwatch which has an oled or backlit screen. It is meant to be used in the light, outside, gym, and it will work just fine. The good friday price made this a great deal!

Amazing product

Its a good buy .Garmin claimed battery will last for 7 days, However I need to charge every alternate day. Garmin should look into it . Otherwise its a very good buy. I strongly recommend for all fitness freaks. Three Cheers.

la montre fonctionne bien et est synchronisée avec un Nokia Lumia 830 sous Windows 10.Les SMS et Courriels sont notifiés sur la montre et peuvent être lus.Le cardio au poignet est top. Cela évite le port d'une ceinture qui peut gêner suivant le sport.La montre ne compte pas les pas au volant, logique mais d'autres produits le font pourtant.C'est du Garmin avec la qualité qui va avec. jamais déçu de cette marque que je connais depuis 20 ans au travers de différents produits.

Hola, estoy muy satisfecho con este Reloj, medir mis rutinas de Ciclismo, Correr, Natacion y Crossfit, me ha proporcionado datos de suma importancia para mis actividades con una relación precio-beneficio extraordinaria.Es muy interesante competir en pasos día a día contra uno mismo, y ver que se puede mejorar, Garmin IQ lo complemente con varias apps para ayudar a aprovechar aun mas actividades como navegación asistida, etc..En resumen si deseas tener algo de calidad en tus manos con una amplia variedad de opciones de soporte para multiples deportes, sin gastar tanto es una opción muy adecuada.

Es uno de los mejores monitores que he probado, ademas de tomar tu pulso cardiaco de forma continua sin necesidad de una banda cardiaca, es compatible con las principales apps de seguimiento en el deporte (Strava & Endomondo) lo cual te permite monitorear tu desempeño. De igual manera la aplicación de garmin te permite el seguimiento en tiempo real de lo que has logrado en el día y visualizar históricos de tus entrenamientos, pasos diarios, pisos subidos, frecuencia cardiaca promedio durante el día. En resumen, es una excelente opción para deportistas que desean conocer su desempeño en el deporte, un valor agregado es la conectividad para lectura de correos electronicos, whatsapp, sms etc...El servicio de amazon como siempre excelente, llegando un par de día antes de lo esperado.