Revision as of 16:04, 10 May 2017

The Garmin Vivoactive is the cheapest watch to support Garmin's Connect IQ, and the current pricing puts it into the budget category of running watches. I've got mixed feelings about the Vivoactive; it's a mixture of generally crippled functionality, poor GPS Accuracy, no Pace From A Footpod, but it's small, fairly cheap, has some surprising extra functionality, and it has a nice user interface. It's perhaps best thought of as a good activity monitor that can also act as a running watch. I found myself using it as my standard activity monitor, and using one of my many other watches for recording my runs. The small size and light weight of the Vivoactive make it far less intrusive than larger devices like the Garmin Fenix 3. Using the Vivoactive just as an activity monitor also helps with battery life, as the GPS chipset drains the battery disproportionately quickly. Combining the Vivoactive with a Stryd Footpod seems strange given that Stryd costs twice as much as the watch, but the combination is a small, attractive watch with good functionality and Stryd provides outstanding distance/pace accuracy. For a simple evaluation of a GPS watch, I look at how well it can answer some basic questions:

• How far did I run? This is the most basic question, and the Vivoactive is rather grim unless you combine it with Stryd. That means turning off GPS, which may be a problem for some runners that want to know where they've run for their training log.
• How fast am I running? Knowing how fast you're running can be a nice to know, or it can be vital for your training or race performance. Because of the nature of GPS, watches that rely on GPS signal alone tend to have serious problems with current pace. Again, this can be solved by combining the Vivoactive with the Stryd Footpod.
• Where am I? The Vivoactive only as a "back to start" arrow, which is better than nothing, but not great. If you use Stryd you'll lose even that as you have to turn off GPS to get the accurate pace/distance that Stryd supports.
• What's my cadence? Cadence is one of the most critical and often overlooked aspects of running. If you get your Cadence right, many other things naturally fall into place. The Vivoactive supports Cadence via a Footpod or it can estimate Cadence from its internal accelerometer. It even has alerts for when your Cadence is too low.

For ultramarathon running the Vivoactive doesn't have the battery life, but it supports Charge On The Run surprisingly well. See Watches for Ultrarunning for more details.

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1 Vivoactive Pros

• The Vivoactive has a reasonable size color display given its small dimensions, though the bezel is larger than you might expect from the latest watches. The resolution of 30K pixels makes it look sharp and clear. The colors are pretty good, and color does make a watch more appealing even if it doesn't add much to the functionality. The standard watch face is quite uninspiring; it makes me think Garmin intentionally set the bar low for developers of custom watch face apps.
  
  
• The Vivoactive supports Garmin's Connect IQ that allows for various apps to be installed, including this custom watch face called "Actiface". I love this display, which shows a lot of data in a small space. There is a graph of the last week's steps and calories, a circular progress bar for today's progress towards you step goal, plus some badges for things like hitting your step goal for four days in the last week. The Vivoactive supports Connect IQ for Watch faces, Apps, Widgets, and Data Fields. It includes most device profiles: Heat rate, footpod, temperature, cadence, speed, controls, and power meter.
  
  
• Sleep tracking with the Vivoactive works reasonably well. You can tell it when you've gone to sleep and woken up, but it does a mostly adequate job of working this out for itself. You don't get any sleep information on the watch itself, which is true of most activity monitors. Instead, you have to go to the mobile app or the website. The Vivoactive consistently indicated I got more sleep than the Basis, including more deep sleep. The Basis is one of the few sleep monitors that will estimate REM sleep. I tend to think the Basis is more accurate, but without a gold standard to compare against, it's hard to draw conclusions.
  

Sleep monitoring from the Basis

Sleep monitoring from the Vivoactive.

• The Vivoactive menu is a little different to Garmin's Forerunner or outdoor ranges, but it works reasonably well. It's designed with a touch display in mind, so you can't operate it with just the buttons. This can be an issue when wearing gloves, but I've had no issues using the touch screen in the rain. In addition to the touch screen, there are two hard buttons, one on either side, and two touch buttons just below the screen.
  
  
• I'm a big fan of having Cadence alerts, which are easy to set up. I'm pleasantly surprised that this feature is included on a watch that has generally been crippled.
  
  
• Here's the cadence alert going off, along with a vibration.
  
  
• I was surprised to find the Vivoactive has support for Garmin's temperature sensing pod, the Tempe. This is something generally only found in their outdoor range. There's no built in thermometer, but I find they don't work well as your wrist is typically at a different temperature to the ambient air.
  
  
• The Vivoactive can be charged on the run, which makes is a candidate for ultrarunners. You have to set the Vivoactive (and some other Garmin watches) to "Garmin Mode" for it to work when charging the battery on the run, but once you do it works nicely.
  
  
  
• I rather like the ability to configure how long the vibration alerts buzz for. It's a small feature, but nice none the less.
  
  
• The Vivoactive has Garmin's standard display of activity tracking. It's rather uninspiring, showing the steps numerically and graphically, along with a guestimate of calories and distance.
  
  
• You can set repeating reminders for things like drinking or eating, as well as custom texts.
  
  
• There is simple "back to start" navigation on the Vivoactive, where it displays a directional arrow and distance to where you started the activity. The arrow is not a compass, so you need to be moving for it to point in the right direction.
  
  
• You can connect to Garmin Live Track, which will allow people to see your run as it progresses. This seems to work fine, and the Vivoactive will support Ant+ devices (HRM, etc.) while doing Live Track. I'm not entirely convinced by the usefulness of this; after all if you're carrying your smart phone, you could use that directly.
  
  

2 Vivoactive Cons

• The GPS accuracy of the Vivoactive is rather poor, though it's in line with more expensive watches that Garmin's produced. For some runners this inaccuracy will mean looking elsewhere, but for many others this may be acceptable. If all you're after is a rough estimate of training mileage, then it should be fine. If you're training more seriously, then the errors can mount up and cause knock on problems due to under or overestimating your training load and ability.
  
  
• There's support for a Footpod but sadly no support for Pace From A Footpod. This means that you won't get an accurate idea of your current pace, though it's possible that Garman might and this in a future firmware release.
  
  
• One of the more annoying bits of intentional crippling of the Vivoactive is limiting it to just three pages of data. This seems rather gratuitous and irksome; I realize that Garmin want to create differentiation across their model range by using software, but I find this a little egregious.
  
  
• Not only are you limited to three pages of data, each page has exactly three fields. I generally like to have four fields displayed, something the Vivoactive's display would handle easily enough. Occasionally I like to have a single field display so it's easier to read, either in low light conditions or when there's one big of data I need to focus on. This restriction to just three data fields as another bit of crippling.
  
  
• The strap on the Vivoactive is made of rather cheap, hard plastic. You can buy an upgraded strap, but sadly that's only of marginally better quality. I purchased the upgrade hoping for something more like the Suunto Ambit strap, but I was disappointed.
  
  
• The Vivoactive gives no summary data when you've finished your run, another example of intentional crippling of the watch. A simple indication of time, distance, and pace would seem the least they could do. (You can access the details via the history menu.)
  
  
• To offset the lack of save summary slightly, the Vivoactive shows time, distance, and pace when paused.
  
  
• In an unusual bit of crippling, the Vivoactive can set its clock from your connected phone or manually, but not from the GPS signal.
  
  

3 Smartwatch features

These features are quite common on smart watches, allowing you to get some basic information from your Bluetooth attached phone. Remember that these features are only available when your smart phone is in a Bluetooth range.

• The find my phone option is useful to those of us that are absentminded and can never remember where we left it.
  
  
• Like other smartwatches, you can get your text messages displayed on the Vivoative when it's connected to your phone via Bluetooth.
  
  
• You can get weather details on the Vivoactive, but it needs a Bluetooth connection to the Garmin Connect app to function, so it just saves you the effort of unlocking your phone.
  
  
• You can control you phone's music playback. I prefer a dedicated music player, but I know many runners use their phone.
  
  
• You can access your smartphone's calendar, which some people might find useful. (I don't.)
  
  

4 Comparison Table

I evaluate running watches in three distinct ways. Firstly, you can use a watch on its own, without any kind of Footpod. This is probably the most common way runners use their watch, but you miss out on a lot. The second rating is with a standard Footpod that is available quite cheaply. These Footpod's can be reasonably accurate once the calibrated, but calibration is a little tedious. The final evaluation is with the Stryd Footpod, which is vastly more accurate than any other type of Footpod, or and more accurate than GPS. The table below looks at the score, and the value for money of each watch for each of the three conditions. (I’ve also tested the Apple Watch 3, but I’ve not included it in these tables as it’s not really a running watch.)

The score is the sum of how well each watch can answer the four basic questions (how far, how fast, where are you, what's your cadence), plus some bonus points.

1. The "How far you've run" will be based on GPS only for "without Footpod" and "with Standard Footpod", but based on Stryd if supported in the "with Stryd Footpod" table..
2. How fast you're running assumes you're using a Footpod if it's supported, otherwise the rating is 0-2 based on GPS accuracy.
3. The "Where are you?" is based on various navigation features such as back to start, breadcrumbs, and preloaded maps. For some watches, you have to turn GPS off to get the benefit of Stryd, so those watches have worse "where are you scores" with Stryd than without.
4. The cadence score uses 1 point for an internal cadence sensor, 2 points for footpod support, 1 point for support from chest strap cadence, and 1 point for cadence alerts.
5. I give 1-2 bonus points for application support, 1-2 bonus points for data upload, 1-2 bonus points for Optical Heart Rate Monitoring, and 0-1 bonus points for battery life.
6. Value for money is the score divided by the price (at the time I last updated the table.) Your needs may be different, so you might weight the different aspects of the watches differently, or be basing your decision on different criteria totally. Hopefully this table will give you a good starting point for your decision.

4.1 Score Breakdown without a Footpod

4.2 Score Breakdown with a Standard Footpod

4.3 Score Breakdown with a Stryd Footpod

4.4 Basic Features

5 Navigation Features

For "navigation":

• Color Maps gives you full color maps, rather like a smart phone, with roads and paths marked out.
• Track Outline is a display of where you've run, rather like a breadcrumb trail. If there are maps, the outline is superimposed otherwise this is just the outline on its own without any context.
• Course Outline is an outline of a route that can be downloaded. I've found this useful during ultras or in unfamiliar cities where I've needed to know where to go.
• Back To Start is a simple arrow point to your starting point, so it won't help you backtrack.
• Back To Waypoint returns you to a previously marked location using a simple arrow to point.
• Compass. A magnetic compass can help you orient yourself or the map. Without a magnetic compass you have to be moving for the GPS to give you a sense of direction.

(Older Reviews: Polar RC3 GPS, Soleus 1.0, Motorola Motoactv.)