Best smart watch on the market?

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btanton27
btanton27 Posts: 186 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Im looking for suggestions on a new smart watch. I've had a fitbit, which i found unreliable on step counting (I'm a chef and it counts chopping as steps). I've also had a Samsung Gear, which was okay but the battery died quickly and wasn't water resistant whatsoever. My last was an Asus smartwatch which i loved but it didnt stay charged for long and the spot to charge it was magnetic, so if it got dirty it wouldn't connect. I need something water resistant, long battery life, and more accurate for tracking exercise. Bonus points if it connects to mfp! Please help!!!

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  • Pamshebamm181
    Pamshebamm181 Posts: 92 Member
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    I have a Garmin vivosmart which does all those things. I love it.
  • ChiliPepperLifter
    ChiliPepperLifter Posts: 279 Member
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    I really love my Garmin Vivoactive!
  • btanton27
    btanton27 Posts: 186 Member
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    Ive been looking into the Garmin products, thank u!
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
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    Look at the new Garmin Vivoactive 3. Not cheap, but it meets all your wants.
  • Catawampous
    Catawampous Posts: 447 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    Look at the new Garmin Vivoactive 3. Not cheap, but it meets all your wants.

    Nice looking watch! I was looking for one myself. But oouuucchhhh you weren't kidding about not being cheap lol
  • vismal
    vismal Posts: 2,463 Member
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    Garmin > Fitbit because they're WATERPROOF! Not sweatproof or water resistant but WATERPROOF! I was given a Fitbit Surge and it went dead from frequent hand washing (I work in the medical field and sometimes I have to wash up to my elbows. I won't even consider a watch that isn't waterproof. The ability to have it on in a pool, shower, the rain, etc is such a major feature when everything else about the two brands are relatively similar for what you pay.

    As to accuracy, the Fitbit was better at tracking when holding something with both hands like a shopping cart or stroller. My Garmin kind of sucks at this (vivosmart 3). I can mow a lawn that should yield me 4k steps and I usually get under 500. Maybe the reason the Garmin does bad at this might be related to why the Fitbit gave you extra steps for things like chopping, just different levels of sensitivity to what triggers a step. Other than that it is very accurate. Carrying things, using a phone in the same hand as the watch, all of those things trigger steps correctly. I have yet to find an activity that results in false steps.

    As for battery, my Garmin gives me 3 days of use with 24/7 heart monitoring, a little less if I play with it a lot. What I found as a pleasant surprise was how fast it charges. I usually don't plug it in until it tells me it's less than 10% and it will fill back up to 100% in about 30 minutes.

    Tracking workouts is neat but not very useful. When I lift weights the thing is surprisingly good at knowing what exercise I'm doing. I was honestly shocked at how often it picked correctly. Obviously it won't work on leg isolation moves but it was able to know I was doing barbell squats. Like I said, neat but not really useful to me at least.

    It's calories burned count has gotten better with time. I feel like it still overestimates a bit but it is dramatically better than the fitbit. With the fitbit using the heart rate monitor it overestimated my calories burned by what I believe to be 500 per day. That's a huge margin of error. With the heart rate monitor off the fitbit undershot me by about 250. The Garmin is pretty close most days maybe +/- 200. I'll note that this is all based on my actual results compared to my calorie intake, so it's not exactly "my best guess" but I am very accurate with tracking calories in and my maintenance has been pretty consistent for almost 5 years now.

    All in all, for the 110ish I paid at Walmart I'd certainly say the Vivosmart 3 is worth it. No GPS but I don't run so if that's a concern for you maybe look at one of their models that does come with GPS.
  • charlenekapf
    charlenekapf Posts: 309 Member
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    Following. The fit bit sucked at accuracy on the stairmaster. I would have to have one hand off and one hand on (on for balance not leaning) to track steps and if my wrists got sweaty it stopped tracking heart rate. It worked well for hiking, cycling but I would love something more accurate and better at constant accurate HR monitoring.
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
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    The new Apple Watch with cell service is coming out any day now. It does everything you mention AND you can make calls and send texts with it. I have the current model and love it.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
    edited September 2017
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    nowine4me wrote: »
    The new Apple Watch with cell service is coming out any day now. It does everything you mention AND you can make calls and send texts with it. I have the current model and love it.

    My .02 pesos on the Apple Watch (disclaimer - I'm a big Apple fan and own a lot of Apple products):

    I've worn/used an Apple Watch every single day for the last two years. It's the best smartwatch on the market, bar none - as far as the power and usefulness of a smart watch, I don't think there's anything on the market that's even close. The watch itself is a great piece of hardware and it's typical of the high quality in Apple devices - very well built and supported by the best customer service in the industry. With that said, it's nowhere near the best fitness/workout tracker.

    Don't get me wrong, the GPS works well enough and it will faithfully log your steps/movement, workouts, standing time, etc., but I'm a data/numbers geek and the data you get from your workouts on the Apple Watch is painfully limited. Their activity/workout tracking software is dismal - it's hard to compare performance across workouts, it doesn't give a useful way to show personal records (PRs) in your workouts, no web platform (you can only view them within the Activity app on the phone), and overall it seems more like a rudimentary afterthought than a well-designed and thought out database. IMO, the software is the Apple Watch's biggest weak spot as an activity/workout tracker and is my biggest point of dissatisfaction (along with my two main hardware gripes - dismal battery life and the lack of an always-on display).

    I switched to a Garmin 935 just over two weeks ago. In all honesty, I wasn't sure if it would satisfy me in terms of smartwatch capability, and I was wondering if I would end up using the Garmin for workouts and the Apple Watch for the rest of the day. So far, the Garmin has enough of the smartwatch capabilities to work as my all day, every day watch - it doesn't do everything the Apple Watch does, but it does enough for me (I couldn't care less about using my watch for phone calls, and I'm finding I can live without being able to answer text messages from it. I tried the phone call feature on my Apple Watch a couple times as a novelty and have never used it since). OTOH, the Garmin Connect software platform blows Apple away by a huge margin for workout/activity tracking. There's not even a comparison. It also integrates tightly with MFP - sends your steps/activity to MFP and reads your calorie logging from your MFP diary to display in your Garmin Connect dashboard, gives a quick but very thorough glance at your activity, calories, etc. for the day. HYOOGE difference in functionality and usefulness, IMO - in both the mobile app and the web version (the latter of which Apple doesn't even have). The battery life on the Garmin is also far better - over a week at a time between charges, even using the GPS multiple times a week for workouts. I also like the always-on display and the multiple, customizable workout screens for every different kind of workout.

    I don't love Apple any less. I still think they make great, very high-quality products and have absolutely unparalleled customer service/support. But as it specifically pertains to a watch/fitness/activity tracker, I've found a new love.


    [ETA:] When shopping for/comparing fitness trackers (amongst lots of other things), a great resource is DC Rainmaker's Site. He conducts very thorough, comprehensive reviews of a lot of fitness products which usually answer more questions about products than you even knew you wanted to ask.
  • btanton27
    btanton27 Posts: 186 Member
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    Thank u for all the input! This helps immensely!
  • jdlobb
    jdlobb Posts: 1,232 Member
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    nowine4me wrote: »
    The new Apple Watch with cell service is coming out any day now. It does everything you mention AND you can make calls and send texts with it. I have the current model and love it.

    I'm pissed that the Nike edition doesn't drop until the end of October. I was waiting for the new Apple Watch, and now I have to wait another month. But best believe I'll have it.

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