Garmin has been making fitness monitors for athletes and bikers for a while now. But this is Garmin’s first attempt at an activity band.The Garmin Vivofit comes in two options. The one with HR sensor and the other one without the HR sensor. The one with the HR sensor is priced at $170 and the one without the HR sensor is priced at $130. It has a very simple and light weight design. The band itself is a silicone rubberlike material, and that is actually separate from the activity tracker. The screen uses the same technology as that of the one which is used in your digital clocks. It shows your steps were taken, remaining steps to reaching your goal, distance traveled, calories burned, time and date and heart rate. The red band on top is the moving bar. The first bar is always the one when you are inactive. Additional bars will start to appear every 15 mins. The band does a good job of distinguishing just moving your hand around or lets say typing or driving your car, versus an actual movement like walking. It is a great reminder to stand up and take a walk once in a while. The display works perfectly fine in abundant lighting, but in dark rooms, it is quite difficult to see. It does not have any fancy displays, and because of that, you don’t have to recharge the batteries now and then. In fact, it will last you for a year before needing to charge. You can swap bands for different colors, and none of them are bulky.
The Garmin Vivofit is comparatively better than some of the bands out there and is comfortable to wear as well. You can wear this in the shower as it is water resistant upto 50 meters. And one thing which i like the most is that there are no ports for charging or syncing. Everything is done wirelessly. The band works with both Apple and Android powered devices. If incase you forget to sync, the don’t worry since it records all the info for upto three weeks. So far the band is quite easy to use. What is more important are the features? Now going on to the app here, the main page shows the distance covered, steps taken, etc. It provides something called as an auto goal based on your previous activity levels. The app will show you how active you were throughout the day or the info for an entire week or so. Now when you are wearing the HR sensor variant, once your heart rate spikes it will automatically trigger an activity. Do make a note that this feature will not be available in the one without the HR sensor variant. It will show you the time, distance, speed, and calories, etc. for that activity. So this works general and overall fitness of your body. But i believe the band is ideal for runners and joggers specifically.
The Garmin Vivofit doesn’t have the GPS capabilities within the band itself. Hence although the app says the particular activity doesn’t have a map data, its because this app is used on other products as well where the map would be utilized, unlike this one. The next section to focus is the sleep monitoring. Before you go to sleep, hold the button on the band to trigger the sleep mode. When you wake up, press and hold it again, and after doing so, the app will show the graph. I wasn’t too impressed with this though as it doesn’t show all the data as the light sleep vs. the deep sleep etc. And lastly on the main page are your badges. There is also a community tab which is where you can add friends. By doing so, you can view the leaderboard to compete with others and gain more. And there is also a devices tab which will show all the devices you have synced and also there is setting menu at the bottom from where you can change anything and everything. Overall, when you are first introduced to the tivo fit, it won’t be much impressive since there isn’t much at the start. But over time, you will start seeing real benefits based on the info on the app, especially for runners. All the main components are there to make it a worthy purchase. And it is worth getting it with the heart rate bundle.
