Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot without its flaws.
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2014
Looking back on this review's pros/cons, it appears that I severely dislike this product. This is not the case. What it is intended to do is get you active and it does that quite well. My holy grail is an ANT+ capable phone that aggregates all of my ANT+ devices (HRM, Pedometer, Cadence counter, speedometer, petal power meter) and graphs it all out over time to show improvements. The Vivofit is not that. Vivofit shows me that, ultimately, I am a lazy human being but after wearing this device, I am less lazy. I credit the 15lbs I have lost in 1 month to Vivofit. Some of that weight loss was due to the aggravation caused by the Vivofit, but I lost this weight nonetheless.
PROS
1. Accurate step tracking. It doesn't count many wrist movements as steps and will accumulate about 10 steps before counting them (backtracking to include those skipped) in order to reduce the errors. My fiance has a Fitbit and it shows 10% more steps when comparing our steps when doing the same activity. If your hands are immobilized during a walking activity (mowing the lawn, shopping), wear this device on your ankle...if it fits.
2. Website allows for in depth reporting and export to CSV.
3. Red bar shows you when you need to get up and be active. During the work week, I rarely see this as I'm usually pretty mobile. on the weekends however, I am a sack of potatoes. That red bar is enough for me to get up and walk it off.
4. Sleep monitoring is a nice feature but doesn't provide any quantifiable metrics.
5. Heart rate monitor is spot on. I have tested this against multiple HRM's from workout machines with metal conductivity pads and the variance is less than 1 bpm. I haven't tested this out with a resting heart rate though. Communication between the HRM and the Vivofit is very reliable and the HRM fits well and doesn't move.
6. Battery life is perfect. It would have been nice for a push button light but I'd rather not push the price up or reducing the battery life on account of me not being able to see my step count when I'm in bed at night.
CONS
1. No connectivity to biking ANT+ devices. My morning routine is bicycling and with the exception of heart rate monitoring, the workout goes without being tracked lest I wear the Vivofit on my ankle, which will ultimately skew my step count for the day.
2. Android app is the lite version of the website interface. I am unable to do advanced edits for activities.
3. Partnering with MyFitnessPal for diet tracking seems like an afterthought and while the communications between the apps works fine, there are some anomalies when it comes to marking your daily weight, sometimes the apps overwrite each other and data is lost. I would prefer having the Connect app do it all without having to download the MFP app as well.
4. Like most things Garmin, the website is visually appealing but very buggy to the point of being annoying. Modules you've removed from your dashboard randomly reappear, server timeouts are numerous, and information is hidden in layers of pretty sliding things.
5. My largest complaint is the Activities module that tracks heart rate data and outputs it to the app. Well, that's what it is supposed to do. This is the one thing that sets it apart from all of the other fitness trackers and was the primary reason I bought it. I use this device to track my heart rate along with all of the other telemetry (having manually input from other bicycling devices) and I can graph it over time in the app, somewhere, I forget where most of the time. The problem is that it doesn't do it 50% of the time. An activity that is shorter than 15 minutes isn't counted (I do a lot of short burst workouts throughout the day and these go unnoticed in my daily totals). I'm not sure what the maximum length is, but I know that upwards of 2 hour and it doesn't count it either. As long as you're within these times, it counts it 75% of the time. This just isn't acceptable level of consistency.
6. This device needs an ankle strap accessory. I mowed a half-acre yard and it said I did 200 steps because my wrist was immobile.
7. It counts calories but I would take it with a grain of salt. The net calories counter is a terrible way to track caloric intake. It would be better to show intake next to spend rather than having a bar chart showing you that the lunch you ate put you at less negative calories. Very confusing interface and hard to see your total daily calories at a glance.
