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Garmin Vivoactive HR

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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Garmin VivoactiveHR Vivoactive HR Review}}
[[File:VivoactiveHR-comp.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The VivoactiveHR is an upgraded version of the Vivoactive, but I prefer the original.]]
The {{Garmin VivoactiveHR}} is an upgraded version of the [[Garmin Vivoactive]], the main addition being Optical Heart Rate Monitoring (OHRM). In this review I'm going to argue that you're probably better off with the Vivoactive than the VivoactiveHR. This is not a clear cut choice, and buying the VivoactiveHR is not unreasonable. Pretty much everything I mention in the Vivoactive review applies to the VivoactiveHR, so I'll focus on the important differences.
|[[File:VivoactiveHR-week.jpg|none|thumb|250px|The chart of the weeks intensity minutes might be useful, but it shows how much better the ActiFace user interface is.]]
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=GPS Accuracy=
The VivoactiveHR has rather poor [[GPS Accuracy]], and it's slightly worse than the [[Garmin Vivoactive]] on which it's based. To help visualize the quantitative assessment, I've included the image below of the GPS tracks from one part of the testing course. You can see the problems where the path curves in the middle section, something that most watches have problems with. Notice that the VivoactiveHR has red lines here, indicating that it's consistently getting this segment wrong. The only green line is where it gets a bit lost and goes wide, offsetting the otherwise short reading. You can also see there are problems going under the bridge where the VivoactiveHR sometimes struggles to reacquire the GPS signal. You can see the lines jump off track near the bridge, and some of the tracks wander after the bridge. The sharp turn on the right side of the picture is better, again something that's common. It seems that watches do much better with a sharp change in direction than a series of curves. The blue lap markers are surprisingly tightly clustered given the overall GPS accuracy.
[[File:BridgeGarmin VivoActiveHR.jpg| None | Thumb | x300px |This diagram has tracks color coded with green indicating good accuracy through to red indicating poor accuracy, and the lap markers as blue dots.]]
=Comparison Table=
{{:Best Running Watch-table}}