#and I hate it cause I need 7-8 hours to run at (near) full capacity

[thegaythespian]

every night I consider pulling an all nighter, already going to bed too late to not be tired in the morning

[alwaysrunning-never-lookingback]

MONDAY GEAR GOBBLE! Garmin vivoactive smartwatch

Let’s talk about some running gear, shall we? Today, its the Garmin vivoactive smartwatch. 

Allow me to begin in this fashion- I LOVE THIS WATCH. Truthfully my favorite thing about this watch is the size. It looks like a regular watch, but can do so much more. Maybe I am so enamored because I’m coming from the Garmin Forerunner 305, which is a lead brick in comparison, both in size and functionality. 

                                   Look at the SIZE of that thing!!

The F305 served its purpose well, and like all technology, was stellar in its peak. But the F305 is to GPS-enabled watches what digital cameras are to smartphones- It’s not impossible to find people still holding on to the romance of the old technology (Like my grandfather with his Nokia flip phone and velcro-style belt loop phone case. It doesn’t even have an address book in it), but the newer counterparts can do so much more, and do it so much better!

Here’s everything that I really enjoy about this thing:

1. Sleep tracker. It’s not perfect,  but unless you attach electric nodes to my head, how could it be? I am a big fan of data in any capacity, and this does an awesome job at collecting data on your sleep patters and putting it in nice charts and graphs for you. It tracks ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ sleep and even will tell you when you wake up and walk around during the night. In the app, you set approximate sleep and wake times and it will try to guess when you’ve gone to sleep based on those approximations. But as long as you stay moving, even if you’re well past your preset sleep time, it will recognize that you’re awake.

Above, an option to start Sleep Mode. This blocks all notifications from bothering you through the night, which is awesome. I don’t care that Costa Vida sent me an email at 2:47am, and I don’t want to know about it at least until I wake up. (But please don’t misunderstand, I love Costa Vida will all my whole soul and I’m very happy they emailed me. Go read this post for proof)

Above, just one bit of Sleep Data provided by the app. This is part of something that I’ll have to cover more in-depth in a forthcoming review

2. Bluetooth phone connection. It transfers your workout data to your phone each time you open the Garmin Connect app, giving you the ability to analyze it on more than just a tiny watch face. If I wanted to track my GPS data on the F305, I had to upload the info to my computer and overlay it onto a map. Not impossible, but Garmin is all about removing hurdles, and here they’ve done a great job. This provides a detailed history of everything ever logged on your device. Again, more big data! You can also see hourly and daily weather snapshots on your phone, though it doesn’t go into much more detail. Another great feature is the music controls. You can connect Connect (see what I did there? Don’t worry I hate myself too.) with a music app like Google Play Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc and control play/pause, volume, and track selection from your watch. I’ve found this to be particularly useful when I’m on a bike: If a song comes on I don’t want to listen to but I can’t get to my phone in my pocket or bag, a few swipes on my watch and voila! problem solved. Getting app notifications is pretty awesome too! I have Gmail, text messages, NYT articles, even an app called Randomly RemindMe set up to send notifications to my watch, and it has changed my life. Sometimes there are too many notifications coming in (like a group chat from hell) and I have to temporarily disable Bluetooth, but seeing who exactly sent me a text or an email will let me know if its urgent and whether I ought to go through the trouble of getting out my phone at work or in class or with friends, etc.

3. Find my phone. A saving grace that should have been invented with the first cell phones to hit mainstream use. As long as your watch is connected to your phone and within Bluetooth range, this function will cause your phone to rapidly flash the camera light, vibrate, and make noise; even if your phone is totally silenced, this will temporarily override these settings until you locate your lost phone. Great for middle-console car traps, falling between the bed and the wall, or heaven forbid, someone hides your phone from you.

4. Sunlight readable touchscreen. Very impressive, if nothing else. Screens are often so hard to see in sunlight, but the Garmin tech geniuses have overcome this on the vivoactive. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, the screen is always as readable as a regular watch face. Never have I had any issue with reading it.

5. Customizable bands. A great feature to make your watch all your own. Nearly any color or design is available, and they come at very reasonable prices. With tiny screw heads, you need to make sure you have the proper tools to remove the watch bands, but it’s pretty simple. Be warned that durability of the wrist bands may become an issue depending on the seller, so whether you do it online or in person, only buy from a reputable vendor you trust.

                   ***NOTE: I am not endorsing Amazon or this seller ***

6. CONNECT app. This is so expansive and incredible I’ll have to do a standalone review for the app in the very near future. Stay tuned!

7. Fast charging and awesome battery. It’s truly wonderful how quickly this battery charges. The charging station has a magnet that holds your watch in place, and is USB-compatible so it can charge nearly everywhere. Additionally, this watch has a great battery life. Without using the GPS and activities, the battery lasts around 2 weeks on a full charge, with variability depending on backlight use, etc. I can get about 6 days of workouts before it needs a charge, and though I’ve yet to run this far in one go, I can roughly estimate it has 8 or 10 hours of battery with constant GPS use (for example, using the run or bike function without stopping). Great for daily and weekly training, but may not hold up so well for those of you running 50- or 100-mile races!

8. All the old Garmin stuff you know and love. Pace notification and customizable data screens for all compatible activities, which include running, biking, swimming, golf, walking, and indoor biking, walking, running. This is so fun! During activities, you are required to have at least one data screen (duh), but can have up to three, with 2 or 3 data fields on each screen AND you can set them however you like. I have three data screens for running set up this way: 

   1. Distance, Timer, Pace 

   2.Lap distance, Average pace, Lap pace

   3. Elevation, Time of day. 

Again, these screens are not permanent. Not everyone is interested in the same things I am during a run, and that’s what makes it so great! You can do whatever you want!! The list of things you can add to these data screens and the combinations you can come up with is incredible! Take a look–

Timer Fields

Timer

Lap Time

Last Lap Time

Average Lap Time

Elapsed Time

Distance Fields

Distance

Lap Distance

Last Lap Distance

Pace Fields

Pace

Average Pace

Lap Pace

Speed Fields

Speed

Average Speed

Lap Speed

Last Lap Speed

Maximum Speed

30 sec Avg. Vertical Speed

Heart Rate Fields

Heart Rate

Average Heart Rate

Heart Rate Zone

Hear Rate %Max

%HRR

Avg HR %Max

Avg %HRR

Lap Heart Rate

Lap %HRR

Lap HR %Max

Cadence Fields

Cadence

Average Cadence

Lap Cadence

Last Lap Cadence

Temperature Fields

Temperature

24-hr Max

24-hr Min

Elevation Fields

Elevation

Other Fields

Calories

Heading

Laps

Sunrise

Sunset

Time of Day

Steps

Lap Steps

***You can purchase separately a HR monitor to sync with your watch. I don’t have one, and therefore anything in field #5 I know very little about. As you can see, the watch offers a plethora of options for you to see exactly what kind of data (there’s that buzzword again) you’re interested as you run/bike/swim/golf/walk. Way more options than the F-305, that’s for sure!

9. Waterproof. This made me nervous at first; I swam a few laps with it and was worried that it would short out, get waterlogged, or some other issue would arise. But to my great surprise it held up just fine! The swim function allows you to set pool lap distance, and it will do its best (which is pretty dang accurate, I might add) to vibrate when it senses you’ve reached the end of the pool and its time to turn around before you sustain some head trauma. 

10. Vibrating alarm. This is a feature that I like, but again it’s not perfect. You can set up to three alarms to go off at any time, and your watch will vibrate for 1 min or until you snooze/ turn off the alarm. I do appreciate that it wakes me up without making noise, and in every situation I’ve found myself it is impossible to sleep through but it’s just so darn easy to deactivate! A quick tap with my finger and it’s back to Snooze City.

11. Connect IQ. This has some features that go with the CONNECT app, a review for this will be up soon! Customizable watch faces (not the bands I already talked about, but the touchscreen interface) is a considerable achievement. As I understand it, those with more design and programming savvy than the rest of us common folk can design any number of widgets and put them online through a place called Garmin Express, where you choose what you want your watch interface to look like. Garmin Express is available as a free download, click here to get a copy for yourself.

However, this watch isn’t flawless, and I don’t love EVERYTHING about it. Here’s what to take note of when it comes to negative things about the watch:

1. Buttons on side occasionally unresponsive. It comes with two physical buttons, one on each side. On the left, you’ll find the power button. Hold it down a few seconds, and it will ask for confirmation that you want to power off the watch. The button on the right will bring up your activity menus. These buttons work okay, but on rare occasion they won’t react right away, or I need to press harder, etc. No serious issues, but sometimes it’s a slight annoyance

2. Touch screen not uber-sensitive. Sometimes, probably due to the build up from my gross, oily hands, the watch screen doesn’t respond well to touch, and as an aside the easy-to-see smudges don’t add to the aesthetic value. This issue also arises when the watch is wet. I know I said its waterproof capabilities were great, but if there is a drop of water on-screen, this messes up functionality until it’s dried off. Not a big deal during a run, I just dry it on my shirt or shorts. This only becomes a problem when one is, say, swimming laps in a pool!

3. GPS mode sucks battery. As I mentioned before, using the watch during activity mode really sucks the battery. So I never use it to track a bike ride to/from campus or work or a friends house, and I don’t turn it on when I’m walking around. The GPS/activity tracking mode is only used for actual running or other designated workouts.

4. Disconnect/connect issues? I put a question mark after this one because I’m not sure if its a common thing or mine was just an isolated event. For the first three weeks I had the watch, there would be periods of a few hours when my watch would disconnect and connect again about every 30 seconds. Not anything life-changing or awful, but my watch vibrated with every change in connection, which I hated. Since then, I’ve had no problems, and the Garmin website was super helpful in resolving the issue

5. Inactivity timer. I had a really hard time adding this to the dislikes. I don’t love it, but think it belongs in some middle category because I certainly see the merits of it. As part of tracking your steps it will alert you if you’ve been inactive for too long (I suspect the timer to be 60 minutes, but that’s purely anecdotal). This is a great reminder to stay active and get up from your chair during the day, but it certainly has its downsides:

In my line of work, I am often up and moving, but it may be for only a few steps at a time and often not very far. If I walk too slowly to trigger the movement sensor or I’m back and forth in the same 8x8 area, it will remind me that I ought to be moving. At the very least, its a mild distraction. But it has gotten me into some awkward situations during exams. No professor wants to hear a vibrate during a test, and more than once I’ve had to explain away what happened.

After a long run, sometimes I feel justified in lying around for awhile. I mean really, if you’ve hit 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 miles today, you’re probably okay to take a little break. But your vivoactive doesn’t care, it’ll tell you to move regardless! And maybe you should. Maybe its beneficial to walk a bit after a long run so you don’t get too stiff or anything. Or maybe you’d be better off melting into the couch, and I wish the watch would let you do that if you so choose.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this watch to anyone. I think it is a great blend of function & form, though I do wish a few small things could be changed. Keep an eye out for my review on the CONNECT app and the IQ portion, which will be paired with info on the Garmin Express program as well. Do you have this watch? Do you have a different Garmin watch that you think is better/worse than the vivoactive? Is there a glaring misstep in my evaluation of the watch? Let’s talk about it, and tell all your friends!

In the meantime, let’s talk! I’m always interested in finding new people to share this passion and trade ideas & philosophies with. But more importantly, I want to hear YOUR stories. Find me on Twitter  @KoltonGWilliams and we can talk about running. Or check out my videos on YouTube here. Heck, email me at williamskolton@gmail.com if you feel so inclined. And then, share your stuff with me! Drop me a message, comment, whatever. Let’s connect! I would love to read your blog and watch your videos and follow all your activities, running or otherwise.  Teach me about your running gear and training, ask me a question, or tell me what you ate today. I want to hear it all! Run as fast or as slow as you need to have a good time, but get out there and run!