Garmin Vivoactive HR GPS Watch

10 Reviews for Garmin Vivoactive HR GPS Watch

1. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Jeff R. – April 7, 2020

   I want to start this off by saying that this is the first fitness tracker I have owned. I would consider myself an athlete and have been one for basically my entire life. The sports I’ve played have changed over the years, but I’ve always been pretty active. I looked at other devices in the past like Fitbit, Polar, Nike, and even other Garmin devices, and nothing was appealing enough for me to finally buy into the whole activity tracking craze. A few months back, a friend showed me his Garmin Vivosmart HR during a volleyball tournament and showed me everything you can do with the Garmin Connect app. I play a lot of volleyball, so I was also a little concerned about wearing something on my wrist while playing since you pass with your arms, but he claimed that he didn’t really notice it while playing. The Garmin ecosystem seemed pretty cool, so I decided to jump on Amazon and search for something for myself.I landed on the Vivoactive HR. Unfortunately, this was in March and it hadn’t been released yet. Because of this, I wasn’t able to find many hands on reviews. But the feature set had everything I was looking for. The main features I was looking for were activity tracking, sleep tracking, wrist-based heart rate sensor, built-in GPS, and decent battery life. The golf features and touchscreen were added bonuses. I golf a couple times a month during the warmer months of the year, and having a rangefinder on my wrist seemed pretty convenient. So I ordered it way back in March, but I didn’t receive it until May 2. However, shortly after receiving mine, I noticed that the screen seemed to be crooked. It was like the display (under the glass) was turned slightly counterclockwise. I ended up calling Garmin directly and arranging for a replacement to be sent out. They sent one while allowing me to keep my current Vivoactive HR which I would send back when receiving the new one. After receiving the new one, I saw that the screen was mounted correctly. I will note that the device itself seemed to function normally otherwise except for one small problem which I will note later when talking about golf.APPS AND FEATURES:Heart Rate Monitoring: So I’ve had this thing for about 3 weeks now. I feel like for the price point it is at, it is truly awesome. Heart rate monitoring seems to be pretty accurate. I am not the type of person to care about perfectly exact HR numbers, but I’ve measured my pulse by feel and it seems to be pretty close. It does seem like doing things (like weightlifting) where you are tensing up your forearm does seem to mess with the HR sensor a bit, but it’s not bad enough for me to really complain about.Step Counter: The step counter appears to be fairly accurate. I am not too concerned about it being perfect. I just use it to get an idea of how much I’ve actually been on my feet any given day. I have noticed that it doesn’t seem to count as many steps as I think it would when I am mowing the lawn with a push mower. Not a huge deal but a little disappointing. Otherwise it seems to keep track of my step count pretty well.Sleep Tracking: Sleep tracking is neat. In my experience, the Vivoactive HR does a solid job of figuring out when I fall asleep and when I wake up. I am a little bit skeptical about the periods of “light sleep” and “deep sleep” that it records in the Garmin Connect app. Also, it doesn’t always seem to see when I wake up during the night. I know that I woke up to go to the bathroom the other night and it didn’t seem to notice the movement at all. You’d think if it saw steps in the middle of the night, it would assume you are awake. I will say that it has picked up other times that I’ve simply woke up in bed and fallen back asleep, but it doesn’t seem to be perfect in this regard. Nonetheless, I am happy that it seems to pick up on when I’m actually falling asleep and waking up every night.Activity Tracking: The only activities I’ve played with so far are walking, running, and a custom activity that I created for volleyball. I only use the GPS for walking and running, and it has been very accurate. Also, it has never taken more than a few seconds to get a good GPS lock. It’s just nice to have GPS because I’d rather have my distance/pace calculated based on something accurate like GPS as opposed to the activity tracker counting your steps and estimating your stride distance. It’s also really nice not having to take my phone with me to use GPS.Golf features: As I said before the golf features were an added bonus. I downloaded some local courses and have used the golf app a few times now. The yardages have been accurate for the three courses that I have played. The app itself will show you distance to the hole when the pin is in front, middle, or back of the green. It will show you yardages to doglegs and layups. You can also measure the distance of your shots if you are into that kind of thing. You can even see (albeit primitive) the layout of the green on one of the screens. I did run into one problem with the golf app. On the layup screen, numbers would occasionally go “missing”. There was a par 5 where I know it was about 150 yards to layup to 100 yards out, and the screen would display 50 instead of 150. This seemed to happen fairly often, and since I was familiar with the courses I was playing, it wasn’t a big deal. But I called Garmin about it anyway, and they were actually able to reproduce it. They said that a software update should fix it. A new software version came out just the other day, so I will try it again this weekend and report back if it is fixed.THE OTHER STUFF:Battery life: For something that has a decent sized display and 24/7 HR monitoring, I think the Vivoactive HR has great battery life. Obviously if you are a heavy GPS user, the battery will drain much faster than normal. I charged to 100% just over 5 days ago, and none of the workouts I’ve done in the last 5 days have required GPS. I’m currently sitting at 50%. I guess if you go off this, you should get about 10 days of battery without GPS usage. During my last 25-minute run with GPS on, the battery level dropped about 2-3% which didn’t seem unreasonable. Golf appears to suck the most out of the battery since GPS is turned on for a few hours at a time. During a normal 18-hole round (a little over 4 hours) with GPS on the whole time, the battery percentage dropped by about 20%. I know the Vivoactive HR is rated for about 8 days without GPS and 13 hours with GPS on. So the battery actually appears to perform better than what it is rated for.Touchscreen: I’ve seen the touchscreen readability as a topic of debate on some other websites. It is actually more readable in direct sunlight than in any other circumstances. It is very readable with normal indoor lighting. It is impossible to read in the dark unless you have the backlight on. In most situations, I don’t really feel like I need the backlight. But it does its job when it is needed. The screen isn’t the highest resolution thing you’ll ever seen, but it still looks nice. The touchscreen is responsive and accurately responds to touches, and I feel like it has actually gotten more responsive and fluid with the latest update.Comfort, size, and looks: I have never worn watches. I was a little worried about having something on my wrist all day, every day…especially while sleeping and playing volleyball. After wearing the Vivoactive HR for a few days, I don’t really even notice it anymore. I find it to be very comfortable. I can see how it might be too large for some people who are accustomed to wearing smaller activity trackers. But I think it’s the price you pay for something that has a decent sized touchscreen with HR monitoring built in. I am wearing the version with the regular band (not XL), and I would say I have slightly smaller than average wrists for a guy. I wear it fairly tight and still have 9 notches to work with on the band. As far as looks go…you’re not going to trick anyone into thinking it’s some kind of luxury watch. It looks like an activity tracker, but I actually prefer the design over the design of the original Vivoactive. It still looks pretty sleek, and I have had a lot of people ask me about it. Also, I work in IT, so no one really cares if I’m wearing something real fancy looking. If you want to spruce things up a little bit, there are quite a few downloadable watch faces available, and the band can also be switched out.Durability: This one is still up in the air. The Vivoactive HR is mostly plastic, but to me, it doesn’t feel cheap. The two buttons underneath the screen feel pretty solid. I did buy a screen protector for the glass, but I haven’t put it on yet. I’m debating whether or not I actually need to put it on. I have always taken care of my electronics, but I don’t take most of my electronics running or play a volleyball tournament with them attached to my wrist. It feels like it will hold up, but I don’t think I will truly have an idea for at least a few months.Other stuff: The smart notifications feature works well. I am able to pick and choose what notifications I want relayed from my cell phone. You can’t really do a whole lot with the notifications other than view them, but I have found that I actually look at my phone a lot less now because of this. The notifications turn off during your designated sleeping schedule, so they won’t annoy you when you’re lying in bed. However, the alarm feature has a strong enough vibration to wake me up every morning. This is nice because I no longer need to blare audio from the alarm on my cell phone and wake up my wife at the same time. Also, there are a decent amount of watch faces/apps/widgets available. So far I’ve only touched the watch faces, but it is nice that quite a bit can be customized to fit your needs.Overall, I’m very happy with the Vivoactive HR. The reason I gave it 4 stars is because of the bugs in the golf app. I’m taking it out to the golf course a couple times this weekend, so I’ll see if the update fixed the problem. If so, I may come back and re-rate it as 5 stars. And if I think of anything else I want to add in, I will do so.

2. 

   Rated 3 out of 5

   Scooter G – April 7, 2020

   I thought to give this 2 stars (“I don’t like it”) but I’m giving it 3 (meaning “it’s okay”) since, despite it’s many shortcomings, it does seem to be the best available option on the market of it’s kind. By that I mean it’s a relatively reasonably priced waterproof GPS activity tracker that has more than a day’s battery life to it and it features a heart rate monitor and altimeter for stair climbing. I don’t believe any other device matching that description and costing well under $200 exists.You know about all of the watch’s pluses because the product description hypes them. Here’s what you don’t know:1. The altimeter is a dicey proposition. Climb a flight of stairs. It might register. It might not. It might count two flights. You just never know until you’ve tried it. If your goal is to add 10 flights of stairs to your daily routine and you expect to see the flights climbed counter go up each time you break your routine to go walk up the stairs, you’re going to be discouraged after you’ve done it 3 times in a day and still found your watch reporting zero. But the next day, it might work. Inconsistency is not motivational; it’s demotivating.2. The watch connects to Garmin’s screwy server through your cell phone, where it stores your activity. Based on how many steps you took last week, it drops you into a weekly challenge group. For instance, if you walked 40,000-44,999 steps in your first week, then you’ll be placed into a competition with strangers who have been similarly active. It’s a good idea. It motivates you to push yourself to at least beat out the bums who are as wimpy as me. In that way, you slowly progress to being an individual who walks at least 45,000 steps in a week. Intuitively, you should in the following weeks (Garmin assesses your performance over the past 2 weeks to decide whether or not to “promote” you to a higher challenge group) be enrolled with a 45,000 step weekly challenge group. And generally it does work that way. But sometimes not. Sometimes you’ll complete a week with over 75,000 steps and find yourself enrolled in a zero step challenge group the next week, or you’ll complete a week with over 50,000 steps and find yourself dropped to a 20,000 or 40,000 step group. A call to Garmin support elicits the representative’s amazement and bewilderment, but despite claims it’s only happening with your account, inexplicable, shouldn’t happen again and is irreparable, other users on Garmin Connect will correspond with you and confirm the same has happened to them–and the proof is in your competitors in the 20,000 step challenge group who are racking up over 100,000 steps for the week; those people, you can be sure, did not register fewer than 25,000 steps in the prior week. They’re very active people. So this is another example of a product that is supposed to motivate actually serving up disappointment, discouragement and demotivation.3. If you step away from your phone, the Bluetooth connection is broken. I don’t mean it’s broken like when you walk away with your headset and lose the connection; with a normal Bluetooth device like a headset, once you step back into the phone’s range you reconnect. Not so with the vivoactive HR. On occasion the VAHR will eventually reconnect with the phone, but far more often than not that disturbed connection becomes semi-permanent. Rarely the issue can be resolved by exiting the Garmin app on the phone and turning Bluetooth on the phone off and on again. But mostly you have to power cycle the phone each time you come back in range in order to reestablish a Bluetooth link between the watch and the phone. So plan to spend 10 to 15 minutes a day with this new activity when you invest in a vivoactive HR lifestyle–not exercise, phone power cycling.4. Together with Under Armor software, Garmin helps you manage your calories. You register calories eaten on UA’s MyFitnessPal and the watch measures how many calories you burn and marries up both data points on the Garmin Connect phone app. Theoretically, you then know whether or not you have another PB&J sandwich in your “budget” for the day. Unfortunately, relying on that calorie budgeting tool can bloat your fat. That’s because the VAHR accumulates calorie expenditure quite generously. A calorie for every 10 steps. Hundreds of “active” calories while you sleep. Before you know it, you’re adding 1,000 extra calories to your diet every day that you never actually burned. Oops!5. If you have multiple Garmin watches, the Garmin Connect software touts its ability to synchronize with each of them. So if you walked 4,000 steps with your vivosmart and then another 5,000 steps with your VAHR, the Web site shows you’ve walked 9,000 steps. That’s great. But each watch still shows your daily progress as being only the steps you recorded using that particular device. So if you switch watches during the day, you essentially are starting over on progress toward your daily goal unless you tote around a computer to check the Web site to see the real daily total. But that’s only the beginning of the flakiness of recordkeeping on the VAHR itself. If you power cycle the watch, the HR history over the past several hours is wiped clean from the watch display. You can only view it on the phone you sync the watch with. That is to say, the data still resides on the watch, but Garmin chose not to have the watch show it to you.6. When you save a GPS location on the watch so you can later select it as a favorite to return to, you cannot name the location. So the VAHR comes preloaded with 3 named locations–Garmin’s US and two foreign offices. By name. But you’ll delete those because you’re not going to walk to Olathe. And when you save your own home location or the trailhead you start a hike from, the watch names them–unchangeably–with the date and time you selected the spot. Unhelpful.7. The battery lasts for a long time. Over a week, even with GPS usage. But don’t think you’ll know when it’s going to die based on the battery indicator. Charge the watch overnight to 100% (it reaches that reading within an hour), then wear it for a day to see the indicator drop to 50%. It will then hover at 25% or 20% for days. Once it gets low enough, sometimes when there’s 10% left, sometimes 1%, it will just start cutting off the GPS in the middle of an activity or shutting down on its own. Not a good thing if you’re counting on your VAHR to steer you back out of that mountain you’ve just climbed.8. There is another motivational feature Garmin devised called Intensity Minutes. You’re supposed to accumulate 150 of these per week. It’s not clear what they represent, but usually activities don’t add any to your count. Sleeping seems to be the most prodigious source of Intensity Minutes. This is another feature that, had it been implemented in a functional way, would have made the watch that much more useful.9. Whenever you take a walk, hike, run, etc., the GPS feature of the watch (unless you’ve switched it off) will start tracking you so that when you later sync with your phone/Connect Web site, you’ll see the activity (the header of the activity is actually location+activity, for example “New York City running”) along with a map of the ground or water you covered. In practice, this works sometimes but other times you’ll find your activity labeled without the location name; in those instances, you’ll find there’s no map to review either. I have been able to discern no rhyme or reason behind why this works sometimes and on the same route the next day it doesn’t.10. The last item is just a pet peeve about customer service. The representatives at Garmin have uniformly been consistently nice and knowledgeable. But with typical wait times of 15+ minutes before you even start troubleshooting, it is an unwelcomed imposition on customers to further extend each and every call with a several minute satisfaction survey.With all these downsides, which I think are poor, on balance I would still buy this again if I didn’t see a clearly superior competitive product. And despite some of the hiccups it has helped with motivation to be more active. And that’s what I bought it for. Still, it should have been so much better.

3. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   M. Williams – April 7, 2020

   I’ve had my watch less than 9 months. I loved what it can do, but it randomly died on me – the display began to flicker and produce nothing but wavy lines, as noted in the photograph – and Garmin was of no help. Rather than fix the problem, they wanted $120 to consider fixing the problem. I expected more support at this price point. The lack of durability really shocked me.

4. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   Rahul Bhatia – April 7, 2020

   I purchased this watch in January 2017 after doing considerable research on what would work best for my primary activities: walking and swimming. For about eight or nine months, it worked well enough, and I was reasonably pleased with how accurately it tracked pool laps. By August, it began to have bluetooth connectivity issues. Sometimes you connected, sometimes you couldn’t. Then Garmin’s software upgrades began to reset my information (losing a record of your steps can be surprisingly annoying) and mess up the time. Then the strap tore (normal usage). I ordered replacement straps from Amazon UK at an eye-watering price. In October 2017, the screen lifted at one edge, allowing water to pour into the device. I hadn’t dinged or hit the watch in any way. It just came unglued. So there’s that. I continued to use it everywhere except in the water and in the shower. But the battery was clearly draining faster, and the heart rate monitor stopped working.I called Garmin in Delhi. They said they’d call back. Nothing for a month or so. Then I called them again in January 2018. Again, no response. Then, finally, I tried them in May. They explained over the phone that the problem with Vivosmart HR’s screens was known, and they would probably replace my device. Three days later I received an email informing me that my device was no longer covered by a warranty, and that I would need to pay about Rs 13k-14k for a replacement device. (I paid Rs 23k for mine in Jan 2017.)Defective products happen. I get that. But the experience of first having to deal with a defective product, and then having to deal with a service center that refuses to acknowledge the problem, left me wondering if I should wait a few years before buying a fitness watch. I’m not sure if they behave this way only with customers in India, or if this is a global problem. Anyway, I’ve given up on the device.It’s a pity because when my device worked, it really worked well. I loved the interface, the app, the prods of encouragement. I loved it all. I’d do it again if things got better. And that’s a risk you’re going to have to live with. This is, all said, a great watch. But if it misbehaves, kiss your money goodbye because no one at Garmin seems to care.

5. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   B Che – April 7, 2020

   Had a great 1yr and 8month with it.Broke the touchscreen don’t know exactly how. Wrote to Garmin for a repair. Was given a quote of 13000. Will find a replacement from an another brand.

6. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   crazyOMG – April 7, 2020

   Review After using for over 2 months …2 stars ONLY for glitch free service in the first month !____It is chunky device .. to begin with. I purchased it on August 23, 2018 after considerable time on reading the reviews on budget fitness tracking with HR tracking for what would work best for my primary activities: walking and cycling. For the first few days, it worked well enough, and I was happy with the device results despite occasional connectivity issues which I chose to ignore as it multiple reviews same was commented upon. However, in October , it began to have serious Bluetooth connectivity issues, hanging issues .Subsequently, impacted the Garmin’s software upgrades also leading to resetting of my information Occasionally, the heart rate monitor also stopped functioning and restarting the same was needed ( not appreciated at all) . I called up Garmin in Delhi .I was advised to reset my device to factory settings instead of any better technical solutions. I have been struggling with faulty device and subsequently in-experienced staff was too much to ask for . I have sought a replacement ..still waiting for a reply !If you don’t want these CS worries… find alternatives 🙁

7. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   Portobello Rockefeller – April 7, 2020

   This has a serious watch with a lot of functionality for various sports and activities including running, walking, cycling, golf, rowing, swimming and others.It does a good job of keeping track of activity and whilst it’s not always going to be 100% accurate, I’ve found it to be reasonably accurate and provides a good measure of relative activity by day, week and month. It is waterproof and survives swimming and being worn in the shower. Battery life is good and you can get in excess of 7 days if you don’t use the GPS. Obviously GPS will reduce this considerably depending on how often used.It provides notifications from your mobile and the ability to read messages, which is a great feature. A little bit tweaking the Garmin Connect application will ensure you only get the notifications you want. One niggle is that once you set your defaults units on your watch, when you sync to Garmin Connect, it overrides with the default units on the app. Not the end of the world once you figure it out, but because the app doesn’t allow you to individually select temperature units (but the watch does) users selecting “Statute UK” units are stuck with °F instead of °C. It’s also a pain having to calculate total lb when you’re used to stone & lb.There are a number of additional app and watch faces you can add and customise. The watchfaces are particularly useful, with plenty of choice.The watch itself it not small, but an acceptable size and comfortable to wear. My wrist is closer to 20cm, but on the advice of another review I ordered the M/L instead of the Xl which Garmin pointed me to. It was absolutely the right choice as there is still room for larger wrists than mine in the M/L.

8. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   Diesel Fan – April 7, 2020

   I first took delivery of this item in early September 2016 and, after fully charging it, have pretty much worn it full time ever since.Overall I like it, am happy with it’s functions (though I don’t yet use them all!), and it’s is comfortable to wear being neither heavy or light..The strap is of a good length for me (I am of very medium and average proportions!) and it adjusts easily to keep the device snug enough for accurate readings of heart rate, etc.My only issues with it are (and as other reviews have commented) even with the display set to maximum brightness, it is still not very bright at all and I have found that (although it kept it’s charge for over week when I first got it) it’s charge duration has dropped noticeably since and now only lasts about 5 days.. and it is just being worn daily as any watch would so I am not sure why…(Addendum 28th May 2017: It is now 8 months since I bought this watch and while I am still happy that it does what I bought it for, I am increasingly unhappy with the battery life that has now dropped to 2.. yes 2 days!! For a £190 watch that promised roughly a week of battery life this is pretty poor.. Dropping my rating to 3 stars)Overall very good but not perfect yet!

9. 

   Rated 1 out of 5

   SR Gor – April 7, 2020

   Dieser Fitnesstracker war mein täglicher Begleiter, im Alltag, im Sport und im Urlaub. Im Großen und Ganzen war ich über diesen Zeitraum gesehen recht zufrieden mit der Uhr.Die anfänglich wenig hilfreiche Software (hier die Android Variante) ist nach und nach geupdated worden und ist mittlerweile ziemlich gut. Was sie leider immer noch nicht vermag, ist eine vernünftige Hilfestellung bei Bluetooth Problemen zu geben.Der Touchscreen ist manchmal recht träge, aber das ist gelegentlich und leicht zu verschmerzen.Interessant ist hier, daß das mitgelieferte Armband das einzige gewesen ist von dem ich keine Hautreizungen bekommen habe, die wie Verbrennungen wirkten. Ich habe bestimmt 3 bis 4 Austauscharmbänder ausprobiert.Wirklich schade, daß die Uhr nun nach nicht einmal 2 Jahren beginnt sich aufzulösen. Und zwar genau da, wo die Kernfunktionalität liegt – am Laserfeld das für die Herzschlagmessung zuständig ist.Wie am beigefügten Foto erkennbar bilden sich Risse im Fenster, die stark nach Materialermüdung ausschauen und meines Erachtens nach dient die Materialwahl hier klar der künstlichen Verkürzung der Lebensdauer.Über 200€ für nicht einmal zwei Jahre, eigentlich müsste man hier 0 Sterne vergeben – Garmin bietet wohlwissentlich selbst auf Materialfehler nur ein Jahr Gewähr.Schade.

10. 

    Rated 1 out of 5

    MrSteve81 – April 7, 2020

    I’ve waited a while before posting this review so I could get over “New Gadget Blindness”™ that can stop people from being honest about products.Having had the watch for around 4 months I can honestly say it’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.Originally I bought the Vivosmart, but I found it too small for my manly wrist, but the Vivoactive XL is a perfect fit.If you’re looking for something that will GPS track your walks/runs/rides while also keeping track of your heart rate at the same time, this device is the one for you.My only complaint is that after lifting weights the autolink with Strava will log my session as a run, but I don’t know if the issue is with the Garmin app or with Strava. A quick jump into Strava to delete the lifting session is simple and fast, so it’s not really much of a problem.It has definitely helped me to push myself harder and further since getting it, and while I might not have lost a huge amount of weight, I do look better without my clothes on. 🙂