It's supremely multi-purpose, but still easy to use and gets the core elements right.Īs to price, at $269.99, it's not an impulse buy. And with the Connect IQ app store, you can further customize the watch's capabilities and informational screens. You can wear it in the pool and track swimming as an activity, or use it during a weight-lifting session to count reps.
The Garmin Vivoactive 3 has just about every feature you'd want and expect from a fitness tracker, plus a few extras-stress readings, contactless payments, cadence measurements, ability to reply to texts when paired with Android-that make it more technologically luxurious. Those numbers also lined up with readings from the treadmill's handgrip heart rate sensors, again with a very short lag. Otherwise, they were always within two or three beats of one another at rest, during both low- and high-intensity activity. Heart rate readings were nearly matched those of the Tickr X, too, typically lagging behind by just a second or so whenever my heart rate changed. The Vivoactive 3 gives you the opportunity to adjust the mileage for a treadmill walk to help calibrate it, so if you're sure your treadmill is accurate, you can align the watch to the same measurements. The treadmill itself clocked about 0.1 mile more. On a treadmill walk and run, the distance recorded by the Vivoactive 3 matched that of the Wahoo Tickr X almost exactly. On two occasions the Ray's readings were higher and on two the Vivoactive's were higher. After four days of tracking, they were on average about 600 steps different, about a quarter mile, but they were not consistent in how they were different. I compared daily steps, distance during activity, heart rate at rest, heart rate at low intensity activity, and heart rate at high intensity activity with a few different pieces of equipment.įor daily walking, I compared the step counts from the Vivoactive 3 with the Misfit Ray. In accuracy, the Garmin Vivoactive 3 performed extremely well. I've had my heart broken numerous times over the promise that NFC or other cashless-cardless payment systems would become universal in the US. Whether you'll actually use Garmin Pay is another story. The specific credit cards that are supported vary by country as of this writing, Visa and Mastercard work in the US. For the purchase to go through, you have to enter your PIN on the watch itself, but you don't need your phone on hand for it to work. (It will be offered in the Forerunner 645 and Forerunner 645 Music when those devices launch.) You enter a credit card in the Garmin Connect mobile app, add a PIN, and then use your watch anywhere contactless payments are accepted to make purchases. One added capability not yet found in other Garmin watches is support for contactless payments using Garmin Pay. That said, it doesn't have the same extensive collection of third-party apps available for the Apple Watch. One of my favorites displays the current time in time zones you choose. You can further customize what's on your watch by adding apps from the Garmin Connect IQ app store. In terms of smartwatch functionality, the Vivoactive 3 cover the bases, with support for incoming notifications of all kinds, remote controls for music and podcasts, a screen displaying current weather conditions, and so forth. It also has smart enough motion sensors to calculate running cadence, even during treadmill runs. The watch comes in three styles: white with stainless steel, black with stainless steel, and black with slate, which costs at little more than the others at $299.99.įor running and outdoor activities, the Vivoactive 3 uses GPS. The standard size bands and swap out easily with a little spring-loaded lever you can press with a fingernail. Handsome yet simple with a round face, the Vivoactive 3 works as casual wear, a gym accessory, and even with business attire, provided you swap the silicone band for something more upscale. If you're a fitness enthusiast in the market for an everyday watch and tracker, this is the one to get, and our Editors' Choice. It could stand to be a bit thinner and lighter, but you'd have to lose the heart rate monitor to make that happen.
If you use it with an Android phone, you can even reply to text messages directly from the watch. While it doesn't track the most advanced running metrics, like foot-ground contact time, it does calculate cadence, pace, and distance using GPS. It manages everything from contactless payments to stress measurement. The Garmin Vivoactive 3 ($269.99) is one of the most full-featured fitness trackers with smartwatch functionality you can get.