Beyond that, it works just like any other Garmin watch in terms of showing you your running stats in customizable display pages: Let’s start though by looking at GPS accuracy. But where it could be more interesting is on the higher end watches (which it’s coming to shortly) in terms of longer endurance workouts. Is there no gesture control, etc? Both sub-$150 options have square screens with the Bip S ($149.99) using a more vibrant full color screen. Vivoactive 4: €299 & €329 depending on bezels/buttons And again, this time for that heart rate graph. I wouldn’t take it for free. I’ll be returning this one and buying a Venu instead, once it’s available. As the price will be nearly the same for both right now here in Germany, I would really appreciate your opinion and experiences. Wonder if anything have changed since the 310XT?? The difference between the 4 … Nice line up from garmin thes last months but any rumors from suunto You can click here to Subscribe without commenting. I like to be inconspicuous when I’m out and about, and the always-on screen has given me pause. Av heart rate 89. Pretty much all of Garmin's watches are built to play nice with Strava, from budget watches like the, And after initial accuracy issues, this can now be considered a strong addition to the watch's third-party mix, Just like Garmin, Polar makes sure that watches like the, Best Strava compatible heart rate monitors, Best waterproof smartwatches to buy in 2021. Strava really makes it easy to dive into looking at your performance levels, and in our experience, does a better job of showing improvement than many of its rivals. I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Yup, all of them. Would go for the Apple watch (as it just has many day to day functions too) but I’m an android user… Which Garmin watch would you recommend or am I better advised to switch to the apple eco system… Thanks so much ! As you’ve seen by the pictures, so far, it’s basically the same quality of display as past Vivoactive watches in terms of readability or such. Odd, almost all smartwatch screens are 1.3″ and smaller, and I see plenty of people using them. 2017 Vivoactive 3 $269 – Vivoactive 4 is 45mm and includes a color touchscreen display Ok, with all that out of the way, we’ll dive into the details. Why it is not available on Fenix 6? Sony make a pair of Bluetooth headphones (and a non Bluetooth MP3 player version) with 4gb built in. Hi Ray, any update on the vivomove review? The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). after reading multiple positive reviews on this device, I purchased a vivoactive 4 on Amazon. We’ll first look at these new features, and then from there dive into a quick accuracy check-up on some runs and such. Ahh yes, the good ol’ classic evening fall run chest strap lack of connectivity (despite wetting it). The lap button is a great decision. When will you update the Product Comparison Calculator with the latest Garmin watches: VA4 and Venu? Yes, Ray says the features will trickle up. Today Garmin announced the new Vivoactive 4 & 4S watches, within a pile of different color/material variants. There seem to be a lot of reports of the housing degrading fairly rapidly. Looking at firstbeat I see those two different watches get 4, and 11 firstbeat metrics respectively. With that, let’s talk all the new things in relation to the past model – the Vivoactive 3: – Music now standard: Including Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and iHeartRadio The Vivoactive 4, like most other 2019 watches from Garmin, are just so much better at music than older Garmin watches. Seems $50 too dear. It does not have custom watch faces and applications from Garmin’s app store. Edge Explore devices are not Strava Live Segments compatible. Get street cred for your sweat. I’m curious if you ever decided on a watch, as I am currently debating between these three (FR245M, FR645M and VA4) myself. Garmin Vivoactive 4S 40mm: Opptil 7 dager i standby og 5 timer med GPS og musikk tilkoblet. Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2: $279 Amazon. Appreciate it! Thanks! On an Apple watch, it almost seems that the vibration has a very short but gentle startup period before it reaches its peak vibration. On 520 everything worked "out-the-box", on 820 I cannot get Strava segments no matter what. I’m really interested in your thoughs on this vs the forerunner 645 music … which is basically in the same price range. After you upload an activity to Garmin Connect it’ll show you the estimated sweat loss leveraging the known outside temperature, your weight, humidity, and general black magic. So Cup #1 could be an 18oz bottle, cup #2 could be an 8oz cup, and cup #3 could be whatever else you want. Power meters are a premium feature and one of the things they use to differentiate products. Strava does a lot of good analysis of your sessions based on heart rate – but there are data points it doesn't track. I’ve actually got an Apple watch second edition that I use as my primary alarm now because it lets me get up without waking up my significant other for early morning runs and swims. thx I would really like to get some suggestions. That’s my addiction that I can’t do without. My wife found the GPS staying on after an activity was the real battery drainer. Is the F245Music all we need? I really don’t understand music on a watch. I’m thinking to return it and change to Polar Ignite or something else, not sure yet. Syncing to Strava is baked into the companion app – and it's the only available API. For example, right now if I have a moderate bike ride and go do yoga (or whatever) the recovery time on my edge 530 is only based on that moderate bike ride, not any other activities I’ve done, or how crappy my sleep is or wacked out my HRV is. . After all – Garmin still has to compete against Fitbit, Samsung, and Apple. If that means the HR monitor now works with the swimming app, there’s a reason to upgrade from the Vivoactive 3 right there. I really like the additional stats the forerunner can get (especially with the dynamics pod). – Vivoactive 4S is 40mm and includes a color touchscreen display Thanks! For the HR plots, there’s a link to follow the actual sets, so you can zoom as deep as you’d like on the DCR Analyzer. I know it’s subtle and hard to quantify, but I’ve always found the vibration alarm of Garmin devices very … abrupt. On my 945, I find the estimated sweat loss to be wildly inaccurate (based on my only partially inaccurate pre-workout weigh-in and post-workout weigh-out). It’s because at this juncture I don’t believe the firmware is final, and thus, it’s not representative of the units going to consumers. Vivoactive 4/4S US Pricing: $349 On the vivoactive 2 & 3 HR it is not possible to set the swimming pool size smaller than 17m…I have requested this feature change to garmin more than once to be able to set it to smaller swimming pool like 14m or even 12m….We not all have access to bigger swimming pools. Looking for Live Segments on your Garmin Edge 1030? I don’t believe we’re at the point where there’s a codebase limitation on the Vivoactive watches that this matters. This is why I returned my va3… Garmin said this is a non issue but I’ve bought on Amazon and they let me return it. Garmin makes the best activity wearables overall, but the Approach series doesn’t have the same features as the vivoactive (no music, no garmin pay, no HR monitor). Zegarek multisportowy Garmin Vivoactive 4S sprawi, że nie będziesz musieć zabierać ze sobą telefonu, by podczas treningu słuchać muzyki, a także portfela, by od razu po wielokilometrowym biegu móc szybko zaopatrzyć się w coś do picia czy przekąskę, by uzupełnić spalone kalorie. This speed sensor is unique in that it can record offline (sans-watch), making it perfect for a commuter bike quietly recording your rides. – Switched to Garmin Elevate V3 optical HR sensor I’m headed to Washington DC – what do you recommend for training? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s 2018 Gear Guide too. Seriously, some of these have repeats that list ‘23x’. Yeah, I have Montana 650 since they came out, I use every hunting season, but my offline topographic maps I have in my smartphone works much better. About 40 bpm to low! And ive noticed that different garmin devices gives a good “recommended time until next workout” when i do a carido based session. I know they held back Venu due to the software stability. And it's in a special club of one because Strava is the only app with that privilege. Ughhh, I see that Garmin are still insisting on having Golf as a baked-in activity that can’t be completely removed. Coming from the Forerunner series I do miss the audible beep, but at least the vibration is strong on this watch. To clarify: Single press bring up the Sport Menu. I cover all the units to buy (and avoid) for the 2020-2021 indoor training season. Kate. Do the First Avenger and Captain Marvel models have the guts of the VA4 in a different package? You can see for this short 27 minute run, it was 163ml of liquid (lower right hand corner of right screenshot): Ultimately, I suspect for most customers of the Vivoactive series units, this probably isn’t too much of a concern. 2016 Vivoactive HR $249 Looks and feels every bit as nice as Suunto (which typically has nice design and build quality). There's also the Ionic, the company's true GPS running watch, though that has recently been removed and retired from Fitbit's own website. Thank you, Markus. No power meter support in the Vivo product line. It looks to me like the small one might take the same strap as the current Vivoactive 3, but the big one and the Venu certainly do not, correct? Also note that like the two Venu & Vivoactive 4 watches, my two posts on these watches at this point are incredibly similar. I looked up your previous posts on earlier versions of the Vivoactive: Example: I create my workout in connect of three sets of squats, 15 reps per set using 100 lbs. The information in this manual applies to both Garmin Connect segments and Strava segments. I would assume so, but would love to confirm if anyone has knowledge/ confirmation on this. Now finally, as I noted early on in this post, this isn’t a review. – Added Workout Animation functionality: For Strength, Cardio, Yoga, Pilates Zooming by buttons is pain in the butt. The new features all strike me as gimmicks other than the extra button and the better heart rate sensor. (PulseOx, Heart Rate, Move IQ). It temporarily shows correct elevation right after I do a workout with the GPS, but within a couple of hours, the altitude reverts too negative. Conoce quiénes son nuestros colaboradores y qué herramientas están creando para ayudarte en tu misión de superarte día tras día. They're health and fitness smartwatches that actually deliver, with good sleep tracking and a weekly rating of your activity and fitness using Mio's PAI score. I see that it samples hear rate regularly, but nowhere can I find if this 4/ 4S version measures hear rate variability. My vivosmart 4 usually was pretty good. I can’t imagine what that AMOLED version of this watch will be eating it down.. You're likely to find more of your pals recording their workouts on Strava than other apps, and that can be much more motivating. No ECG, no offline maps, no Sapphire , Titanium, no LTE… Long press brings up the Controls Menu. Like the extra button on the side. While many of the new features are within the general aspects of the watch (like hydration), a huge pile of them are technically under sports (including the breathing features I talked about in the previous section). Any news on an LTE variant of either the Venu or Vivoactive 4? In fact, I think the pending firmware update may have *caused* the battery issue, because I realized that it was “stuck” in a half-downloaded state in the Garmin Connect app, so I’m wondering if the app was constantly trying and failing to push down the update via Bluetooth. But today I generate a fit file of a segment and put manually in my Fenix Chronos. The list of differences is long. You'll support the site, and get ad-free DCR! I wrote Garmin support to ask if the hydration widget would come to FR645 and they would not give an answer to the question. In the feature overview you mixed up the 4 and the 4s in regard to the sizes. Your email address will not be published. Have you used PacePro on the 645M? As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I’ve had my V4 for a little over 48 hours now, and my first observation is that the build quality is very nice on this watch. You can also have sessions recorded in the Apple Workouts app synced to Strava, and this can be done by connecting Apple Health from within the Strava app. The old one was useless garbage and Garmin has admited as much. For me, however, my Vivoactive HR takes care of all my hiking and cycling needs. Pretty much all of Garmin's watches are built to play nice with Strava, from budget watches like the Garmin Forerunner 35 all the way up to the likes of the Fenix 6 (pictured above) and the Forerunner 945. I like my VAHR, apart from the battery duration which is now down to 4 days, and was expecting the VA4 to be its replacement. What about the Workout Animation for Pilates, is it only for Vivoactive 4 or will it also transition to higher-end watches? Update! There you can enable manual lapping, that works But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. It’s very toyish , cheep looking and asking premium price and competes with regular smartwatch for half the price. Pixel density is overrated, what matters is screen clarity and contrast. Another question. Any specific reason you can share as to why the full review isn’t there yet? Is there something similar on the VA4 or any workaround to get this information? Note for all these photos in both posts, I’m using the default backlight settings. That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. As you can see, the vast majority of new features on the watch are far less focused on the swim/bike/run athlete that’s more common in Garmin’s Forerunner and Fenix lineup, and instead focused on a bit more of the lifestyle athlete that may be more varied in their day to day activity – which to be fair, was always the strength/target of the Vivoactive lineup, as this is within that family. – Structured workout support via downloadable workouts For the most part it’s good, but there’s also some runs where it’s a bit wobbly. Given that the vivoactive is brand new and probably a very high volume model, I wouldn’t read into this too much. Sadly, because the Courses feature doesn’t make it to Vivoactive 4, Venu or Forerunner 45, those devices won’t get the new update. You get a number of tracked sports, with outdoor workouts tracked by GPS that passed muster in terms of accuracy. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below.