Smartwatches continue to pile on capabilities in
impressive feats of multifunctionality encased in a few ounces of wrist-worn
tech. Garmin was one of the earliest significant brands in fitness-focused
smartwatches, building on the company’s history of GPS-centric devices. Amazon
has slashed the prices on two of Garmin’s most appealing smartwatches, both the Vivoactive 3 and the Forerunner 35.
We find the best deals on smartwatches as
they happen, so you won’t have to spend most of your time in finding the best
product to buy on internet. Because most of the merchants sometimes sell out of
even the deepest inventories, when we see particularly high-quality tech on
sale, we don’t hesitate to spread the word. Whether you’re shopping for your
first smartwatch or want to upgrade to one of the newer Garmin models, these
two deals can help you save up to $70. As at now if you buy any of these
mentioned products, you will 28% price sliced down.
This is a fitness wearable that you won’t want to take
off when you leave the gym. You can wear it while you’re exercising, but also
while you’re going about your daily activity, walking around the house, to and
from the shops, and while you’re sleeping.
It can be used to track swims as well as runs, bike
rides and gym sessions, plus it delivers notifications like a proper smartwatch
– a job it is surprisingly good at. It’s not quite a smartwatch in the sense of
an Android Wear watch or Apple Watch, because the number of apps that can be
installed isn’t as broad; instead think of it as a wearable that bridges the
gap between fitness devices and smartwatches.
Why Should I buy Garmin Vivoactive 3?
The reasons why you should have this wonderful
smartwatch are listed below;
1. You
can use this Smartwatch to Make Payment of all your shopping.
2. You
enjoy more than 15 preloaded sport app and choose it how you like to get fit
3. The
In-Built GPS make it to record your distance, your location, and all your
activities both indoor and outdoor as long as you set it and it is with you.
4. It
fit for all you do and for you.
5. It’s
work with all types of weather condition.
6. It
is waterproof. You can use it while you are swimming, raining and showing.
7. Readable
screen, you will be able to read all the text on its face clearly.
8. With
your tender touch, you will be able to wipe up and down easily.
9. Your
daily fitness and stress will be tracked
10. You
get connected and updated with your Smartphone, email, text messages, social
Medias etc.
11. Powerful
battery; the capacity of its battery will take up to 7 days and 13 hours GPS.
12. It
will rate the condition of your heart.
One area in which the Garmin Vivoactive absolutely
doesn’t convince is in its appearance. If this is Garmin trying to get all
lifestyle on us, then it’s not working – the Vivoactive’s functional physique
is not going to win any design awards.
The brushed stainless-steel bezel looks nice enough
but the black screen surround within and plain black polycarbonate body do
nothing to catch the eye. Neither does the stretchy black rubber wristband,
although you can easily replace this with something nicer given the watch has a
standard 20mm strap fitting.
Having said that, the Vivoactive 3 is lightweight and
comfy to wear and it’s packed with practical features. The strap, for starters,
has a phenomenal range of adjustment that means it’ll fit those with thick
wrists and thin alike (from 107mm to 204mm in circumference, to be precise).
It’s laden with
all the sensors you need for pretty much any fitness tracking task you can
think of. On the rear is an optical heart rate sensor and inside are GPS and
GLONASS positional radios, a barometric altimeter, compass, accelerometer and
thermometer. The watch is waterproof to 5ATM (50m) so you can take it in the
pool for a swim, and the screen is topped with Gorilla Glass 3 so should be
resistant to scratches and scuffs.
And, while the colours on the Vivoactive 3 Vivoactive 3’s 1.2in 240
x 240 resolution LCD are no match for the ultra-vivid Fitbit Ionic, Apple Watch
or Samsung Gear Sport, it is a sensible choice. It uses transflective LCD tech
so it’s always on, yet power efficient because it doesn’t require a backlight
to read in normal or bright sunlight. Plus, in contrast to regular OLED
smartwatch displays, the brighter the sunlight gets the clearer the display.
In the dark, the screen lights up when you raise your
wrist, but it is rather over-sensitive. I found it tended to activate when I wore
it in bed, waking me up in the middle of the night. Fortunately, you can put
the device into do not disturb mode pretty easily, although enabling an
automated schedule for this is a bit of a chore; in the Garmin Connect app you
have to adjust your “Sleep” time in User settings then dig into Device settings
to enable do not disturb during sleep.
Still, once you’ve set it up, the Vivoactive 3 works
absolutely beautifully. A button on one side performs a number of different
duties depending on the screen you’re in and whether you hold it down or tap
it.
There’s a touch screen up top, which you tap and swipe
to navigate through the watch’s various screens (you can control what’s shown
here via the Garmin Connect app) and on the right edge of the watch is a touch-sensitive
panel, which lets you scroll through menus and screens without needing to
obscure the watch face with your finger. In another nice touch, it’s possible
to flip the screen in settings so the button faces either left or right.
As far as Smartphone features go there’s also a lot
the Vivoactive 3 gets right, too. Long messages are truncated but shorter stuff
is readable in its entirety with a quick tap, whatever the messaging platform.
The Vivoactive 3 adds the ability to respond using canned responses, such as
“Sorry, can’t talk right now” or “In a meeting, call you later?” This is
limited to incoming phone calls and SMS messages, which is a shame, but it’s at
least better than what’s on offer on the Fitbit Ionic, which truncates messages
much more severely and doesn’t allow you to respond at all.
The fact that there’s no on-watch music playback,
however, is a bigger issue. You can view track names and control what’s playing
your phone via the Vivoactive 3 screen but if you want to take the watch out
running sans phone, you’ll have to go music free. That’s fine by me; I can’t
stand running with any kind of ear- or headphones but for some people, this
will be a deal breaker.
Garmin Pay – theVivoactive 3 ’s other big new feature
– is also a disappointment, at least for now. The theory is that you’ll be able
to use contactless terminals to pay for things in shops.
Here’s hoping this changes in the coming months.
However, even without it the Garmin Vivoactive 3 is a credible smartwatch
stand-in, especially as it also provides access to a decent selection of
third-party apps, widgets and watch faces via the Garmin IQ Connect store.
But you don’t buy a Garmin watch if all you want are
smartwatch functions. You buy one primarily because it’s great for activity and
fitness tracking and, on this front; the Vivoactive 3 is very good indeed.
First up, general activity tracking is excellent. The
watch keeps tabs on your steps, floors climbed and calories burned during the
day, and it continually monitors your heart rate both during the day and the
night, recording your heart rate at one-second intervals. There’s also sleep
tracking, which tracks your movement to indicate when you’ve been in light or
deep sleep or awake during the night.
The Vivoactive 3 also supplies a stress score, reports
your average resting heart rate and your estimated VO2 max – a measurement of
lung capacity and, therefore, your general cardiovascular fitness levels. It
can estimate your lactate threshold, a measurement that, some say, is a better
way to calculate exercise zones that your maximum heart rate.
Plus, there’s a huge range of activities it can track,
from the most basic (running and walking) to more specialist stuff such as swimming,
golf, indoor fitness machines, skiing, snowboarding and even paddle boarding.
Most of these are tweakable on the watch itself, too.
For example, select a Pool Swim and you’re prompted to select from a number of
presets or set your own length. You can choose what’s displayed during the
exercise and set alerts selected based on time, distance and calories burned.
There’s even more tweakability when it comes to
running and other GPS-based activities, with the ability to download workouts
from your training calendar, set alerts, laps, and turn on auto-pause so that
your average pace or speed doesn’t tumble while you’re waiting to cross the
road or stopped at traffic lights.
As for accuracy, that seems to be pretty good as far
as optical wrist-based heart rate sensors go. It tracks at around the same
level as the Fitbit Ionic and didn’t give me any strange readings when I and a
couple of colleagues tested it out while cycling and running in London. It
won’t track your heart rate while you’re swimming but you can add the
capability by pairing with either an ANT+ or Bluetooth smart chest strap like
the Garmin HRM+SWIM.
Likewise, the GPS worked well, tracking my position
during an hour-long bike ride tightly and accurately. The only small negative
point was that it did take a 30 seconds or so to lock onto a signal,
particularly in built-up areas. That’s not a problem when it’s balmy and bright
but during the winter months, you want to spend as little time as possible
outside freezing your various bits off waiting for a GPS lock.
Battery life is superb, though, and this is where the
Garmin Vivoactive 3 outdoes many of its smartwatch competitors. I found it
lasted as long as six days between charges when not employing the GPS and,
bearing in mind it’s tracking heart rate continually, that’s pretty impressive.
With Garmin rating GPS usage at 13 hours continuous, even if you do use it to
track a couple of runs a day or an hour or two of cycling, it should last three
to four days at least
The Garmin Vivoactive 3 is a GPS smartwatch
loaded with sports, fitness, health, and communications features. This Vivoactive 3 model has 15 GPS and indoor sports apps for yoga, swimming, running,
and more. You can track your VO2 max lev and even monitor how you handle
stress. This smartwatch supports contactless payments with Garmin Pay and
receives app alerts, text messages, social media updates, and email. Share your
activity with friends or use the watch to control streaming music. ,
Normally priced was $249.99, and the Garmin Vivoactive 3 has now cut down the price to $179.99 during this sale, 20% of the normal
price which was $70 has gone away. If you want a smartwatch to customize with
apps from Garmin’s Connect IQ store and the ability to personalize it with
watch faces and more, this is a great opportunity to take advantage of an
awesome price.
In short, I’m impressed – the Garmin Vivoactive 3 really is one special fitness watch. It ticks pretty much all the boxes: it’s
usable and accurate, has GPS, altimeter and heart-rate sensors, it tracks your
swims on top of all the regular fitness activities – plus a few extra – and
it’s a superb everyday activity tracker.
That it does all this while also packing in some
degree of smartwatch capability is truly remarkable and, while it isn’t a
beautiful device to look at, it achieves pretty much everything I’d want from
fitness-cum-smartwatch. The only major misfire is the lack of phone-free music
playback, and frankly that won’t bother everyone – it certainly doesn’t me. If
Garmin can sort out bank support for its NFC-based contactless payment system
it’ll be pretty much the perfect all-rounder.
Looking to save on Amazon devices? Visit here to get your own
with discount
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