Garmin Vivoactive 3 GPS Smartwatch Silicone

The Vivoactive series has given us some of the most interesting, and least appreciated, fitness watches going. They match the GPS-tracking chops of the most expensive Garmins with a design that doesn’t make you look like a wannabe Bear Grylls. Why so little love? Traditionally, Vivoactives have been small, but kinda ugly. The Garmin Vivoactive 3 changes all that. You get smartwatch looks with hardcore runner’s watch features. It's an exciting combo for those who want their smartwatch to be fitness-focused with a side of smarts, rather than the other way round... DESIGN: SPORTY BUT SLIMLINE The first thing fitness watch fans will notice is that the Vivoactive 3 isn’t a wrist-hugging leviathan like the Fenix 5. At 11.7mm thick it is, well, a normal size. The Fenix 5 is 15.5mm thick. That 4mm makes a big difference. There’s a stainless steel ring around the screen, super-tough fibre-reinforced polymer on the sides and more metal on the back. It’s miles better looking than the original Vivoactive or Vivoactive HR. As much as we loved them, they were the watch equivalent of the kid who brought a briefcase to school. Thanks to its low 43g weight and a decent silicone strap, the Garmin Vivoactive 3 is comfy too. Garmin doesn’t make some of its watches ultra-chunky just to satisfy burly chaps with a bit too much to prove, though. The screen isn’t recessed here, making it a bit more susceptible to damage if you do your 10km runs on mountains and fells rather than in the local park. Gorilla Glass 3 sits over the screen, so you do get a decent level of scratch resistance. The flat-topped screen makes it a bit too easy to accidentally wake the watch or fire-up home screen apps, but you’ll get used to this in time. The Vivoactive 3 also has 5ATM water resistance, like the latest Apple Watch, which means you can take it swimming to depths of around 50m. The Fenix 5 has even better 10ATM resistance, but unless you're planning to go snorkeling regularly, the Vivoactive's waterproofing will be fine for most situations. SCREEN: SPORTS OVER STYLE The Vivoactive 3's screen is very Fenix 5-like, with the 1.2in, 240x240 round colour display coming with memory-in-pixel transflective tech. This means it uses barely any power to keep the clock on-screen and actually gets clearer the brighter the sun shines. When you’re indoors, a press of the side button or a brisk wrist flick turns the front light on, which means you can tell the time in the dark. This kind of screen tech is great for always-on use, and for seeing how far you’ve made it mid-run on a sunny day. The flip side, though, is that the Vivoactive 3 doesn’t make fancy chronograph style watch faces look as good as a fancy OLED. It’s not as sharp as an Apple Watch, colour is a little muted and contrast isn’t great. Still, you can pick the look you want. There are digital watch faces, diver’s watch designs packed with info and ultra-simple analogue ones. You can also download many more from the Connect IQ store. APPS: HALFWAY SMART The ability to handle notifications and run third party apps is what makes the Vivoactive 3 a smartwatch, rather than just a fitness tracker. You get access to same apps as Garmin's most expensive watches thanks to Connect IQ, which is nice, but don't expect a full smartwatch experience though. It's not what these watches are designed for. Downloaded software turns up as either another info ‘homescreen', accessed by flicking up and down on the touchscreen from the watch face. or as an ‘activity’. You get to a list of these by pressing the side button. There's a free Tetris clone for the Vivoactive 3, for example, but launching it from a menu next to run, cycle and gym tracking feels a bit weird. And it’s not much cop either. You’re best off paring down the extra info screens and apps to a minimum, as flicking around the watch’s interface isn’t as responsive as, say, Android Wear. Well over 90 per cent of apps are exercise-related too. The watch is perfectly good for phone notifications and a few basics, though. New for this model is the ability to make wireless payments using Garmin Pay. We’ll have to take Garmin's word for it as the Garmin Connect app lists it as “coming soon” right now. One other feature that would have been a real boon for the Vivoactive 3 is music storage. You can control tunes from your phone, but not play them natively. So you'll still need either your phone or another device like Mighty for that. FITNESS TRACKING AND PERFORMANCE: SPORTS SUPREMO Exercise tracking is the real reason to buy the Vivoactive 3 anyway, and for that it’s fantastic. You’re only ever a button press and tap away from starting a session. Like other Garmin watches, GPS is built-in. The very first GPS connection took about a minute, but after that it only took a few seconds to hook up, max. You also get the same rock-solid GPS connection and decent tracking accuracy as Garmin’s more hardcore models. Ther

Garmin’s Vivoactive 3 is the brand’s most fully featured activity tracker, and the smartwatch slots into the same category as the Apple Watch and Fitbit Ionic when it comes to features and price. Tipping our scales at 43g the Vivoactive 3 features a round touch screen and one button. The size factor is quite small, likely to please those with small wrists, however on me, it looked a bit like I was wearing a toy watch. Given it’s a smartwatch, it’s no surprise the Vivoactive pairs to your phone and integrates with the Garmin Connect app. From the app, you can define which wrist you’ll be wearing the watch on, and which direction you’d like to have the button pointed. Garmin Vivoactive 3 highlights Bluetooth and ANT+ connectivity Access to the Connect IQ store 13 hours battery life with GPS Optical HR GPS + GLONASS Touchscreen This connectivity also allows access to the Connect IQ store for watch faces, apps, and data fields, and wireless uploads of activities to the watch can then automatically be pushed to third-party apps such as Strava and TrainingPeaks. You can also customise settings on the watch through the app, such as displays on the controls menu. It’s a shame however that Garmin hasn’t taken this a step further by enabling other features aspects of the watch to be customised via your phone, such as data fields for particular activities, like you can with Wahoo's ecosystem. The app integration isn’t perfect, I tried to turn off notifications a million times because the watch was buzzing every time someone liked one of my tweets, commented on Instagram or sent me an email, and the watch continued to buzz. The touchscreen is quite sensitive, although with full finger MTB gloves it’s a bit iffy, and with thick gloves on with the small screen it's a bit like trying to eat rice with chopsticks. The side of the watch is also touch sensitive and allows you to swipe to change the screen you’re looking at. I can’t say I used this feature much, when I wanted to change the screen I’d just swipe the screen, but when I did use the side swipe it either wouldn't register or would flip to two screens. Unlike many smartwatches in this category, the Vivoactive 3’s screen is always on. Given the annoyance the 'only on when you look at it' screen causes with the Apple Watch and the Fitbit Ionic, this was a much-appreciated feature. Indoors the screen is not the easiest to read without the backlight. However, the backlight is like a floodlight and, even for being so small, lights up the better part of a dark room. Also new for the Vivoactive is Garmin Pay. Unfortunately, however, neither my bank or any of my credit cards are supported. Garmin hasn’t got many financial institutions on board just yet, but neither have Fitbit or Apple in some territories. Battery life is claimed at up to 13 hours in GPS mode and up to seven days in smartwatch mode. I was testing the Vivoactive 3 alongside the Fitbit Ionic, often wearing both devices at the same time on each wrist, and the Vivoactive outlasted the Fitbit every time. Garmin Vivoactive 3 activity tracking The Vivoactive 3 is positioned just below the more sport-centric watches in Garmin’s line up like the Fenix and Forerunner series, and so it’s no surprise to see a focus on steps, sleep tracking weather, flights of stairs, intensity minutes and the like. There is also a new stress stat, which basically tells you how in numeric form your day is going. With built-in GPS, GLONASS, barometric altimeter, compass, accelerometer, thermometer and Garmin’s Elevate wrist-based HR, the Vivoactive pulls well ahead of the majority of activity trackers. There’s also a million different activity modes to choose from, ranging from the default bike and run to strength, ski and even yoga. You can also create your own or download a pre-built app from the Connect IQ store. This is another aspect where Garmin has missed the boat on phone integration, and it’s a shame you can't define these from inside the app. The watch can display up to three screens of four metrics plus an HR gauge. If you opt for the four field layout, the outside two are limited to just a timer, heart rate, calories, distance and time of day, while the inner two get the full spectrum of data fields — the three field layout also allows full customisability for each field. As you’d expect, there are also options for auto pause, auto scroll, auto laps and manual laps. The watch can connect to both ANT+ and Bluetooth HR straps, and speed and cadence sensors, but it doesn’t natively support connections to power meters. However, there are data fields in the Connect IQ store that do allow the devices to communicate, although they also occasionally yield for some wonky readings. Garmin Vivoactive 3 accuracy When it comes to the optical heart rate accuracy, the Vivoactive 3 offered up surprising results. As usual I tested against a Garmin ANT+ heart rate strap paired to my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt head unit, and