Garmin Vivoactive HR Review

It's time to lay it out on the table... time to review the Garmin Vivoactive HR. It's been 7 days, and I've used it for a variety of workouts, and data gathering information. It's going to be fun, because it is a fun device. It took a few days to fully get up to speed with it. There is SO MUCH information that it is a bit overwhelming at first--exciting, but overwhelming. Also, if it is a first fitness watch, it is a tad bit confusing to set up. Not horribly so, and you can stumble through it, but it will take a bit of figuring out. It comes with very detailed instructions, but I found that in spite of that, Garmin seems to pretty much assume the user is accustomed to this type of device and how it works, and sort of skims over some of the connection details. LOL 

The Vivoactive HR is a constant heart rate monitor. Unlike my old fitness watch that I had to press and hold a button to see my heart rate at the time, the Garmin VAHR (vivoactive HR) shows it in real time at all times and keeps a record of it that downloads to the mobile app and computer account when sync'd. It also comes pre-loaded with many activity trackers. One is a SWIM tracker which I love since that is what I do most often. 

On the face of it: The watch itself comes with 5 preloaded choices for a watch face. 2 of them are analog, the old-fashioned clock face, and 3 of them are digital. Along with the faces, they include information on battery life and steps. There are a lot more choices though. When hooked up to the computer, or through the mobile app, users can go to the Garmin "store" and download other watch faces, so you can really customize the looks of the watch and what you want to see on it at a glance. My favorite is the Big Time download. It has large time numbers, and also shows steps, calories burned, battery life and total daily mileage. The screen is a touch screen, and you swipe up to see the detailed records of steps, heart rate, calories burned, last swim, last run, last walk, last exercise, intensity minutes. There are pages and pages of watch faces, apps and data fields to download, and they are all free for Garmin users. 

I have found it is VERY accurate on step counts. It does NOT add steps just for hand movements, and records very well both inside and out. It also has a GPS link for outdoor walking so you get very accurate distance details when walking, running or biking. 

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I love that all of the records show up on the watch for the last 7 workouts, on the mobile app for months and on the computer account too. It is a very flexible system that you can view information on in several places which is really helpful. Unlike my LifeTrak Zone this watch does need to be charged regularly. However, it has a really good battery life considering how much it does. It seems to go through about 10% of the battery each day, so Garmin's 7 to 8 day claim of battery life is probably pretty accurate. I hook it up each morning and let it charge a little bit (not fully) while I look over the stats for sleep that night, so I haven't had to charge it up fully since I first got it. Even then, however, it didn't take too long. It came with barely enough battery life to turn it on and hook it up to the computer USB charger and it only took about an hour and a half to fully charge from empty. 

On the downside: It syncs okay to Spark People, but I just today finally gave up and disconnected the sync. I'll go back to manually recording the workout info and stuff. The reason: It INSISTS on screwing up my weigh ins even though the weigh-in on the Garmin is exactly what I lost, it adds a half pound to my loss when it syncs with SparkPeople. I have NO idea why, and I tried everything to make it show right. That is an important thing though. I can deal with the fact that when it syncs exercises it does it in a lump record and doesn't detail the type of exercise, why, I don't know, because it DOES show specifics in the sync with MyFitnessPal. I don't use MFP, but I do have an old account there, and I checked it out because Garmin automatically syncs with it, and sure enough, my daily exercises are updated there and show exactly what each exercise was and how much time, calories etc. were involved with each. So it is obviously possible, but SparkPeople programming won't recognize it. SparkPeople also does not accept all of the calorie burn info from Garmin stating that some of Garmin's activity minutes include BMR calories. That may be true, but it isn't totally correct. If I log in exercises manually to SparkPeople it's own calculations give me FAR more calorie burn that Garmin does in spite of what SP claims as over calculation on Garmin's part. 

The second thing I don't like about it, but it isn't a Garmin specific problem, it is problem with any tracker. The heart rate monitor does not work in the pool. My old watch didn't give accurate heart rate readings when I was in the pool (wet) either, but Garmin fully recognizes this and when you enter the swim app it actually turns off the heart rate monitor completely, then turns it back on when you exit the swim workout program. Why is this bad? You don't get any "intensity minutes" recorded and the calorie burn isn't as accurate because the calculations are based on heart rate in most activities. Again, this isn't a Garmin specific problem, it is just because the sensors can't get accurate readings when the skin is wet. 

It is fully waterproof, though, and works great in the pool otherwise. It records distance in yards swam, and you can program in the length of the pool you are in. The bad: it refuses to recognize my backstroke and record those laps/lengths. It only recognizes the 4 major strokes: freestyle, backstroke (traditional), breast stroke and butterfly. It works great when I do the freestyle and breast stroke and butterfly, but when I do the backstroke it just doesn't record the lengths. I have an old shoulder injury that prevents me from doing the "windmill" like traditional backstroke, so mine is more like an upside-down breast stroke, but the muscle action is reversed in the pressure, so I like the workout. The Garmin doesn't like it though. LOL. So I have to manually calculate those lengths in my head. 

One extra bonus with the Garmin watch is that it gives you pretty detailed sleep data. Not just how long you slept, but what type of sleep, waking sleep (that in-between going to sleep or waking up type sleep) light sleep or deep sleep. It's kind of interesting to see the patterns each morning. I seem to get the exact same amount of deep (REM) sleep and light sleep every night, but the pattern is always a little different. Overall, I just really love the Garmin Vivoactive HR.