Any Fitbit users tried Garmin Vivosmart 4?

yirara
yirara Posts: 9,993 Member
edited December 2024 in Fitness and Exercise
Looks like my Fitbit Charge 2 is finally getting old. I've been super annoyed with fitbit as of lately. Instead of improving things they've made their product totally useless on parts that are important to me: the maxHR setting cannot be set in the app anymore due an error, and reverts to the rubbish 220-age every few days when set on the website. Waiting for a fix of this problem since June. They also made the HR display in the iOS app useless. And a few more things. I've had it!

So I'm looking for a similar fitness band with good battery performance and sleek size. I want it to recognise a few workouts, like hiking, running and cycling automatically, be waterproof so that I don't need to take it off in the shower, a maxHR setting that works! And some kind of sleep phase recognition. So basically not a lot I think. I don't need gps, messaging, music, and whatnot.

So what's your experience with this?

Replies

  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    I used to use a Fitbit, it's what got me started down the tracking journey. I have a different Garmin watch, I like it much better personally, but I had an older Fitbit to compare against.

    The exercise tracking is a different paradigm with Garmin than what you're looking for. You can set the watch up to do what you want, but, by default, it's going to use GPS for running, cycling, and hiking, it will give you maps later alongside the stats about what you did. When you run the watch will measure cadence; if you look at the run data later in the app it can graph your heart rates across the run and overlay another chart of your cadence (or pace or elevation etc) so you can see how these things relate to each other. You can turn GPS off and have it just give you time in each heart zone of your prefer though.

    It's optimized for data quality, and all of that stuff that's on by default tends to work better if you tell it when your activity starts, picky folks don't want to miss the first minute or two of their data. You can have it do it for you automatically but 😳
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,993 Member
    Well, for running I use a dedicated app and separate website which is quite a brilliant combination for what I want. I would not want to wreck the battery life by tracking a full day hike, and having this start a few minutes later is no problem (especially if I can adjust it in the app like in Fitbit), so I would likely switch that off anyway and go with a tried and tested step size. Maybe Garmin is coming with something new in the new year, but I'm so annoyed that there are simply no small devices anymore. I have tiny wrists and very sensitive joints and skin. Which means I need to wear something small if I want to prevent injuries. Until Garmin comes up with something new, the Vivosmart 4 is the only option - and it's already 2 years old. Sigh.
  • wkay99
    wkay99 Posts: 29 Member
    I love my vivosmart - way better and more consistent than my fitbit. Although, in all fairness, I'm older and no longer run. Heart rate and sleep functions seem to work well.
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