Garmin activity trackers.

justinrye

I'm looking at buying a garmin activity tracker, possibly the vivofit or vivo smart. Who has one and what are your thoughts or thoughts on other trackers as well. I also count steps using my phone but when I'm on the tractor it counts steps as if I was walking curious if this would be a problem with the activity trackers as well.

mystgrl28

I have the garmin vivosmart hr and i love it! I havent owned any other fitness tracker so i cant really compare, but it's perfect for my needs. Tracks my steps, hr, calories burned, exercise, sleep, and most especially, it tells me to move when im inactive for too long. Havent got a complaint so far

Rusty740

I also have the vivosmart he and love it. Waterproof to 5 m, decent activity tracking, good battery life 4-5 days. Tracks sleep really nicely, even better on inside of wrist though. I wear mind playing hockey too and it holds up well. Nice and light 30grams. See YouTube video by RizKnows, he does a great review where you can see it in action and he rates it #1 in 2016 hr trackers for 2016, it's a great choice

sympha01

Wall of text here, sorry.

It really depends on what you want to get out of it. I currently have a Vivosmart and kind of hate it; I used to have a Fitbit.

1. Just in general, I think fitness trackers are better for relatively sedentary people who want to become moderately active than they are for active people who want to get more active or more intense. This was why I switched from Fitbit to Garmin -- the Garmin seemed like it would be a bit more sports-oriented -- but I was disappointed. In retrospect, I think once you're moderately active then it's probably just time to consider special purpose devices for your specific sports (running watch, swimmers watch, various biking devices, etc.).

2. I like that my Vivosmart is waterproof, but only as a convenience factor (e.g., I can wear it in the shower and so on). It's terrible at tracking swimming (strokes don't seem to correlate to steps), and the touch screen is too sensitive so swimming has a tendency to "wake" it up and then all kinds of crazy things can go wrong.

3. The Garmin website and phone apps you use to see your data are notoriously terrible. They don't display information in very useful ways compared to the Fitbit website, and they don't track information well even related to how the tracker itself works (e.g., it's still mostly a step-based tracker, but it's very hard to find any data breaking down your steps during activities on the website and app. If you dig deep there's an all-day chart, but that chart doesn't have clear or precise markings for time of day. And you can't track number of steps to a particular exercise (including running!). Also, I've noticed that the Garmin website goes down more often than Fitbit's did, and Garmin seems to be doing a lot of silly tweaks that have been reducing the functionality. (For instance, they can't seem to decide if walking counts as "active calories" or not on the "Active calories" report, so that changes arbitrarily from time to time).

4. One feature the Vivosmart has that I thought had a lot of potential was the "Move Bar," which essentially buzzes you when you've been sitting too long. Unfortunately, the way it determines inactivity (only constant movement in full 1 minute increments counts, so if during an hour you get up and walk for 30 seconds 5 times in an hour it doesn't count as you having moved at all during that whole hour) is not useful for how I live, so it buzzes at me even when I've been on my feet doing various chores for an hour. I hear it works pretty well if all you want it to do is buzz you when you're sitting at a desk at work all day (and don't mind that it will keep buzzing at you on your free time at home).

5. One more dig at Garmin: it feels to me like Garmin corporate management is in the activity tracker business as a "defensive move" in that they see other brands of fitness trackers as a threat to their business with running watches. Which is fine, except what's happening is that Garmin seems to get all worried that its own customers are using general fitness trackers instead of buying more expensive running watches or other devices. So there's stuff their Vivosmart and Vivoactive are actually capable of, but Garmin has either disabled the website from letting you see the relevant data or otherwise sabotaged. And then when you complain, they say "well, that device wasn't meant for that. Buy this other thing!"

6. A general note and I'm sorry if you're going to think this is a bummer. If you want to "measure" your calories burned for the purpose of eating calories back, all activity trackers are nonsense in terms of accuracy -- don't bother (better to just be as consistent as possible with your routine and stay on top of your TDEE). Any fitness tracker can help you assign an estimated number to how active you've been, which can certainly be useful when you're tracking your data over longer periods of time. You can tell if you're gradually becoming more active, or less active, or if you're having a particularly lazy day, or the opposite. But you can't count on any fitness tracker to give you anything like an accurate number on actual real calories. So I'd say when picking a tracker, don't pay too much attention to features that claim to help you do this (especially ones that track your heart rate). Also, as far as I know all of them give a lot more weight to exercise with "steps" than things that don't have steps. (At the end of the day, fitness trackers are all just super-charged pedometers that upload data to the internet for you to see better, really). In general I think my Fitbit was way better at just generally quantifying my activity than my Vivosmart is (but it always gave me like 2x the calories per minute for taking a slow walk compared to say, doing aerobic dance, kickboxing, or cardio kettlebell workouts). Vivosmart seems to only like running, and its estimate of my calories burned seems highly correlative just with steps. Even though it talks to my HRM during exercise, if that exercise isn't running w/ lots of steps, it just doesn't seem to care.

ghudson92

I have a fitbit charge HR and also a Garmin forerunner. I got my fitbit in December 2015 and I'm on my 5th replacement. I got my Garmin in January 2015 and it's still good as new. Garmin has never software too in my opinion but that's personal preference. Garmin seem a good solid brand.

ghudson92

Whoops. Nicer software that meant to say.

sympha01

I've heard good things about the garmin Forerunner too. To be clear though, that's more of a runner's watch (and a core part of Garmin's business for years), not really an activity tracker (although I understand they do track steps all day and base a calorie estimate off that). It's useful to track data for your runs and maybe walks -- not so useful to track your overall activity level unless you just want the equivalent of a pedometer. (Which again -- most activity trackers really kinda are anyway). Not saying you can't use the Forerunner as an activity tracker, but it's pricey for the level of activity tracking you might be getting from it unless what you really really want are the running features (I do kind of wish I had bought that instead of the Vivosmart!). Also, since it's a full watch it's bigger and bulkier, which might matter for some people.

The Vivo series of Garmin activity trackers does not have the same reputation for durability as the Forerunner does. Check out the Garmin vivo forums to see all the people who are keeping track of the number of replacements they've needed to get from Garmin! The core problem seems to be the touchscreen, which seems to develop dead pixels and lines really fast. I had to get mine replaced after 9 months, but what triggered it for me was a software bug (for some reason it started shortchanging me on distance travelled, even though it seemed to be counting steps properly and had my stride distance set correctly).

My fitbit started getting some cosmetic damage after about 9-10 months, which some people told me was a problem with chlorinated water on my skin having a chemical reaction with the finish. Shouldn't have happened, but it was just cosmetic.

justinrye

Mostly I'm looking to track calories burned, steps and sleep.

NorthCascades

I have a Garmin Fenix 3, it's a GPS watch, with an activity tracker built in. I don't look at the number of steps very often, but occasionally it's fun to compare against other people I know. But it's great for keeping track of the cycling, running, and hiking I do. I use it for swimming in the summer (it was really warm last week, I'm looking forward to swimming again), being waterproof means I can leave it on in the shower. I thought the smart watch stuff would be a gimmick but I love it.

justinrye

Thanks for the info everyone .

justinrye

My job involves repairing water lines and I'm do lots of fishing so that's good that they are water resistant that's a huge plus

justinrye

How tight does it have to be to your wrist?

20yearsyounger

I bought my vivofit 1 as an early Xmas present for myself back in 2014. I love it. It's still plugging away. It tracks steps, sleep, calories, I pair it with a heart rate monitor and it tracks virtually any exercise, it's waterproof so I never have to take it off, but most of all, it has excellent battery power. I have yet to change the battery and I am a very active person. I also have a fitbit zip that I bought off ebay strictly for challenges and I have had one cycle of battery changes.

The one thing I would have liked to have was an activity timer which 2 & 3 fixed. Since that time I have become a runner, and though I have absolutely no problem automatically tracking my runs with my current device, there are some more advanced tools like time splits, intervals, and other info I would like to capture. I didn't go with the ForeRunner because I also swim and I wanted to be able to track my laps in the pool. I decided to finally bite the bullet and pre-ordered the vivoactive HR. I didn't even consider fitbit because although their software syncs better, it seems like more of a toy compared to all of the info that Garmin gives me. Yes, Fitbit has a great customer service for returning duds.

Hopefully my VAHR is worth it with the extra charging I will have to do. I kinda liked not having to worry about my activity tracker at all. I toyed around with just getting the vivoactive (basically same functionality without wrist-based HR and other improvements) at a deep discount, but I said I'll just go with the latest (I heard it has more memory and can still connect to my current HR band if I want it to) and hopefully greatest.

20yearsyounger

I'll also add, that my vivofit has been perfect for me in terms of helping me track my eating back calories. I've been maintaining for a while now and I eat back every single calorie. The estimates provided are generally lower than what I get for my fitbit. I don't use a TDEE method and I calorie cycle and I count on the numbers my Garmin gives me. So if I have a 1600 calorie day, and I go for a 2 hour gym sessions or a run w/HR, and I get an additional 1400 calories, you better believe I eat (and drink) it all back and I have had no problems maintaining weight.

tweatherly83

I have garmin love it
Waterproof

OldAssDude

Check out the Polar devices too.

I have owned several Garmin devices and they are so buggy that I do not recommend them to anyone. Go to the Garmin forums and look at all the posts about issues with just about every Garmin device they make. The devices themselves are made very well, but the firmware/software has many issues. Also their servers go down quite often (sometimes for days) without any warning or notification, and all devices are rendered pretty much useless until they are back up.

I recommend doing some research on Polar, fitbit, and others as well.

Rusty740

justinrye wrote: »

Mostly I'm looking to track calories burned, steps and sleep.

Most anything you get with heart rate will do this so no worries.

justinrye wrote: »

How tight does it have to be to your wrist?

It's just snug. I find I can where my Vivosmart HR just tight enough that it stays just a touch above my wrist one, but it has a nice watch style strap that is easily adjustable, so you can loosen it as much as you like during the day, it will work fine as a step counter but won't track heart rate unless it's more snug.

You may also like the FitBit Charge HR, my wife has one and I seriously considered it. One main difference is the App that each comes with, FitBit will stand alone with calories and food( no need for myfitnesspal), and Garmin Connect is a little more flashy and you get a bit more detail on sleep. I find the Vivosmart HR tracks sleep well, and you get "light, deep, and awake" in the chart, you also get a "movement" graph that shows how active you were sleeping. You quickly see your REM sleep corresponds to when you are paralyzed( no movement) and you might get better sleep results when you where it inside your wrist. Either of these trackers sound like they will do you fine so check out the apps and see if you like them, they're both free with no adds.

justinrye

Thanks for the replies lots good info and advice appreciate it .