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Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn.
The thinner-and-lighter trend isn't just dominating smartphones and laptops—fitness tech companies are constantly trying to make "the next big thing" as thin and light as they possibly can. Fitbit recently slimmed down its $150 Alta HR fitness tracker, and now Garmin is countering with its new $139 Vivosmart 3 wristband.
The newest device in the accessible Vivo line takes last year's Vivosmart HR to the next level with new rep counting and stress-evaluating features, as well as a slimmer design. Garmin just manages to undercut Fitbit on price here, but just because it's cheaper and has the Garmin name doesn't mean it's the better choice.
Design
Fitbit still has the thinnest heart rate monitor-toting wristband with the
Alta HR
, but Garmin came close to it with the Vivosmart 3. It's only a bit thicker than Fitbit's device (18.5mm versus the Alta HR's 15.4mm), and it's certainly more seamless than last year's
Vivosmart HR
. Instead of the band and the module being visibly separate, the Vivosmart 3 has a soft-touch silicone feel all the way around. There's a module inside it that clearly feels harder than the flexible bands, but the soft-touch material covers the display and gives a universal look to the entire design. It's also quite comfortable to wear, thanks to the watch-like clasp that makes it easy to adjust around the wrist.
Further Reading
Fitbit Alta HR review: $150 for a true all-day, all-night fitness tracker
The 128×64-pixel, OLED display isn't impeded by the silicone covering, either; you control it with taps and swipes, just like the Vivosmart HR. Once you know how many taps it takes to control the display, it's much easier to work with. I spent five minutes furiously tapping the display to wake it when I should have been double-tapping to do so. It will also wake up when it senses your wrist turning up as if to check the time, but you can wake the display with a double-tap at any time and swipe up or down to see stats, including steps, stairs climbed, intensity minutes, stress levels, notifications, music controls, and more.
The Vivosmart 3 has Garmin's optical heart rate monitor on its underside, but it doesn't have onboard GPS due to the device's thinness. The overall design and included sensors make it a direct competitor to Fitbit's Alta HR, but there are a few other differences between them. Fitbit's device supports interchangeable bands while Garmin's doesn't—and it currently only comes in black and purple. The Vivosmart 3 uses the heart rate monitor to estimate stress levels and guide breathing exercises from your wrist, but Fitbit's
Charge 2
only comes with a guided breathing feature, and the Alta HR doesn't have either. The Vivosmart 3 is also water-resistant enough to swim and shower with, whereas you wouldn't want to get more than a splash on the Alta HR.
Garmin tried to combine the most important features from its previous devices and Fitbit's newest devices into the smallest design possible. While it's not the most stylish device, it does follow Garmin's inoffensive design language, allowing it to go unnoticed in most social situations. However, it wasn't quite able to beat the Alta HR's battery life: Fitbit's tracker promises seven days on a charge, while the Vivosmart 3 promises about five days. However, both trackers could last a bit longer than their battery life estimates: on the fourth day of my testing of the Vivosmart 3, its battery was only two-thirds drained.
The $139 Vivosmart 3.
It's available in small and large sizes.
Watch-like closure makes it easy to adjust and wear comfortably.
Optical heart rate monitor underneath the module.
Those four magnetic circles attach to the proprietary charging cable.
Steps screen.
Stress test, where the device measures your heart rate over 30 seconds.
Results of stress test.
The Vivosmart 3 (left) with Fitbit's $150 Alta HR.
They're quite similar, but Fitbit's device is slightly thinner.
Features
Three new features set the Vivosmart 3 apart from its predecessor: rep counting, stress levels, and fitness score. I was excited to try out the rep counting feature because most devices don't have it yet. Android Wear 2.0 and the
updated Google Fit
brought rep counting and automatic activity recognition to some Google smartwatches, but Garmin's device is much cheaper than any Android Wear device. You must choose the weight-lifting activity on the device before you can start counting reps and sets. Long-pressing the display brings up the activities you can track, and swiping down will bring you to a small icon of a person lifting weights. Once chosen and the timer starts, you can start lifting.
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Garmin told me that you won't see the first five or so reps on the display, but they are being counted. The feature is quite accurate, and it only missed one rep in a set, if any at all. After every set, you tap on the display to start a rest period. The display will time how long you rest, and another tap will begin the next set. While I wish you could simply go from set to rest without touching the display, it's a small price to pay for simple and accurate rep counting.
Further Reading
Necessary updates, but the work’s not done: A closer look at the new Google Fit
Garmin has an automatic activity recognition feature that goes along with rep counting, but it's not foolproof yet. You won't see these exercise names on the Vivosmart 3's display, but they'll show up in your workout logs in the Garmin Connect app. In my first rep-counting test, which consisted of three basic dumbbell sets, Garmin's software managed to correctly identify one set of curls. It incorrectly identified the second set as "row" and couldn't identify the third set at all. But in my next sessions, it somehow identified all my dumbbell sets as sit-ups. Thankfully, you can designate each set's exercise yourself by editing the workout log. There are a ton of exercises to choose from—almost too many—and that means that no matter what exercise you do, you'll probably be able to correctly label it in Garmin Connect. However, you can't change the number of reps counted, so if the Vivosmart 3 gets it wrong, you're stuck with inaccurate rep counts.
Let's revisit that long-press function that brings you to the activities page. Aside from weight lifting, you can also track walking, running, stair-climbing, and aerobics (named "other," but the icon looks like someone doing zumba). No matter which profile you choose, you double-tap the display to start the timer and double-tap again to stop recordin
g. You'll then be able to discard the recorded activity or save it to be uploaded to Garmin Connect later. I like that there's an activity menu on the device, considering Fitbit's Alta HR doesn't have one at all. Fitbit forces you to rely on its smart tracking feature, which recognizes when you've been doing a specific activity for more than 10 minutes. Thankfully, that feature is very accurate and typically never misses a workout. But having that menu available on the Vivosmart 3 and the ability to choose your own workout profile provides a peace of mind you can't replicate with even the most accurate invisible tracking.Garmin also has an auto recording feature that's similar to Fitbit's smart tracking. It's not on by default, but you can activate it in the device settings page in Garmin Connect. When turned on, it'll automatically track running and walking sessions that last more than an amount of time you specify. I set mine to track walking longer than 10 minutes and running longer than two minutes, and it tracked these activities very well. I noticed it the most during my commute, which is a time that I forget about how much walking I do to get from point A to point B. The band vibrates when the activity timer kicks in, so you'll know when it starts logging your activity. Then you can either end the activity yourself with a double-tap, or the band will vibrate again a minute or so after you've stopped moving. It's a shame that it only tracks walking and running, especially since Fitbit devices can auto-track those activities in addition to elliptical, bike, aerobic, and sports workouts.
With any of the workouts you do, the Vivosmart 3's heart rate monitor keeps track of pulse changes. It's an all-day monitor as well, so it will continuously track your heart rate during the day and while you're sleeping. The monitor is accurate most of the time, but it did get tripped up when measuring high heart rates. Until about the 150 BPM mark, the Vivosmart 3's monitor was on par with my Polar H10 chest strap. But any heart rates higher than that would be about 10 BPM off of the chest strap's reading. On the Vivosmart 3's display, you can swipe to the heart icon to see a tiny graph of your heart rate fluctuations within the last hour, including maximum and minimum measurements. When you first set up the device, you can even also choose a watch face that puts your real-time heart rate reading at the bottom of the display, so it just takes a glance to check in on your pulse.
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The Alta HR's heart rate monitor is key to its advanced sleep tracking data, which includes time spent in deep, light, and REM sleep as well as time awake. The Vivosmart HR monitors heart rate during sleep but doesn't do much with that information. You can only see your mid-sleep heart rate in the all-day heart rate charts in Garmin Connect, which are separate from sleep data. Garmin Connect only shows you deep and light sleep stages as well as awake stages, and it doesn't provide dedicated sleep insights either. Fitbit's new insights will tell you how to sleep better based on your health data, exercise regimen, and previous sleep stats, but Garmin's in-app insights mostly focus on activity.
Two new and connected features on the Vivosmart 3 are the stress level assessment and guided breathing exercise. This is basically a different take on Fitbit Charge 2's guided breathing feature: instead of just giving you a timer and animated screens telling you to breathe in and breathe out, the Vivosmart 3 uses your heart rate variability to estimate your stress level throughout the day. The meter was fairly accurate—I checked it a few times each day, particularly when I knew I was more stressed out than I was earlier in the day. There were definite correlations between a higher stress level and my heart rate spikes in real life, and the intent is that you'll take anywhere between one and five minutes to use the guided breathing exercise feature when your stress is too high. The device's screen will tell you when to breathe in, hold the breath, and breathe out over that amount of time, which should help your heart rate stabilize and your stress level come down. I'm not a fan of guided breathing features on fitness trackers because I never use them. But for people with high levels of anxiety or those serious about daily meditation, it's a useful tool.
Further Reading
Fitbit Charge 2 reviewed: A calculated update that’s ideal for new users
The final new feature is called your "fitness score" and "fitness age," both of which are based on your estimated VO2 max level. VO2 max is hard to accurately measure outside of a lab with heart rate, oxygen, and carbon dioxide machines, as it's the maximum rate that your body can use oxygen during intense exercise. But more and more fitness trackers are trying to estimate it by using onboard heart rate monitors. The Vivosmart 3 will give you a fitness score based on your estimated VO2 max level, which can only be determined after using the device for a couple of days. It will also give you a "fitness age," which basically translates that fitness score further to tell you how healthy you are compared to others of your same age and gender. After a few days of wearing the Vivosmart 3, the app told me this: "Your Fitness Age is that of an excellent 20-year-old. That's the top 30 percent for your age and gender." Both of these scores fluctuate as you use the device each day, and while it's not the most accurate representation of your true VO2 max level, it's as much of an estimate as you'll get using smart wristbands like this.
Garmin devices are great in that they receive all of your smartphone notifications, and you have the option to just receive call or text notifications by changing a setting in the mobile app. These alerts appear as the app from which they're coming (Instagram, Facebook, etc) and a short clip of the alert. You can't scroll through an entire alert or message, nor can you respond like you could using an Apple Watch or an Android Wear device. But this is the case for most Garmin wearables (and many other wearables like those from Fitbit and Polar)—if you want to do more with smartphone notifications on your wrist, you'll need a dedicated smartwatch to do so.
I've always enjoyed music controls on fitness trackers, but they're not as flexible on the Vivosmart 3. You can pause, play, and skip tracks by tapping on the display when you're on the music control screen, but it only works for the default music app on your smartphone. Since I have an iPhone 6s Plus, it only works for iTunes music, leaving me as a Spotify user in the dust. That's especially frustrating since other trackers with music controls have evolved over the years to control whatever app is currently playing music, whether it be Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, or others.
