Garmin vivomove HR review

Overall rating

“An attractive analogue and digital watch that can manage your daily exercise at work and play”

Available to buy at Garmin and other sites at around £169.

I bought the Garmin Vivomove HR watch as I wanted a nice analogue watch to wear at work. My next watch also had to encourage me to get off my backside and walk at lunchtime.

Here, I tell you all about the watch having owned it for six months, how it can help you with daily exercise, and how it starts the important business of *digital wellness. As the watch doesn’t have any buttons I have included some videos of how to use it with your fingers on the touchscreen.

* “Digital wellness” refers to any type of gadget or service that helps you measure, record, manage and understand your physical and mental health. It’s like having a small doctor stuck to your wrist or in the palm of your hand.

This watch is good for those who want to start to measure your daily exercise and receive messages and calendar appointments in the workplace. If you are a dedicated runner buy a dedicated running watch as this watch won’t measure your runs accurately.

Suitable for

• People who like attractive analogue watches.
• They want to start to manage their health.
• They want to get their calendar appointments/messages on their wrist.

Not suitable for

• Serious runners as this product does not have a GPS receiver.

Pros

1. Very attractive analogue watch with hidden digital display.
2. The strap is very comfortable to wear for exercise or work.
3. Measures and monitor your stress over 24 hours.
4. Use it everyday at work for calendar reminders, steps walked, energy used and messages.
5. Introduces you to stress tools to help you relax and manage stress. It has a breathing App to calm you down when you get all hot and bothered.
6. Use the watch to transmit your heart rate over the air to the display of a compatible running machine. This will allow you to see your heart rate on your chosen exercise machine. This means you can leave your heart rate belt at home.

Cons

1. No GPS for measuring your run length accurately. However your running stride can be entered in metres so that run lengths measured can be more accurate.
2. The Android App needs to be open all of the time to receive messages and notifications from your phone. If you close the App by accident you don’t get messages or notifications which is disappointing and frustrating.

How the watch came about

One day Garmin’s product development team decided to make a new smartwatch that appealed to people that aren’t massive running fans but liked traditional watches . They knew that some people just wanted to record their exercise and get text/whatsapp messaging from their smartphones. This was to make more money. A similar product we reviewed is the Withing’s HR watch.

Garmin decided to keep the analogue watch shape. They then added a hidden digital display behind the hands. They decided to make the screen a touchscreen so the watch would have a clean look. When you touch the screen the hands of the display go up and out of the way to allow you to see the digital display. This is similar action to gull-wing doors of the Back to Future Delorean car opening up. Nice action.

They also wanted to add new Apps to the watch that looked at your stress. This video below shows you how to start and stop a recorded exercise activity on the watch. It is a little bit tricky as you have to use the touch screen. There are no physical buttons to press.

Say hello to Digital Wellness!

The Garmin vivactive HR watch has new features that starts the “Digital Wellness” business. This is an important step and one that other reviewer’s may not have actually picked up. This video below shows you the Apps that monitor your health including a stress meter and an breathing App. Breathing exercises can control your mood and your stress level.

Stress Monitor

This is a display of your current stress level. If you tap it it will draw a graph of your stress over the day.

Breathing timer

This breathing app asks you to breath in, hold your breadth and then breath out for a specific time in seconds. If you do this when you are stressed properly with your belly going out when you breath in and your belly coming in when you breath out through your mouth for several minutes you will calm down. Put your hand on your belly to ensure that you are doing this right. This a yoga technique.

 

Other features

As well as steps, calories , number of staircases, miles walked , the watch can also :

1. Control your music on your phone with play, pause and next track.
2. Weather and temperature at location.
3. Heart Rate . Current and a graph over the last hour with highs and lows
4. Your current stress level in the shape of a bar graph. When you select it and swipe right you get a relaxation timer that starts a breathing animation and
5. Detect if you haven’t moved for a while and ask you to move by saying “Move” and vibrating which is very useful.

You can measure your activity by :

1. walking
2. running
3. stepping on a step
4. lifting weights
5. sleeping

And there’s more features

1. Where’s my phone? feature. Select it to make your phone ring. Be certain to keep the Garmin Connect App open on the phone screen otherwise you won’t find the phone.
2. Saved activity folders for reviewing activities.
3. And if you sit still it tells you to move!

The Connect App

The Connect App runs on Android and Apple iOS phones and shows you stress over the day as well as the usual metrics from steps to energy consumed.

 

whichwearable highlight : Wearing a very comfortable watch daily and transmitting my heart rate to cycling and running machines from it so I don’t have to take my heart rate strap to the gym.

whichwearable lowlight : Having to keep the Connect App open on Android to receive messages from my smartphone. Why can’t the App run in the background constantly using whitelisted permissions?