You will have to excuse the brevity of this review. I have promised Brad to do one for over a month now and of course, the moment you promise something is the moment you become so unbelievably you don’t even have time to scratch you head!
Today I want to talk about two of Garmin’s newer products in their range, the Vivomove and the VivoFit 3.
I’ll disclose this right up front, when I said I’d review this, I hadn’t looked into them much. Sure, I new the rough idea, but I went in completely blind. The advantage, I believe, is that I went in unbiased to which one I thought I’d favour. Strangely, I walked away not really feeling the urge to go out and buy either of them. The reason? They didn’t actually provide me with what I was actually after. What I did discover was a beautiful simplicity in the Vivomove and a quiet practicality in the VivoFit 3. So I’ll go into a bit of what both of them offer.
Vivomove
Positives:
I was lucky to review a white version of the Vivomove (honestly, anything would be better than black). I had no troubles setting up the watch with Garmin app. It only took a few minutes and holding down on of the dials on the side of the watch.
It’s a good looking watch, although the face is a bit big for my small wrist.
The red display to tell me to get a-movin’ is clearly visible. Especially given I spend most of my day sitting at a desk, the little remind to get up was handy.
Negatives:
No way to manually sync the watch. You can adjust the settings to tell it how often you’d like it to update, but you have no idea when this is, and no way to manually force the sync. So if you’re like me and get a spare minute to check your steps for the day – you’ll be working off whenever it last updated.
It’s actually reasonably thick and a tad on the heavier side given the slim watches you can buy these days.
Limited. So the whole premise of the watch is just that – it’s a watch. With the added feature of making sure you move (and tracking those steps when you do move).
So if you’re looking for a new watch and would like the added bonus of a step tracker, then this watch could be it. The battery life is long because it’s only running as a watch.
VivoFit 3
Positives:
Very lightweight. Straight off the bat – you’ll likely forget that this is on your wrist.
This little guy you can manually sync as much as you’d like (but may be to the detriment of your smartphone battery…). It has a simple interface with only one button.
Set up was simple with the Garmin app yet again.
It tracks your sleeping patterns, tracks your steps, tells time!
Negatives:
You have to tell the app when you’re starting an activity (so before you start that boxing class).
It’s not terribly trendy… and when I say that, people can look at your wrist and know you’re tracking every one of those steps.
Can be a bit fiddly trying to take it on and off (if you’re the kind of person like me that doesn’t want to soak it in the dishes water).
This little gadget is a very lightweight, streamlined little tracker. It has a number of the usual bells and whistles that you will expect from similar designed products. Because it’s light, you don’t feel like you’re walking around with weight on your wrist. Because it’s rubber its easy to clean and you’re not as likely to scratch the little screen on the front. For those with smaller wrists however, I’d recommend heading to Rebel Sports or similar store to check out how it’s going to sit on your wrist. As it’s a formed shape on the top for the display, you might find that it might not be a good fit.
Both are quite interesting devices in their own rights and suit specific, albeit, different markets. However, they are consistently reliable devices and are easy to set up and use.
Review by Kim.