I am one of those few people who needs a little nudge to get
up and take a walk or go to gym or take a dip in the pool. While it is not
difficult to track and remember to work out or play every day, it becomes a boring
task unless there is a goal. In such situations, it is essential to have a good
partner who works out with you or a dog who can make sure to get you moving.
However the most practical way is to push yourself to do things and with the
modern lifestyle is to have technology help you. I tend to ignore my health. I am sure you do too. I got my
hands on the Garmin Vivosmart HR a couple of months back and I am totally in
love with it. While I love watches and have quite a collection of them, I couldn’t
get myself to move on to fitness trackers as they would just take the look away
from my wrist and it is tedious to have a decent watch and a tracker. Garmin Vivosmart HR will
change that opinion.
What is in the box?
Garmin takes up the policy of no nonsense packing and gives
you a small box which holds the device, charger cable, a small guide and that’s
it.
The cable is simple to use and click perfectly even after
multiple usages on to the strap of the watch and works with an USB port. The
average charging time is about an hour and it works with full utility for about
2-3 days. I had to turn off unnecessary notifications from my phone like WhatsApp,
Facebook as they were over distracting and it worked for almost a week. That is
pretty decent battery time for a watch cum tracker. The best part here is that
the charger points aren't hindered even though the device is deeply
waterproofed.
The device is very simple to look at, weighs about 31 grams
and has a non-allergic band that fits to your arm so naturally that you won’t
even realise it is there. The two sensors under the hood that seek your pulse
on your wrist are lit up with green lights and are close to be accurate. The
strap comes in various sizes and has enough margin to adjust to your wrist.
There is a button on the device that helps you pull up menus on the screen and
also to turn on/off.
You need to download the Vivosmart HR app on your phone from
the app store and it is good to go.
Screen options:
First things first let us talk about the look and feel. The
watch is designed to be subtle and has a backlit display screen that is very
decent for its size and performs well under the ultimate pressure situations I
put it through. It is very readable in daylight yet calmer in darkness. The
screen comes alive with twist of your wrist and is very useful as it turns on
when you twist to see the time and goes blank when you flick your wrist again.
Daily Activity and sleep monitoring:
At the basic level Vivosmart HR tracks your steps, sleep,
stairs climbed, calories burnt, distance traveled and your heartbeat. As in
other devices that track your heart rate from your wrist, the more away from
the wrist bone, the better is the reading. Vivosmart HR comes with a special
Garmin algorithm that ensures it doesn't read non-walking exercises like
driving, playing a video game, popping as your steps. It is not 100% accurate
but much better than all the contemporary devices available in this price
range.
The number of steps you have taken today is the second screen to the default one (which gives you time, date...) and another useful thing
here on the steps page is that it also gives you the average steps taken in the
last one week! This is pretty good when you compare to setting a standard
6000/8000 steps and calling it a goal as it pushes you to do a bit more than
yesterday. Though this dynamic counter updates almost every day, skipping the
target once in a whole doesn't bring it down very much. You can override it and
set your own goal but you would want to keep it this way to see where you are
going. You get rewarded by small fireworks display on your screen when you reach the target.
The next screen gives you the distance traveled and the
calories (which uses the optical HR Sensor). But it also includes basic bodily
functions in this calculations.
You will also be able to see moderate exercise minutes
during the week and work towards them. Which means you should at least get
150-180 minutes (30 mins/day) of moderate exercise per week and Vivosmart HR
helps you monitor that. You can also modify this to set your own goal.
Next important feature is that you get to see the number of
floors climbed. Here the altimeter is in play as it tracks how many floors you
went up and how many you went down. Though the ones you go up are displayed on
your watch screen, full information is updated on your phone when you sync it.
This is accurate most of the time unless you are waving your arms on a slow
elevator or taking a flyover or a flight. I pretty much liked it that way.
Let us talk about sleep monitoring.
This is one of the coolest
features the watch offers you as it gives you not just the sleep times but also
the metrics like when you fell asleep, partially awake, awake, when you woke
up. Accuracy here is pretty good but I was upset with my deep sleep time as I
realised I am not sleeping well or tossing on the bed many times. It did show a
4 hour deep sleep for one day when I was really exhausted and slept like a log.
I cannot guarantee the accuracy here for deep sleep timing but let us say it is
at 80% of the time based on how satisfied I woke up.
Running or walking:
Did I mention that Vivosmart HR has a special screen only to
track your moderate exercise activity? There is an icon of a running man that
you need to touch and start your activity and then it tracks your workout.
Though it looks simple, you can actually check and set up tracking of heart
rate, distance, calories, time among others. While it rewards you with almost
accurate timings and distance you need to set your stride length in the app to
measure your workout better.
It enables you to have autolap for every mile or kilometre
and it will notify you by vibration. This becomes very helpful when you are
running or swimming. The only drawback here is that it doesn't come with a GPS
nor is it enabled to track using the mobile device.
Optical HR Sensor:
Garmin uses their own sensor called 'Elevate' which is quite
positive though I have had some issues when the watch moves towards the wrist
bone. It serves multiple purposes: monitoring heart rate all through the day,
more accurately during workout, it can also connect to ANT+ or other devices.
This is the best monitoring among all the devices as it track more information
than any other devices. It also gives you the average heart beat too to tell
you how your day has been, i.e., current HR vs Average resting HR.
Accuracy level: 80% which is pretty good for a device
measuring from your wrist.
Smart phone connectivity:
Though there is an option for giving you all the updates
from your phone, I personally found it distracting and didn't use it for more
than a day. Here are the functionalities: You can see the calls, text messages,
WhatsApp, Facebook updates which show you the first line or up to 50 characters
on the screen and you have an option to scroll to read the full message. If
your mobile is too far away and you want to read it, then using it is fine.
One of the best features is the music control. There is an
option for play, pause, previous, next track and the response is quite well at
even 20 feet. Now I tried connecting the phone to the Bluetooth speaker and
control from Vivosmart HR and it was as smooth as butter :) Very useful when
you have a Bluetooth headset and running or riding or swimming. You can freak
some people out when the songs change without touching.
The only drawback is that there is no storage capacity for
the music on the phone. But it’s okay as you constantly play music from your
phone seamlessly.
You can also read data like temperature, weather from your
phone and decide where you are running - outdoor or the treadmill.
The Garmin mobile app is pretty cool as they have too many
things in detail as you can see in some of the screens below and the sync is
quite fast and you have a whole dump of data on your phone.
To summarize, if you are looking for a high quality fitness
tracker that has multiple functionalities and are looking at someone to push
you, nudge you and track your steps and help in running, this is the best one
available at that cost. You can buy one from amazon for around INR 12000. It can be really
good for the features it is providing and can be helpful if you have just
started being serious about getting fit and running. It also ranks pretty high
when it comes to heart rate sensor devices and looks pretty cool on your wrist.
Though it is not a head turner to be frank, it is not distracting as well. I
would have loved to have a bigger display and more stats to play around on the
screen while keeping the sleek design. They could improve on the battery too
and make it last longer than what it is now. It is very decent in its
deliverables as long as you work out regularly and love tracking your stats and
taking life seriously. You deserve a Garmin Vivosmart HR to take a good look at
your health.
