Fitness Watches Questions

MonaRaeHill

Thanks everyone. You're awesome! I am going to try a couple of cheap things, the alta, the vivoactive, see what works better. I usually have to cycle through a bunch of things to find the one that works for me. If it's something that touches my skin, I tend to be finicky, (I blame that on the Virgo in my house of home and hearth). lol.

Tacklewasher

Gonna hit a couple of points.

Accuracy. I find my Fenix 3HR to be pretty close on the accuracy, except when it REALLY isn't. So if it screws up, it's obvious.

Last Sunday I went X Country skiing for about 7K. Then went home and fell asleep watching Nascar. So moved very little outside of the skiing.



So it screwed up something, but it's pretty clear there was a screwup.

On the Garmin watch straps. Gonna disagree with the poster who said they were easy to change. It depends on the watch. Only some of the higher end ones use the quick release system. Mine doesn't come with a quick release, but I've learned I can use the same bands as the 5X and have one metal band on now with 2 silicon bands on the slow boat from China (Amazon). Check which watch you are looking at to see if it has the quick release or not. If it does, they are great but I don't think they are available outside of the pricier Fenix or Forerunner watches.

You mention the Vivoactive. They do not have the quick release so swapping bands takes a few minutes and a couple of small screwdrivers (that often come with a replacement band).

MonaRaeHill

Thanks Tacklewasher. Always good to have more viewpoints.
I was just going to try out the cheap two I've already bought, and if I like one of them enough, step up to a better version of that brand.
I think I actually have a small set of screwdrivers that go to my sewing machine, so pretty sure I can manage it. I ended up finding a vivoactive on ebay for a reasonable price, and it's an extra large (I'm very large boned, for a woman), so I can just sew up a sleeve for it, in it's 'test' phase.
I actually changed a battery in my kindle with those tiny little tools, which blew my mind (that I was actually able to), impressed myself, ya. lol. Now I feel confident I can do this, too, but shhhhhh...... the imp of perversity likes to mess with me...the minute I get too proud of myself.. ugh.

Tacklewasher

MonaRaeHill wrote: »

Thanks Tacklewasher. Always good to have more viewpoints.
I was just going to try out the cheap two I've already bought, and if I like one of them enough, step up to a better version of that brand.
I think I actually have a small set of screwdrivers that go to my sewing machine, so pretty sure I can manage it. I ended up finding a vivoactive on ebay for a reasonable price, and it's an extra large (I'm very large boned, for a woman), so I can just sew up a sleeve for it, in it's 'test' phase.
I actually changed a battery in my kindle with those tiny little tools, which blew my mind (that I was actually able to), impressed myself, ya. lol. Now I feel confident I can do this, too, but shhhhhh...... the imp of perversity likes to mess with me...the minute I get too proud of myself.. ugh.

Sounds like you'd have no trouble changing bands. When you buy them of Amazon, they tend to come with the little screwdrivers, so no issue there.

Enjoy.

stanmann571

Tacklewasher wrote: »

Gonna hit a couple of points.

Accuracy. I find my Fenix 3HR to be pretty close on the accuracy, except when it REALLY isn't. So if it screws up, it's obvious.

Last Sunday I went X Country skiing for about 7K. Then went home and fell asleep watching Nascar. So moved very little outside of the skiing.



So it screwed up something, but it's pretty clear there was a screwup.

On the Garmin watch straps. Gonna disagree with the poster who said they were easy to change. It depends on the watch. Only some of the higher end ones use the quick release system. Mine doesn't come with a quick release, but I've learned I can use the same bands as the 5X and have one metal band on now with 2 silicon bands on the slow boat from China (Amazon). Check which watch you are looking at to see if it has the quick release or not. If it does, they are great but I don't think they are available outside of the pricier Fenix or Forerunner watches.

You mention the Vivoactive. They do not have the quick release so swapping bands takes a few minutes and a couple of small screwdrivers (that often come with a replacement band).

Having a Vivoactive, I've recently switched to one of the metal bands and I'm quite happy. It's not a quick release, but the two screws are easy to manipulate, and now that I've gone through a couple different bands I have like 6 or 8 of the screwdrivers... the screwdrivers with the less expensive/low quality bands are pretty much single use.

MonaRaeHill

Thanks stanmann571! I'll report back and maybe we can set up a post for just garmin users. I am excited to try them out.

MonaRaeHill

For anyone else interested in this: there's quite a few 'refurbished' ones on ebay, for less even, then most of the fitbit appliances. (<$50.00). I never buy anything new due to price gouging. I used to work for one of the richest people in town, and she told me to never buy anything new.......even on sale, we're paying too much for things, most of the time. It was good advice, which I heeded.

Tacklewasher

Search the groups. There are a few Garmin groups already, just no idea how active they are.

MonaRaeHill

So far, so good. Getting my garmin up to speed and almost ready to link it to MFP. I LOVE it, so far. Much easier and more intuitive then the fitbit. Already sold the fitbit HR, after only 2 days on Craigs list. I LOVE having the gps on my wrist and NOT having to carry my smartphone everywhere! I am going to keep the vivoactive, I think, even though I have a New VivoSport, on the way. I know my son will love this VivoActive one.........thanks for the recs, everyone! I will have a fitbit one, for sale, soon. lol.

SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish

I see a few Garmin vivoactive HR users here, have any of you noticed its behavior change in the past week? I was pretty happy with everything until this past week. Mine used to post activities on MFP and it doesn't now, which isn't a huge thing, but I also noticed some days this week it didn't have a negative value for calories when steps were low, and another day that negative value is much larger when steps were higher...not sure whats going on here. I have not really changed settings as far as I know, except for limiting which apps can post notifications to my watch, MFP is not one of those I limited so that shouldn't be it... In any case its probably an app change not a device issue, just still trying to figure out where/what setting...

TheFlyOnTheWall

I don't have a vivoactive, but I do have a forerunner 10 - and I've been having issues the past few days as well with garmin connect communicating with MFP, or vicey versey - seems one or the other is glitching

MonaRaeHill

Yes. I've noticed that it's a bit glitchy, wasn't sure why, being a new owner, just thought it was user-error. lol. It's been not-syncing that well, but only seems to happen at around 6:00 p.m. so I just wait until right b4 I go to bed, and try it then, which has worked well. I am guessing that the mother ship gets slammed at this time, so maybe it's just a broad-band issue?

jjpptt2

The connection/sync between garmin and MFP is iffy. Some days are fine, others... no dice.