The new Garmin Vivoactive 4 is available in 40mm and 45mm sizes at $349.99. I’ve been using the 45mm slate stainless steel black edition for the past few weeks, and I’ve come to like the Vivoactive 4 a little better than the Forerunner 245 Music I tried earlier this year.
Although the smartwatch market is dominated by the Apple Smartwatch/Fitness Tracker and there is no other rival, there are plenty of alternatives for those searching for wearables that have more sophisticated features for fitness monitoring and exercise. Garmin continues launching new watches and with about every $50 raise, it’s beginning to clutter the segment with watches available.
The Vivoactive 4 is a Forerunner 245 Music touchscreen variant with a somewhat wider monitor and some minor variations in the basic training and running features.
It supports Link IQ and the customization widgets provided by this capability, but on the watch itself, you won’t find many advanced apps.
Garmin Vivoactive 4 SOFTWARE:
To navigate the device, you can press the button or press/hold/swipe on the display. Swiping up and down from the watch face scrolls you through the various widgets available (Active Minutes, Actions Taken, Health Statistics, Floor Mounted, Lost Run, Music Player, Heart Rate, Notifications, Hydration, and more). Selected widgets in the smartphone Garmin Connect app and synced to the watch. Swipe right and left from the watch face to access the shortcut you selected in Settings.
The software on the watch is the same as what you find on other Garmin devices. Such as the Garmin Forerunner 945. You can visit the Connect IQ Store to install Watch Face, Data Fields, and other applications.
You can use the Garmin Vivoactive 4 to track running, biking, pool swimming, golfing, and more focused exercises. Great to see the extensive golf support integrated with Garmin’s Approach CT10 Club trackers.
Due to VivoActive 4K’s fitness focus, it supports regular gym workouts with inexperienced athletes’ preloaded animated workouts. This is a great feature to try something new to help you exercise properly for safe exercise.
A large number of settings and customization options are available for each type of activity. For example, in the Running app, you can customize three data screens in a layout ranging from one to four fields with timer, distance, speed, velocity, heart rate, rhythm, temperature, altitude, and other fields. I want you to spend some quality time, optimize everything as you wish. Then be ready to tweet things while you do your activity and find that your data can be used differently
The experience is quick and simple by using the default or customizing the clock’s data fields and settings for as little time as you want.
Hardwear:
Touch-sensitive display with two buttons on the right side of the display. This is in contrast to the Vivoactive 3, which has a single button with a touchscreen interface. The top right button is the action button used to start your activity timer, view the control menu and the event recognition/notification feature. The button below is used to return to the previous, previous display, locate the laptop, view device settings, and more. From the watch face, you need to hold down the back button to go to the settings menu.
Hold down the single right button to access the control menu and by default, it contains the following; Garmin Pay, Music Player, Phone Connection Toggle, GPS Location Toggle, Do Not Disturb Toggle, Find My Phone, Stopwatch, Illumination Settings, Lock Display and Power Down.
The color display is good for indoor use. But it doesn’t sparkle like the Apple Watch, Fitbit Ionic, or other gear displays. It looks great outside and in direct sunlight. But the display technology watch helps longer than the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear.
Final Verdict:
I love what Garmin has been doing recently with GPS GPS watches for monitoring the health details like pulse ohmmeter for body batteries, advanced sleep-tracking, hydration tracking, stress tracking, respiratory tracking, and more. Helps. In areas beyond the practice session. Cross-train and doing animated workouts that encourage you to discover new exercises is also very easy.
The Vivoactive 4 touchscreen is useful and with fewer buttons. There is less confusion in remembering which different buttons to control, most of its watches have five. The touchscreen is responsive and has a week-long battery life, though not as powerful as some other smartwatches.