An activity tracker with every function you’ll ever need?

Like many people who are after a fitness tracker, I wanted every possible feature known to man, but I wanted it in as small a package as possible. Oh, and I wanted it at a decent price point. All of which you’ll know – if you’ve ever shopped around for an activity tracker – is a pretty big ask!

Usually, you do your research and find out the one you like the look of is maybe missing out on GPS. Or a sleep tracker. Or it turns out to be massively expensive – or any number of other deficiencies and drawbacks.

And so I’d been hanging off buying a fitness tracker for a while. But when I came to looking around in earnest, I found Garmin were just about to launch what looked like exactly the right fitness tracker for me.

Almost all the others lacked one feature or another – but…

…the Garmin VivoSport looked to have it all.

It’s pretty small with a full colour screen. It’s waterproof. It’s got an LED wrist-based heart rate monitor. It’s got built in GPS so it doesn’t have to rely on your phone’s GPS – especially useful because I never take my phone out with me running. It’s got a step rate monitor. It does sleep-monitoring. It’s waterproof. And it has what looked like a really comprehensive phone-based app – something my research told me was really important because reading all the info from an app is much easier than squinting at your tiny watch screen.

And so it very much seemed like the time was right for me to take the plunge. The VivoSport had just hit the streets and it ticked every box on my fitness watch check list – and I took the plunge.

Initial Impressions of the Vivosport

Screen’s a bit duller than expected

On opening the box, I wasn’t disappointed. For such a fully-featured tracker it’s reasonably small and I like how deep black and inconspicuous it is.

However, the main thing I noticed is that the display is no where near as vibrant as they show on the pictures.

On all the official photographs, the screen colours are really rich and bright. But in reality, it seems a pretty poor quality screen – the colours are muted, looking barely made of colour at all. The photo I took on the right was taken in really great lighting conditions and you can see even then the colours aren’t very vibrant.

Maybe it’ll be brighter with the backlight on, I thought. Touching the screen activates the back light, but it didn’t really help much. The back light is pretty similar to old Casio watches I had in the 1980’s – it gives an overall dull glow which is fine for reading the display when it’s dark, but doesn’t help with the vibrancy of the screen colours one bit.

Vivosport with backlight on

I have to say though, that in reality, the always-on screen is fine and even though it doesn’t look one iota like the screen Garmin show on their photos, it’s adequate. And unlike some hyper-bright Oled screens you find on some other trackers which can illuminate a dark room by accident when you’re trying to get to sleep (I’m looking at you, massively popular Fitbit Charge 2!), the screen on the Vivosport is more real-world useful. It means you can always see the time/heart rate/date/whatever screen you choose without activating the watch and it means it’s bright enough to read the screen at night. Job done.

It was a relatively easy step-by-step process to set up the Vivosport when I got it – and it comes with a printed quick start guide in the box – and there was enough charge already in the watch for a few day’s running without charging it up first so I was off.

Here’s the main features of the Garmin Vivosport:

• GPS
• Heart Rate Monitor
• Mobile app (apple, android)
• Music player control
• Phone connect – calls, messages alerts
• Step counter
• Sleep monitor
• Altimeter/floor step counter
• Waterproof rating – swim
• Stress tracking

As you can see from the list – the Garmin VivoSport looks like it ticks all the boxes. Which was the reason I bought it…

So what’s it like to use?

Running

Post-run info screen

OK, I go out running a few times a week. So when you want to use the GPS to track the route of your run, you’ve a couple of options.

You can leave your Vivosport to detect that you’re going for a run, in which case after a minute of running, I’ll realise you’re off for a run and start tracking your exercise. Or you can hold the screen to enter the activity menu, choose running (or walking) in which case it’ll start searching for a GPS signal and once it’s connected to the satellites, all you have to do is double click the screen to start tracking.

And the VivoSport picks up the GPS signal really quickly because every time your VivoSport connects to your phone and syncs, it updates the GPS satellite positions meaning it quickly latches onto them when your GPS turns on. Fab.

I find it locates the satellites and is ready to track in about 10 seconds – which is obviously just what you want so you’re not hanging around waiting.

More running information – pace and heart rate

When you start running, the VivoSport is nice and light and you don’t really notice it’s there. You can set it so it shows lots of different information on your wrist while you’re running but I rarely look at it to be honest. I can feel it buzzing away from time to time to tell me various timing splits but I just tend to ignore it.

One great feature I do like though, is auto-pause which means that it’ll pause its tracking if I come to a stand still at a pedestrian crossing for example, auto-resuming its tracking when I start moving again.

Occasionally it does get it a bit wrong – thinking I’ve stopped one exercise and started another so it measures it as two different exercises which is a bit annoying – but overall, it’s pretty good.

Walking

When I’m walking, I tend to leave it to VivoSport’s automatic walking detection to start my tracking. So after around 5-10 minutes, it’ll realise I’m on a walk (I can feel it vibrating when it realises) and then it’ll start auto-tracking. That’s a really useful and hands-free way to track your walk.

Reading Results on the Desktop and App

Desktop dashboard. Click to enlarge

I use both the free iPhone app and the desktop browser version to see my exercise results.

Both the desktop version and the app are great and cover pretty much everything I’ll ever need to see.

We’ll cover the app mostly here though, because I guess that’s how most folks will use their Vivosport.

After a run, it quickly and automatically syncs with the VivoSport when you come within range of your phone, and it seamlessly transfers all my running data over.

App dashboard – scrolls down to reveal tons of info

So when you fire up your app – or open the app in your browser – it displays a map of the route I’ve taken along with lots of other data: pace, speed, distance, steps, time taken, outside temperature/weather, cadence (foot speed), heart rate, avg heart rate, elevation, calories used, 1 mile, 5k, 10k etc. split times – everything you could want to see is in there in lots of nice shiny graphics and data tables.

It’s the same after a walk – there’s more information than you can shake a stick at to appease all us data and metrics-hungry exercisers.

Of course, all that data is stored and you can see your performance improvement (hopefully!) over time too.

Step Counting with the VivoSport

In-app step counting summary

Like all activity trackers, the VivoSport tracks steps taken and floors climbed – and sets target goals for number of steps per day. Usefully, the VivoSport sets you a goal and if you don’t meet it, or if you surpass it, it can automatically adjust the target appropriately to give you a more realistic goal.

And when you meet your step tracking daily goal, the watch displays a nice little well-done animation and vibrates.

It also counts the number of floors you’ve climbed – though as a home worker, I find that the counting of floors in my home doesn’t seem to be that accurate as it rarely registers when I climb a floor. The built-in altimeter seems pretty good so I’m thinking the height threshold it uses to count the floors climbed might be a bit high – but that’s just a guess.

Intensity, floor and stress level data

Exercise Intensity

There’s also a goal set for intense exercise. Moderate exercise is great but we all need to get our hearts pumping too for a bit more of a cardio-vascular workout. So there’s a count for moderate and vigorous exercise weekly goals.

Stress Checking

Interestingly, the Garmin VivoSport uses micro-changes in your heartrate to calculate your stress level. How accurate it is, I don’t really know but it seems to reflect how I feel. It displays a donut graph showing resting levels of stress, as well as showing low, medium and high levels of stress throughout the day. It’s useful insight that’ll at least give you a baseline measurement of your stress so you can start to do something about it if it’s running too high.

Sleep Tracking

In the app settings, you drop in your approximate bed time and wake time which the VivoSport sleep monitor uses to second-guess when you’re more likely to drop off to sleep.

Sleep monitoring is a bit hit and miss

It’s my first fitness tracker with a sleep monitor, but I’ve been surprised at how poor the tracker seems to be. The app shows the amount of time you spend in light and deep sleep as well as time you’re awake. It shows the information in an attractive and detailed graph – and it also shows the amount of tossing and turning you do through the night.

The only problem is it rarely manages to identify the time I wake up accurately – and if my bedtime is very different from the time I put into the VivoSport, it tends to assume I went to bed when I said I would and counts time I’m sat at my desk or reading as time asleep and adds it to my overall daily and ongoing sleep count.

Which is a bit rubbish really.

Swimming

Now, I have to say that I’ve never taken my Vivosport swimming – but it is waterproof-rated for ‘swimming’ which, in Garmin-world, seems to mean you can do most things apart from high-speed watersports and scuba diving (though snorkeling’s OK!).

I do, however keep it on when I jump in the shower after a run, before towelling it dry – and it’s been absolutely fine so far.

I seem to remember reading that somewhere that these optical heart rate monitors won’t work in water though, so if you’re after a tracker to monitor your lengths when you’re swimming, you might have to look elsewhere.

Community Data

VO2 max data

Like most modern fitness trackers, Garmin ask to use your data to aggregate it with all other users to provide insight which you can access (and presumably which they sell-on anonymously?).

But there’s some cool stuff that you get back from sharing your data – which is part of the trade-off I guess.

You can see how well you’re doing in comparison to other users of your sex or across sexes, as well as across the ages.

It gives you a VO2 Max figure which assesses your overall fitness and gives you a fitness age rating, again in comparison to other users.

And when it detects certain types of activity you’re doing, it’ll give you fitness insights from across the community of users.

In fact, there’s so many ways to look at your data that there’s plenty of hours to be spent – if that’s your thing – going through all the options and displays.

The Wrist Display

Of course, you’ve always got the display on your wrist to give you some of the information.

The default view gives time, battery status, date and has a red line on it which is the move bar (a bar to show you how much movement you’re doing in real-time). And there’s a number of different

Here’s the watch face setup screen

default watch views to choose from top so you can have it showing heart rate or steps… or even the weather forecast.

From that main watch face, you can swipe up or down to see stress level, heart rate, last mobile phone notifications and messages, weather in farenheit, music control such as spotify control (it works – genius!), distance moved, step counter, then back to main watch screen.

So, is the Garmin Vivosport worth buying?

If you’re after accurate sleep duration tracking, I’d have to say no. But that’s really the only negative I’ve come across.

Otherwise, it’s a great little fitness and activity tracker that works really well for overall fitness tracking, goal setting and keeping an eye on your general wellbeing.

It seems to cover pretty well everything you could ever want on tracker, connects seamlessly to my iPhone and its apps, and there’s so many functions and features that I’m still discovering new stuff months into my ownership.

7 day activity summary screen

Sizing

If you’re going to buy one, sizing doesn’t seem to be that much of an issue. I’m a reasonably large chap so I bought the size large which is fine for me – but I’m only adjusting it around six holes out of fourteen on the strap so I could’ve probably got away with the alternative size too – which is S-M – and which will realistically fit everyone from Minnie Mouse to Bigfoot (probably).

So there you go. A highly recommended fitness tracker with stacks of features, a comprehensive and user-friendly companion app and which looks great on the wrist. What more could you want?