Vivosmart Hr Won't Register Intensity Minutes?

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Garmin's Vivosmart HR reviewed: Don't buy a Fitbit before considering this band

The $150 all-purpose tracker may not have Fitbit's modern exterior, but its internals are solid.

Garmin is serious. The most defended outdoorsmen and athletes look to its rugged products for tracking everything from laps in the puddle to unsafe hikes in remote places. Now the company is getting more serious about heart rate with the $150 Vivosmart Hr, its first wristband activity tracker with a builtin optical center rate monitor that the visitor adult itself. It sports many of the features Garmin put into its other all-purpose trackers, including step, altitude, calorie, and sleep tracking, smartphone notifications, and music and action cam controls. It all connects to the newly redesigned Garmin Connect app.

Other than the heart charge per unit monitor, in that location's nothing outstandingly new nearly it. However, the Vivosmart Hour is a necessary product for Garmin. Not only volition information technology compete with the forthcoming Polar A360, simply, more than importantly, it's going subsequently Fitbit'due south $150 Charge 60 minutes with a comprehensive set of features that both novices and hardcore athletes volition appreciate.

Design: Don't fix what isn't cleaved

The Vivosmart HR looks similar a matrimony of the Vivosmart band and the Vivofit ii. It has a module with a 1.00 x 0.42-inch,160 x 68-pixel touchscreen that sits atop the wrist, with a single physical push on the correct side of information technology. It'southward embedded into a flexible, silicone band that mimics a regular watch strap, merely this has rectangular notches rather than tiny holes. That subtle change makes it super easy to adjust and fasten, so you can make it equally loose or equally tight as you want depending on when you're wearing it (y'all'll desire to have it on pretty tight when you lot program on using the heart rate monitor heavily).

On the underside of the device is the optical heart rate monitor and the 4 tiny nodes for charging. The charging cable has an odd fastener on it that yous have to fit the band into in order for information technology to ability upwards via USB. The nodes are not magnetic either, so I often had to fiddle with the charging cable before I finally snapped it into identify correctly.

The 160 x 68-pixel touchscreen is bold and has a backlight that turns on when yous tap it.

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The ring is silicone and comfortable with an adjustable closure.

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The Vivosmart HR comes in black, bluish, and purple.

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Swiping to the left on the display shows you steps taken, calories burned, and more.

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The middle rate screen shows you your real-time pulse and your average centre charge per unit over time.

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Music controls for when you lot keep a run and don't want to whip out your phone.
The settings bill of fare, attainable by tapping the side push, lets you do things including offset a run, enter do not disturb fashion, and find your telephone.

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The center icon initiates a sync with the Garmin Connect app.

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The nodes for charging, which surprisingly are not magnetic.

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The bottom of the module holds the optical heart charge per unit monitor.

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The entire ring isn't curved, but the module lays comfortably flat to your wrist.

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The charging cablevision for the Vivosmart Hr acts like an bad-mannered cradle for i side of the device.
It's super abrasive to snap into identify, especially since the nodes are not magnetic.
The brandish is as well very piece of cake to read in direct sunlight.

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Despite the brandish's basic, monochrome way, I really liked it. The numbers that testify the time digitally are big and easy to read, and the entire display is super clear in direct sunlight as well. In the Garmin Connect app, you can choose if you want its blueish backlight on e'er, never, or only during activity and when tapped. I constitute myself wishing the backlight was brighter, but that's an issue most Garmin devices have had for ages. It also times out pretty quickly if you have it set up to only plow on when woken by a tap or activity tracking, so I would advise keeping it ever on if you take centre troubles.

The Vivosmart Hr is water-resistant upwards to 5 ATM, or about fifty meters. That'south ameliorate than the comparable Fitbit Accuse HR, which is merely splash-resistant. The band is supposed to last upward to five days on a single charge, and my band was downwards to nigh 20 percent bombardment during my fourth day of utilize.

Setting up the device is unproblematic plenty: but download the Garmin Connect app and follow the pairing instructions later yous sign in or create an account. The Vivosmart 60 minutes pairs via Bluetooth to your Android or iOS device, and it does and then during setup from within Garmin's app rather than in the Bluetooth settings on your smartphone. I didn't take an issue setting upwards the device, merely information technology did have occasional syncing bug. You can initiate a sync by opening up the app or by borer the sync icon on the ring; sometimes the band wouldn't automatically sync when I opened the app.

A Garmin representative told me to update the Vivosmart Hr'south software to see if that would set the problem. To exercise so, you must connect the device to your calculator via its USB charger and sync it with Garmin Express, which you can download from Garmin's website. It's basically a device management system that is mostly proficient for software and firmware updates. Certain enough, my Vivosmart HR needed to exist updated to the virtually recent software, and after I did so, it synced to the app chop-chop and hands. (I should also mention that Garmin was doing maintenance on its Connect app while I reviewed the Vivosmart Hr. This slowed me down as it disrupted syncing, only after the maintenance was finished, things went back to normal.)

Video shot/edited past Jennifer Hahn.

Features: The usual suspects, with an accurate center rate monitor

Garmin is certainly trying to take Fitbit's Charge HR caput-on with the Vivosmart Hr. It tracks steps, calories, distance, floors climbed, and sleep, which is exactly what the Charge HR does. A note on sleep tracking: the Vivosmart HR monitors deep and light slumber, every bit well as the number of times you wake up each nighttime. During setup, one of the things you have to tell the device is the time yous typically go to bed each nighttime and the time you wake upwards each morning time. The tracker uses those times every bit guidelines. Information technology automatically assumes y'all're asleep when information technology senses no movement in that window of time, and it also silences the vibration alerts on the band then any telephone activity won't wake you up.

1 of the new metrics tracked is "intensity minutes," which piggybacks on the recommendation of organizations including the US Centers for Disease Command and Prevention and the American Centre Association that you should go at least 150 minutes per week of intense activity. According to Garmin'due south Vivosmart Hour manual, you can gain intensity minutes by participating in "x consecutive minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity activities."

The biggest new feature is Garmin'due south Elevate optical heart rate monitor embedded in the wristband. It continuously monitors your pulse, learning your average eye rate over time. I similar beingness able to cheque my heart rate at any time by swiping to the advisable page on the display, and seeing my average eye rate puts the real-time number into perspective. I checked my pulse multiple times a day this way and tested the monitor'due south accuracy the old-fashioned way: taking my pulse with my finger over the artery in my throat. Each fourth dimension the monitor was within five bpm of my reading.

The heart rate monitor is on when y'all piece of work out as well, and the readings volition show upwardly when you swipe the brandish while tracking a workout. With runs, you can swipe through time, distance, calories, eye charge per unit, and clock screens, and if you just want to be able to glance down at a specific metric while y'all're preparation, you tin can just swipe to that page and leave it there. Heart rate and distance are what I like to focus on when I jog, then I often kept the display showing those. I likewise like that when you cease tracking an action, you can choose to save it or discard information technology—this makes it super easy to filter out any activities that may have been interrupted for some reason or just ones you're not particularly happy with.

There's also broadcasting way for the heart charge per unit monitor, which shares your pulse with a connected Garmin Pismire+ uniform device such as an Border cycling tracker, the VIRB action cam (which you can also control via the Vivosmart HR), or even a Vivoactive smartwatch which tin can track swimming. Polar's upcoming A360 wristband can do the aforementioned matter, sharing your middle rate information with other Polar products that don't take monitors already in them.

While the Accuse HR shows you call and text alerts, the Vivosmart HR displays all the notifications your smartphone gets including texts, calls, emails, calendar events, Facebook, Twitter, and more. It's one of those bands that just floods your wrist with notifications, even if your smartphone doesn't lite up with them. I don't disable any notifications on my iPhone 6, simply some practise not wake up the display considering they aren't important enough for me to want to run into immediately. Even those alerts come through on the Vivosmart 60 minutes, so often I would look down at my wrist and meet just a random notification that a friend had checked-in at Milkshake Shack on Swarm. If you want to disable whatsoever notifications from coming through on the band, you'll have to go into the settings on your smartphone and disable them for your device as well.

In the drawer of miscellaneous features, the Vivosmart 60 minutes has music controls on its display, letting you pause and skip dorsum and forth betwixt songs while you work out. The only app I was able to use information technology in was iTunes, though, and so Spotify and Google Music users are out of luck with this. If y'all've been slumming information technology on the burrow or at your desk for over an 60 minutes, the ring will vibrate to tell y'all to move a niggling. But the feature I used more than I'd like to acknowledge is the find-my-phone feature: tap the phone icon in settings, and the band volition transport a jingle to your smartphone in example y'all've lost it.