Garmin Vivoactive 3 - Review 2022

The Garmin Vivoactive three ($269.99) is one of the near total-featured fitness trackers with smartwatch functionality you can get. It manages everything from contactless payments to stress measurement. While it doesn't runway the most avant-garde running metrics, like foot-ground contact time, it does calculate cadence, pace, and altitude using GPS. If you use it with an Android phone, you can even reply to text letters directly from the lookout. It could stand up to be a bit thinner and lighter, simply you'd take to lose the heart charge per unit monitor to make that happen. If you're a fitness enthusiast in the market for an everyday watch and tracker, this is the i to get, and our Editors' Choice.

At a Glance

Handsome yet uncomplicated with a round face, the Vivoactive 3 works as casual wear, a gym accessory, and even with business organization attire, provided you bandy the silicone band for something more upscale. The standard size bands and swap out easily with a little jump-loaded lever yous tin can press with a fingernail. The watch comes in 3 styles: white with stainless steel, black with stainless steel, and black with slate, which costs at niggling more than the others at $299.99.

Versatile equally information technology is, the Vivoactive 3 feels the tiniest bit thicker and heavier than I prefer. Size is relative, so I should mention that I'm five anxiety eight inches tall and non petite. The heft (ane.5 ounces, which is objectively not that heavy) and majority are due to the optical heart rate monitor.

The original Garmin Vivoactive, which does non take a heart rate monitor, weighs well-nigh 1.three ounces. I still own and love that watch. Information technology ready a high bar for the weight I'm willing to tolerate on my wrist. And quite frankly, I don't mind not knowing my middle rate 24/7, and the trade-offs of getting rid of the sensors volition be worthwhile to some. For example, eliminating the center charge per unit monitor increases the battery life from 1 calendar week to 3 in smartwatch mode. It's also much more comfortable to wearable while sleeping, typing, and pond. Yet, compared with other watches with heart rate monitors, the Vivoactive 3 is on the compact side.

Battery

The Vivoactive 3 ships with a proprietary USB charger that snaps securely into the dorsum of the lookout. A full battery lasts upwardly to 13 hours with the GPS running and up to vii days in smartwatch mode.

When in smartwatch mode, you can see the time and date, or whatsoever you choose for your watch face, on the screen at all times. When y'all raise your arm, the face illuminates. The screen is in full color and supports touch input. A unmarried physical push button on one side and grooved edge on the contrary side also help yous navigate the screens.

Features and Smart Functionality

Jam-packed with features, the Vivoactive iii runs the gamut of being excellent for fitness tracking, running, and equally a smartwatch.

As a fitness tracker, it counts steps, stairs, slumber, heart rate all mean solar day and nighttime, calories burned, number of active minutes per day, and stress (using center rate VO2 max and other data). It likewise supports a long list of activities you can runway both indoors and outdoors, such as running, walking, bicycling, aerobic exercise, pond, force training, yoga, and many others. You can customize which activities show up on the sentinel and then that yous tin track your favorite ones hands.

At that place's a move reminder that nudges you to become up if you've been all the same for too long, an alert with vibration, and one of my favorite features, a do-not-disturb push in the settings that silences notifications.

For running and outdoor activities, the Vivoactive 3 uses GPS. It also has smart plenty motion sensors to calculate running cadency, even during treadmill runs.

In terms of smartwatch functionality, the Vivoactive 3 cover the bases, with support for incoming notifications of all kinds, remote controls for music and podcasts, a screen displaying electric current weather weather condition, and and then forth. You lot can further customize what's on your lookout man by adding apps from the Garmin Connect IQ app store. One of my favorites displays the current fourth dimension in time zones y'all choose. That said, it doesn't accept the same extensive collection of 3rd-political party apps available for the Apple tree Sentry.

One added capability non notwithstanding found in other Garmin watches is support for contactless payments using Garmin Pay. (It will be offered in the Precursor 645 and Forerunner 645 Music when those devices launch.) Y'all enter a credit card in the Garmin Connect mobile app, add together a PIN, and so use your spotter anywhere contactless payments are accustomed to brand purchases. For the purchase to get through, you accept to enter your Pivot on the sentinel itself, but you don't need your phone on hand for it to piece of work. The specific credit cards that are supported vary by country; as of this writing, Visa and Mastercard work in the The states.

Whether you'll really use Garmin Pay is another story. I've had my middle cleaved numerous times over the promise that NFC or other cashless-cardless payment systems would go universal in the US. I'm no longer holding my breath.

Accuracy

In accurateness, the Garmin Vivoactive 3 performed extremely well. I compared daily steps, altitude during action, center rate at rest, center charge per unit at low intensity activity, and heart rate at high intensity activity with a few dissimilar pieces of equipment.

For daily walking, I compared the footstep counts from the Vivoactive 3 with the Misfit Ray. After four days of tracking, they were on average nigh 600 steps different, about a quarter mile, just they were non consistent in how they were different. On 2 occasions the Ray's readings were college and on 2 the Vivoactive's were college.

On a treadmill walk and run, the distance recorded by the Vivoactive 3 matched that of the Wahoo Tickr X well-nigh exactly. The treadmill itself clocked about 0.1 mile more than. The Vivoactive iii gives you the opportunity to adjust the mileage for a treadmill walk to help calibrate it, and so if you're sure your treadmill is accurate, yous can marshal the watch to the same measurements.

Heart rate readings were about matched those of the Tickr X, as well, typically lagging behind by just a second or so whenever my center rate changed. Otherwise, they were always within two or iii beats of one another at rest, during both low- and high-intensity activity. Those numbers also lined up with readings from the treadmill's handgrip heart rate sensors, again with a very short lag.

Comparisons and Conclusions

The Garmin Vivoactive 3 has only about every characteristic you'd want and expect from a fitness tracker, plus a few extras—stress readings, contactless payments, cadence measurements, ability to reply to texts when paired with Android—that make it more technologically luxurious. You lot tin can clothing it in the pool and track pond equally an activity, or employ information technology during a weight-lifting session to count reps. And with the Connect IQ app store, you lot tin can further customize the watch's capabilities and informational screens. Information technology'south supremely multi-purpose, simply still easy to use and gets the cadre elements right.

Every bit to price, at $269.99, information technology'south not an impulse purchase. That said, Garmin watches take a reputation for lasting a long time. Information technology's a expert price for a device that does so much, especially if you don't intend on replacing information technology for five or 6 years. The Fitbit Ionic costs more, and its manner, with a foursquare face up instead of circular and a more streetwear look, is less versatile.

If Garmin sold the same lookout simply without the heart rate monitor, I'd still purchase it, and I might even prefer information technology for existence a touch lighter and thinner. Equally is, information technology'due south still ane of the best fitness products nosotros've tested. Garmin really hits the sweet spot with the Vivoactive 3, and earns our Editors' Selection.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/review/19711/garmin-vivoactive-3

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