Garmin vívosport Large Review | 171 Data compared

Garmin Vivosport Review Summary The Garmin Vivosport (2017) is a minimalist, lightweight fitness band that packs the robust features of a full GPS smartwatch into a slim, 27-gram silicone profile. It stands out as one of the smallest trackers to offer an always-on color display, built-in GPS, a barometric altimeter, and a heart rate monitor. Key advantages highlighted in the review include its impressive five-to-seven-day battery life in watch mode, smart notification integration, and accurate indoor tracking that counts gym sets and reps. Additionally, it features an exceptionally bright backlight that offers excellent visibility in poor lighting conditions. However, the device has notable drawbacks, primarily centered around its button-free touchscreen, which is described as overly sensitive. This touchiness causes frequent accidental inputs during daily tasks or when exposed to water, often requiring users to take it off before showering to avoid logging false activities. Furthermore, the review notes that the GPS can be slow to lock on, the aesthetic design is somewhat bland, and it lacks dedicated swim tracking modes. While it lacks the advanced connectivity needed for serious cyclists...

The Garmin Vivosport is praised as a feature-rich, lightweight tracker boasting built-in GPS, 50-meter water resistance, and advanced metrics like VO2 Max and stress monitoring, along with a seven-day battery life. Its functionality is supported by the user-friendly Garmin Connect app, making it a strong choice for active users. Conversely, the review highlights the device's uninspiring, utilitarian design and a narrow screen that limits readability. While offering stellar performance, the Vivosport falls short for users prioritizing a stylish or premium aesthetic.

The Garmin Vivosport is a compact, lightweight fitness tracker that successfully integrates built-in GPS and advanced heart rate features into a notably slim form factor. It upgrades the user experience with a clear, always-on colour touchscreen display that ensures excellent visibility in sunlight. In terms of performance, the device tracks a wide array of wellness metrics, including 24/7 continuous stress tracking, VO2 max estimation, and automatic activity detection for running and walking. The battery life is respectable, comfortably delivering 4 to 5 days of real-world usage with regular short GPS activities, and up to 7 days in basic smartwatch mode. However, the tracker has notable limitations, particularly for outdoor cycling where the wrist-based optical heart rate sensor suffers from poor stability and inaccurate readings. It is also incapable of connecting to any external ANT+ or Bluetooth sensors, which prevents users from pairing it with a chest strap or cycling speed/cadence sensors. Additionally, the device uses "Smart Recording" rather than 1-second data intervals, causing the GPS tracks to appear somewhat blocky and cut corners on tight turns or trail switchbacks. Finally,...

The Garmin Vivosport is a compact, highly functional fitness tracker that stands out for its robust activity-tracking capabilities, packing full GPS, a heart rate sensor, and an altimeter into a lightweight band. Unlike most modern wearables, it features a 24/7 always-on memory-in-pixel (MIP) LCD screen that feeds off ambient light, making it exceptionally clear and easy to read under direct sunlight without draining battery life. It integrates seamlessly with the comprehensive Garmin Connect app, which provides highly accurate data like VO2 Max, distance, and elevation metrics, making it an excellent, low-profile alternative to bulky running watches for dedicated runners and cyclists. The battery reliably lasts up to seven days during general use and around five hours when continuously tracking outdoor workouts with GPS active. Despite its enduring performance, the tracker’s age shows in its design and specific technical limitations. Its primary drawbacks include a screen that appears dim and dull when viewed indoors, an older GPS chip that can occasionally take several minutes to triangulate a signal outdoors, and a complete lack of swim tracking modes despite having 5ATM water...

The Garmin Vivosport is a reliable, lightweight, and durable sports band-style fitness tracker that functions effectively as a basic smartwatch, delivering full-text push notifications from Android and iOS devices. The tracker features an always-on, customizable, and dim color touchscreen display with no physical buttons, relying entirely on swipes and taps. In terms of battery life, the device lasts about seven days in smartwatch mode and up to eight hours with continuous GPS usage. Performance testing proved the device to be highly accurate for heart rate monitoring and step counting. Additionally, users can easily calibrate distance inaccuracies directly within the Garmin Connect companion app to ensure precise tracking over time. Key Pros and Cons A major advantage of the Vivosport is its comfort and comprehensive suite of automated activity tracking options, which includes MoveIQ and automatic rep counting for strength training. Fitness enthusiasts will also appreciate advanced metrics rarely found in this category, such as VO2 max, heart rate zones, and stress level monitoring based on heart rate variability. On the downside, the device is considered expensive for a standard sports...

The Wareable review praises the Garmin Vivosport as a feature-packed, sporty tracker offering solid battery life (up to seven days) and built-in GPS for comprehensive activity tracking. Key strengths include an always-on Chroma touchscreen display with great daylight visibility, alongside heart rate monitoring and a slim design. Conversely, the review highlights significant drawbacks regarding the fiddly, highly sensitive touchscreen navigation, which often triggers in bed. Additionally, the device features a low-resolution screen with a large, unappealing bezel and lacks the physical buttons found on previous models, making, according to the review, navigation frustrating. Wareable

In his review, John Galea evaluates the Garmin Vivosport primarily as a compact, affordable secondary device to complement his higher-end Fenix 5, allowing him to track 24/7 metrics without wearing a bulky sports watch at all times. On the positive side (pros), he praises its slender, lightweight form factor that is slightly thinner than older models, the bright, always-on color display, and its capability to provide advanced health metrics like all-day stress tracking and REM sleep detection. He is also highly impressed by its heart rate accuracy during a smooth bicycle ride, its solid tracking performance during a cold hike, strong vibration alerts for smartphone notifications, and the addition of useful count-up and countdown timers.

Garmin Vivosport Review Summary The Garmin Vivosport is a discreet, comfortable, and feature-rich fitness tracker designed for everyday use and casual athletes. It stands out by offering built-in GPS tracking and high-frequency, constant heart-rate monitoring at one-second intervals, making its basic fitness tracking quite accurate. The tracker also introduces a barometric altimeter to count stairs, stress level logging via heart rate variability, and automatic activity tracking. Furthermore, its battery life is highly reliable, lasting up to a full week in smartwatch mode or up to eight hours with continuous GPS usage. Despite these capabilities, the device is heavily held back by its physical limitations. Its tiny, buttonless colour screen is significantly downsized, making menu navigation via swipes and double-taps incredibly fiddly and frustrating. This small display drastically limits live data, forcing users to squint at just two metrics at a time during workouts and truncating smartphone notifications. Additionally, despite being waterproof, the Vivosport suffers from no dedicated swim tracking and offers no support for external sensors like chest straps, making it difficult to fully recommend over alternatives with larger screens.

The Garmin Vivosport is a compact, unobtrusive fitness band that packs the high-end tracking capabilities typically reserved for larger running watches, such as built-in GPS, an Elevate heart rate sensor, and an altimeter. Priced around £160/$160/AU$300 at launch, it introduces notable upgrades over its predecessor, including a slimmer design, a touch-focused interface, and a 24/7 always-on color transflective memory-in-pixel display that thrives in direct sunlight. It serves as a highly practical device for dedicated tracking, offering precise outdoor route mapping, frequent heart rate sampling, and extra features like VO2 Max reading and stress testing.

The Garmin Vivosport is described as a powerful, feature-rich, and lightweight fitness tracker featuring built-in GPS for accurate, phone-free route tracking. It boasts a 24/7 always-on color touchscreen, precise heart rate monitoring, stress tracking, and long-lasting battery life. Key drawbacks include non-interchangeable bands, a strictly sporty design with limited appeal, and the lack of physical buttons, making interface navigation challenging, particularly during intense workouts. Additionally, despite being waterproof, the device lacks swim-tracking software, and the, at launch, $199 price point was considered high compared to competitors.

The Garmin Vivosport is a lightweight, compact fitness tracker that bridges the gap between a basic activity band and a GPS sports watch. Designed for practicality over style, it features a slim, black rubberised band with a low-resolution, color touchscreen that remains permanently active and performs excellently outdoors in direct sunlight. Despite its small profile, the device is packed with advanced standalone hardware, including integrated GPS and a barometric altimeter, allowing for accurate outdoor activity tracking without needing a smartphone. It also serves as a capable smartwatch companion, delivering full phone notifications like readable WhatsApp and email snippets directly to the wrist, while offering a realistic battery life of around four days with intermittent fitness tracking. However, the tracker compromises on several design and connectivity fronts to maintain its low price point and form factor. Visually, the device is relatively uninspiring and lacks aesthetic flair compared to slicker rivals. From a performance standpoint, it lacks Bluetooth and ANT+ sensor support, preventing serious athletes from pairing a precise external chest strap heart monitor. Furthermore, while the tracker boasts 5ATM water resistance,...

The Garmin Vivosport stands out as a highly capable, feature-packed everyday fitness band that packs the punch of a full-fledged GPS sports watch into a slim profile. It provides comprehensive 24/7 activity monitoring, including metrics for steps, floors climbed, calories, continuous heart rate, and stress tracking derived from heart rate variability. Its standout features include accurate, built-in GPS tracking for outdoor running and cycling, an excellent and data-rich companion Garmin Connect app, and an impressive battery life that lasts up to five days with regular use. Additionally, its always-on display ensures easy visibility during workouts, and the device provides precise estimations of VO2 max and resting heart rate to track fitness improvements over time. Despite its impressive technical substance, the tracker has several notable drawbacks. Visually, it lacks the sleek style and customizable bands found on competitors like Fitbit, utilizing a somewhat uninspiring, fixed design. Its interface relies on a clunky double-tap screen system to pause or record activities, which often fails to register when fingers are cold. While the hardware is fully waterproof, it notably lacks any dedicated swim...