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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Garmin Vivoactive 3 Notes}}
I'm still testing the Vivoactive 3, and normally I wait until I've completed my evaluation before writing anything up. This time I thought I'd publish my ongoing thoughts for those that are interested, and it should morph over time into a full review. (Garmin updated the firmware to 2.60 on Oct 10th, and I'm in the process of retesting as some of these issues may be resolved.)
* I find the way that Garmin have intentionally crippled the VA3 to be rather mean spirited. They've gone beyond the typical limitations of not supporting all sensors and restricted the data that can be displayed while running. The first Vivoactive (and the Vivoactive HR) had some of this, with only a few screens of up to three fields, but this could be overcome by [[Connect IQ]] apps like "Single Field Run" that display lots of data by taking up the whole screen as a single field display (hence the name.) Garmin have made it far harder to use this type of data field by forcing all screens to have the same number of data fields. I think that's just nasty and petty.
* There's no way of recording a lap manually, which I think is less about intentionally crippling the VA3 and more about bad design. The manual says the single button will record a lap, but it doesn't work, and it's not clear how it could work given the button is used for start/stop. They could use the Suunto approach and have a press record a lap and a long press perform the stop, but that's not something Garmin typically does on their user interfaces and it's a little unfriendly.
