This is not as big on the wrist as you would think it is. From other pictures that looked like it might be huge. It's not. The screen is very easily to read and the app works really well. I'm not a runner. Even though I'm a fitness person (pro dancer/performing arts) I didn't purchase this for that reason. I purchased it for the heart rate tracking. I purchased it for general idea to see what my heart is doing while at rest and sleeping. Just to get a general idea not to be 100% accurate. I do understand the importance of having accuracy while doing activities. Also I understand the accuracy in the pedometer part. But one thing I also know is that any kind of motion may be registered with burning calories and such. So sometimes I think that people forget that part of fitness in their reviews.
In the app there's not a section for dance or Performing Arts. I'm not quite sure what would be the equivalent in the preset activities. Maybe outside of cardio not quite sure I haven't played around with the app that long. I've only used it for 2 days.
It was fairly easy to set up as long as you follow the sequence. If you have patience it will work out for you. So no it's not going to sync up with in 45 seconds or less. Straight out the box it's going to come with a dead battery. It's going to take about three to five minutes for the actually charge and the screen come on consistently. It takes about an hour and a half worth of charge to full power. During this time you can download the app from the App Store, and pair your device accordingly. The process takes about 10 to 15 minutes. The reason for that is it's going to make you set up an account and it asked you some decent questions. I'm not quite sure what the desktop setup would be like but according to setting up via phone or mobile device it's going to take you about 10 to 15 minutes.
Also depending on your connectivity if you lose Bluetooth signal, do you may add an extra one two three minutes on to this time. So don't be frustrated getting it out the box. This is a Garmin device. In all of my years of experience, Garmin does take a little longer to set up but it's well worth it.
My band was regular fit, I don't have a lot of extra length hanging around once I fastened it. It's not super tight and it hasn't left a mark on my skin. It's actually really comfortable. I'm not quite sure what the other reviews were saying how it is uncomfortable are leaving marks. But for me it's actually pretty fine. It's no different than wearing a regular watch. There's no extra pressure. I have other bracelets on around it and it doesn't rub. I even had a long sleeve tight shirt on yesterday and there was no additional pressure.
I did buy a protective screen for it but I have not put it on yet I wanted to see how the device held up over 48 hours. That's far as it's held up very well. With the placement on my dominant hand it's not cumbersome.
Even want the vibration notification to move or when you get a message it's not overpowering or disturbing. It's no different than if you had your phone in your pocket on vibrate.
For Sleep purposes you do have to go in and program the hours and what you think you're going to sleep so it can monitor your sleep activity. However if you do sleep longer than that it will just calculate whatever it is into a resting position. So it doesn't automatically know if you're asleep or if you're just sitting down.
I will monitor my use with the watch. I will update this accordingly if things change. But I do highly recommend this for people who want to have a general idea of what their Fitness is. It actually makes me feel a lot better about myself when I am at rest/ non overall physical activity, which helps de-stress my mindset. It did pick up by steps accurately when I was walking around from place to place. Buy it doesn't count when i go up ans down stairs as it should. I live upstairs so i go up and down stairs often.
When I do a strenuous activity I will check the monitoring then to see how accurate it is but if you're looking to just get an overall perspective, don't want something that's super Gotti or noticeable on your wrist, an easy-to-follow information I would suggest this watch.
From time to time you can always hit the sync button if you haven't open the app for a while. But it does auto sync on its own every so often.
I have showered and washed my hands fequently since the purchase it is waterproof. In the shower i noticed The running water caused if to cycle through The fitness options, but it was no biggie. The display isn't always on all the time but whenever there's a change of life or I tap it it comes on. Which is good for battery for Life preservation.
If you are able to I would probably get an additional band. As the regular size is for small-to-medium wrist. I have a fairly medium size wrist. I can see myself getting a larger band in the future if it poses a problem but it's okay.
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Reviews with images
Not bad for the price, but it wasn't what I was looking for
When I first bought this on April 22, 2016, it cost me $150. I’ve noticed the price has been in flux for the past few months, but checking today (October 3rd), I was surprised to see it was still $150. I first decided to buy this because I noticed my heart always seemed to be racing at work, and because this had a heart-rate monitor, I wanted this one as opposed one of the cheaper options. I also really wanted an Apple Watch, so being able to get my notifications was also important. Finally, because I did want the Apple Watch, I wanted to make sure I would actually WEAR a watch (I’m a stereotypical millennial who has never worn a watch because I’ve had a cell phone within arms reach for half my life). In full disclosure, I lasted 5 and a half months with this watch, which I wore nearly every day. The only times I didn’t wear it when I forgot it at home because I had to charge it and forgot to put it back on. When I didn’t wear it, I sorely missed it. If nothing else, this turned me on to watches for the rest of my life. Having the time RIGHT THERE is so amazing, but I digress.Here are a few categories I wanted to discuss further, in no particular order:WATER PROOF: Early on, I wanted to test if it was truly water proof. I choose this Vivosmart over a similarly priced Fit Bit because it was water proof… which, in hind sight was kind of dumb because I only swim once a year. (Ironically, instead of buying the Apple Watch series one, I pre-ordered the series two… still knowing I don’t swim). I think I initially decided I needed my Vivosmart to be water proof was because I was certain that if I took my watch off while I was in the shower, I would forget to put it on before I went to work. For the first month or so, I only took it off to charge. So watch is CLEARLY water proof. I did end up stop wearing it in the shower because if the point was to not take it off, I definitely had to take it off after my shower to dry it anyway. If not, it was like getting a hair tie wet and waiting for it to dry; it agitated my wrist. As well, I did go swimming once with it on. It was in a pond, over the course of several hours, and my only complaint is that the water pressure was enough to change the screen (as if it were a finger sliding), so when I wanted to keep it on the time, every time I splashed in the water, it changed to something else. But that is obviously a really minor annoyance. I think this would be a great fitness tracker for someone who wants to be in the water a lot.MOTIVATION: For about a week, every time my tracker got a little line saying it had been an hour since I last stood up, I would get up and walk around. One thing I actually LOVE about this fitness tracker is that it adjust the step goal based on how active I actually am. So if I walk a lot (like when I’m at work during the school year), it would naturally raise my goal. But when I sat at home during summer vacation and didn’t move at all, it would lower my goal to what it thought was a more “realistic standard” for my actual level of activity in the recent past. This way, I’m not held to the 10,000 step that the My Fitness Pal app or my sister’s Fit Bit suggested. During the summer, I definitely wouldn’t have hit that, so I like that it tried to motivate me by giving me a realistic goal and only increasing if I met the goal the day before. Now, I’ll talk more about the actual Garmin Connect App later, but there was only a few times I was motivated on that end. First, for about two weeks, I was obsessed with beating everyone on the “step challenge” in the app. At first, it wanted us to compete to hit (or exceed) 10k steps (you’re put in with like 10 other people either “at random” or “people who have similar step trends,” I think they claimed the latter, but I don’t know how true it is). The second week it jumped up to 40k. Now, this motivated me for two weeks, but I had the Vivosmart for 6 months. In fact, I pretty much stopped using the app at all after about two or three months. Another way the app and the watch are supposed to motivate the wearer is by sharing the steps with friends; however, literally everyone I know has a Fit Bit, so that was no motivation at all for me. (It’s still the problem, because I only know one other person with an Apple Watch). Overall, did this make me become more active? Not really. But that’s okay, too, because it made me more aware of my habits.COMFORT: In one review I read before deciding on the Vivosmart HR, one girl mentioned how insanely uncomfortable this was. Now, it did take me a little while to get used to it. I wore those rubber LiveStrong type bracelets since high school, but this is completely different than that. Initially, I couldn’t sleep for the first few days because it hurt so much, but I quickly adjusted. I have very small wrists, so I always kept it on four or five. The biggest discomfort came from the fact that the heart rate monitor actually protrudes. It sticks out and “digs” into the wrist. I assume it’s to get a more accurate heart rate, but whether it actually does is up for debate (I would argue it’s far less accurate than my Apple Watch has been, and it’s SIGNIFICANTLY less comfortable, too). While the heart rate monitor did tend to leave a mark on my skin if left in one position for too long, I did get used to it. Toward the end, maybe for the last month or so, I did start taking it off at night. However, I can’t say I would want to sleep with my Apple Watch on, either. Besides, I don’t know accurate the sleep monitor part of it was, anyway. I don’t need a constant reminder that I didn’t get enough sleep, and I really didn’t want my watch telling me I got a great night sleep when I knew I woke up and rolled over several times and woke up exhausted. Overall about comfort: mildly annoying at times, but mostly I got used to it.CONNECT APP: I HATE the app. This app may work great for some people. I think this fitness tracker for someone who wants to differentiate their workouts. So, I think that maybe a weight-lifter or someone who does a lot of different activities. I barely did ANY activity, so I think the app was needlessly complicated. Like I mentioned, I stopped opening the app at all after two or three months. The thing that sucked about it was that certain features could only be used if the app was running on my phone, like the weather. I used to think it was cool to check the weather on my watch, but the app was such a hassle, I stopped opening it, so I couldn’t access the weather.NOTIFICATIONS: On the weekends and over summer, I got a TON of notifications for a bunch of things I never needed to know right away. I did really like getting my messages or seeing a phone call come in while I was at the store so I knew to dig out my phone. Did I need all the CNN updates and new emails? Probably not, but it was still cool. What I didn’t like about the notifications was the fact that I apparently didn’t get good enough service in my school building to actually receive notifications at work, which was kind of a main reason I wanted it. The weirdest thing is that I’ve never had a problem getting ANY of my notifications on my Apple Watch, so I don’t know if the push notifications are different because even if it is over “bluetooth,” it’s going from Apple product to Apple product. So if you sometimes have a hard time receiving calls or messages because you work in a cement bunker, this may not be the best option. However, I will say that I think a notification feature is a MUST for any fitness tracker.BATTERY LIFE: I never had this die on me. ONCE (in six months), I had a little empty battery icon show up, but it lasted until I got home so I could charge it. When researching, that was one thing that people complained about, but it was never an issue for me. I did have to charge it twice a week, something like every 3-5 days (I don’t know why it lasted longer sometimes, or if sometimes I would just remember to charge it while I was in the shower when it was still half full). I HAVE to charge my Apple Watch every night, but I also know that the vivosmart without the HR that one of my coworkers has has a different battery, which lasts for a year then it needs a new battery. Really, it would depend on what you were looking for. It only took between 30 minutes and an hour to charge, so I would usually just charge it when I woke up in the morning and grab it before I left for work (which is how I left it at home once or twice). NOTE: Make sure it's actually plugged in. It's a bizarre way to charge something. Once (but only once), it didn't have a strong connection, so it didn't charge.HEART RATE: Now, I don’t really know how accurate it is. Sometimes I would be mid-work out and my heart-rate would read in the 60s, and I know my heart NEVER gets that low. Even at rest, my heart rate averages in the mid-eighties. It seems like sometimes tightening the band so the light sensor was closer to my wrist worked, but sometimes I had to stop the work out all together and wait a few minutes before it would finally catch up.Overall, I think the true testament of this watch is the fact that I wore it practically every day for six months. I wanted an Apple Watch when I bought this, but the truth of the matter is that if I didn’t end up buying the Apple Watch, I would still be wearing this Vivosmart HR because I wouldn’t have traded it for a Fit Bit or any other fitness tracker. The ONLY thing I would give this up for was the Apple Watch, but the Vivosmart was $162 after taxes and the Apple Watch was nearly $400. I always say it’s unfair to compare a $25 bluetooth speaker to a $100 bluetooth speaker because most of the time, a higher price means a better product. So for me, this was just an expensive test to see if I would wear a watch before I bought the one I really wanted. I think I was kind of rough on this fitness tracker, but it was also a long time coming. I specifically held off on writing this review until I had a ton of data. I love this watch and I hated it when I forgot it at home. The only problem, truly, with this watch, was that I wanted an Apple Watch when I bought it and then, after six months, I finally did buy it. Otherwise, I would still be all about this fitness tracker. No, it didn’t make me want to get up and move, but it did what I wanted to do: it made me more aware of my heart rate and my habits.I think that all of these fitness trackers market to different types. If you want to compete with your friends, I would definitely recommend getting the one they have. Most of my students have Fit Bits, and they love competing with each other. Also, this is a great one if you want to swim. If you don’t care about it being water proof, though, I think the Fit Bit has a better app. I won’t try and convince you that this is the best one for you, but it worked well for me for six months.Overall, if you want a really decent fitness tracker without a $400 price tag, this may be what you’re looking for.
