Garmin Vívoactive 4 Review

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The Vívoactive 4 is a fitness wearable released by Garmin on September 5, 2019. It is marketed as a rugged and reliable GPS smartwatch for an active lifestyle and has all the features you’d expect from a Garmin product but at a fraction of the price. With its impeccable battery, numerous sensors, and endless apps, it is no wonder it is rated one of the best smartwatches in 2020.

There are two versions of this wearable, the following 45 mm one, and the 4S which is 40 mm in size. The difference between the two lies mainly in the watch size, battery performance, and available colors.

The flat, circular watch body of the Vívoactive 4 is 45.1 x 45.1 x 12.8 mm and made of stainless steel. It weighs 50 grams and comes with easily exchangeable 22 mm silicone straps which are soft to touch and don’t seem too prone to latching onto dirt. Its touchscreen is complemented by two buttons on the right-hand side, and its sleek design means it isn’t so thick it will get stuck above your shirts as the Samsung Galaxy Watch would for example.

Whilst this wearable does not feature a microphone or speaker to alert you and assist you in taking calls, its haptic technology is pretty advanced and you may also adjust the level of intensity of the vibration on your watch. 

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Garmin Vivoactive 4, GPS Smartwatch, Features Music, Body Energy Monitoring, Animated Workouts, Pulse Ox Sensors and More, Black
  • Keeps track of your energy levels, Pulse Ox (this is not a medical device and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or monitoring of any medical condition), respiration, menstrual cycle, stress, sleep, estimated heart, hydration and more
  • Easily download songs to your watch, including playlists from Spotify, Amazon music or Deezer (may require a premium subscription with a third party music provider), and connect with headphones (sold separately) for phone free listening
  • Record all the ways to move with more than 20 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps, including yoga, running, swimming and more
  • Get easy to follow, animated workouts right on your watch screen, including cardio, strength, yoga and Pilates
  • Battery life: Up to 8 days in smartwatch mode; Up to 6 hours in GPS and music mode

Display

Screen Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass, v3
Screen Size: 1.3 Inch
Screen Resolution: 260 x 260 pixels

Battery

Charging Mode: via Cable
Battery Life: Up to 8 Days

Sensors

Accelerometer
GPS: with Galileo, Glonass
Gyroscope
Garmin Elevate™ Wrist Heart Rate Monitor
Barometric Altimeter
Compass
Pulse OX Blood Oxygen Saturation Monitor

Features

Waterproof
Fitness Tracking

Box Contents

Vívoactive 4
Charging/data cable
Documentation

Setting up the Garmin Vívoactive 4

Pairing up your new wearable to your smartphone is pretty straightforward using Garmin’s Connect phone application! As you can see below, in a few minutes I managed to pair and set up my preferences for the wearable.

 

Garmin Vívoactive 4 compatible devices

The Vívoactive 4 works with both iOS and Android, and in this case was being tested with a Sony Xperia smartphone. As with all other smartwatches, pairing it up with an Android device gives you more functions such as being able to reply to messages using preset texts, as this was disabled by Apple for its iOS. 

Garmin’s official website also promotes the use of this smartwatch with some of its other devices such as the Garmin Approach CT10 Automatic Club Tracking System, the Garmin Varia RTL515 Cycling Rearview Radar with Tail Light and the Varia™ UT800 Smart Headlight

Furthermore, a number of accessories are also available to help you acquire the most accurate fitness tracking stats: 

Garmin Vívoactive 4 bands

Garmin official merch has released bands for this wearable in:

Shadow Gray with Silver
Black with Slate Hardware
Midnight Blue with Silver Hardware
Brown Italian Leather with Silver Hardware
Black Leather with Slate Hardware

However, being standard 22mm quick release bands, you can easily find numerous bands to personalize your watch, whatever your price range!

Garmin Vívoactive 4 features

Garmin is known for its top-quality devices for the professional athlete and some of the best health and fitness smartwatches on the market. Whilst these may be costly, the Vívoactive 4 offers a lot of the same features at a more affordable price.
When it comes to health monitoring, this wearable boasts the following features:

  • Wrist Based Heart Rate (Every second)
  • Daily Resting Heart Rate
  • Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts
  • Respiration rate (24×7)
  • Pulse Ox blood oxygen saturation
  • Fitness Age
  • Body Battery™ energy monitoring
  • All-day stress tracking
  • Relaxation reminders
  • Relaxation breathing timer
  • Sleep
  • Hydration
  • Menstrual Cycle

When it comes to actual workouts, the wearable has a number of gym activity profiles mainly training related to strength, cardio, yoga, and pilates. These are facilitated by an automatic rep counting system and on-screen workout animations.

The Vívoactive 4 helps not only to track your workouts but to analyze and further plan your improvement. This is done through intricate tracking of HR zones, HR calories, VO2 Max, and calculation of %HR max. Your respiration rate during exercise is also noted along with GPS information regarding speed and distance covered. This data may also be broadcast via ANT+™ to any of your paired devices. 

Auto Pause® and Auto Lap® make sure the wearable has your back without needing too much instruction from your self, whether you are following one of the advanced workouts it offers, or working on one of your downloadable training plans.

During training, one may easily set up the fields of data to be shown during the activity, such as distance, pace, speed, heart rate, heart rate, cadence, temperature, elevation, calories, steps, and more.

You may also set up a number of alerts during your activity, such as to hydrate, regarding your pace, or to turn back after a number of kilometers.

Garmin Assistance is also included in your wearable and may be activated by pressing your top button for 5 seconds; whilst there is also automatic incident detection for walking, running, and cycling, which will automatically alert your emergency contact if it detects that you need help.

Running

For the running enthusiasts, the watch offers 3 separate profiles: Running, Indoor Track Running, Treadmill Running. If you’re a newbie, you might want to try out some of the offered run workouts. 

If you’re looking for more accurate information, you may track GPS-based distance (the GPS loads in just a few seconds!), time, and pace as well as cadence (real-time number of steps per minute). If running is what you’re really into however, you might want to take a look at the Garmin Fenix 6 or consider one from this list of the best GPS smartwatches for running.

Golf

The Vívoactive 4 is a great addition to any golfing enthusiast. Even though it does not have all the extras a fully-fledged golf watch would have (such as the Garmin Approach S60 GPS Golf Watch), once you download the course you want to play via your Connect app, it will be saved on your phone for further use.

This wearable will provide you with basic tracking such as what hole you’re on and how far away the front/middle/back of the green is.  One may also study the shape of the green and measure specific distances by moving the pin.

For each hole, your Garmin companion will not only alert you of hazards, doglegs, and layup spots, but give you details of the hazard and its location in relation to the green. 

One of the pretty savvy features is that it may keep your score and shot history. This is done automatically once you hit your shot, and walk up to your ball!

Swimming, Cycling, and other sports

Your Garmin will assist you through your outdoor activities such as Snowboarding, Skiing, XC Skiing, Stand Up Paddleboarding and Rowing through designated profiles. If you are more into swimming or cycling however, it does go the extra mile in those regards. 

For swimming it assesses: 

  • Pool swim metrics (lengths, distance, pace, stroke, count, swim efficiency (swolf), calories)
  • Stroke type detection (Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly -pool swim only)
  • Basic Rest Timer (up from 0) (Pool swim only)
  • Time and distance alerts
  • Underwater wrist-based heart rate

For cycling enthusiasts, your Vívoactive 4 has 2 cycling profiles: for indoor cycling and for outdoor. Apart from alerts for when you reach goals such as time/distance/ heart rate or calories, it is also compatible with the Varia™ Radar and the Varia™ Lights. As mentioned above, it also supports additional speed and cadence sensors that step up the data you are able to record from your exercise.

Garmin Vívoactive 4 battery

With a whopping 8 days of battery life as advertised by Garmin (8 days of standard tracking without GPS, up to 18 hours of GPS tracking, and six hours with GPS and music), this wearable enables you to go through life with one less thing to worry about; definitely making it one of the top contenders for feature-rich smartwatches with the best battery life this year. It recharges via the proprietary port at the back of the watch same as the one for the Vívoactive 3 and Fenix 6

I loved how in about an hour, I managed to get a full charge. The fact that the charging wire is a simple USB on one end and not a full dock means it is compact, and the wire itself is cheap enough to have extra ones at work, in your car etc.

The downside of this is that the charging port is at the back of the wearable, so whilst charging you have to awkwardly put the watch on its side. Upon doing some research I did find that Amazon offers a number of different charger options that use this Garmin proprietary port, so might want to have a look at them below if like me, you prefer to have your watch charging on some sort of a stand.

Upon trying the watch out, it could be seen that certain functions such as Pulse Ox severely drain battery life. With it going 24/7 in the background and using GPS for some activities every day, I still managed a good 4 days! Had I streamed music during my activities, I am sure this would have significantly drained further, however, I prefer to go old school and have a third-party device for my music, so as I do not drain my phone and wearable!

Another battery-saving trick is to disable the feature which shows the passing seconds in real-time on your watch face. In general, the more data and colours the watch face has, the more power it will drain, so keep that in mind when downloading or creating your watch face (only 4 watch faces came preinstalled on the watch!).

Is the Garmin Vívoactive 4 waterproof?

Yes! Having a 5ATM standard, this wearable is water-resistant up to 50 meters in depth for 10 minutes. This means that it is built to withstand showers, low-velocity, and shallow-water activities, including swimming. It is definitely one of the best waterproof smartwatches out there as it delivers an array of tracking options for your underwater activities too!

Garmin Vívoactive 4 Apps

Once I set up my Garmin Vívoactive 4, I have to admit I was disappointed with the limited amount of apps already on the smartwatch, apart from having a flashlight, calendar and Garmin Pay, the watch was predominantly loaded with lists of possible activities I may carry out and track. 

Then, I stumbled on the wonders of the Garmin Connect IQ App Store. This is an application development platform in which companies and individuals work on apps for Garmin Wearables, with the possibility of even being acknowledged by Garmin themselves through the Connect IQ Developer Awards. This opens up the market to a lovely competition of third-party apps, ranging from data-rich watch faces to specific apps targeting different needs- such as a metronome for musicians, Pomodoro time-tracking app to help increase your productivity, or even a COVID19-distance tracker to help those who are legally obliged not to wander too far from their house during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you have premium Spotify, Amazon Music, or Deezer accounts, you may also download and listen to your music offline via Bluetooth headphones or speaker (You technically have 4GB of music storage on it however in reality there is a good amount of that already taken up).

As seen below, the selection is vast; however one of my disappointments is that there aren’t many sorting options, and I do not have the facility to only be shown free apps or watch-faces. Furthermore, some of the watch faces didn’t mention that they were not free, and after a few hours of installing them and using them, I was asked via my wearable to go to a website to pay to continue using the watch face, which I felt misleading. 

Don’t get me wrong, if an app is that useful, I don’t mind paying a dollar or two for it and for the designer’s time, however, I found it time wasting to install and uninstall all the apps that I wanted to try out that eventually demanded I pay for them.

Some other useful apps you might want to take at a look at are Barcode Wallet: which stores all your gym membership or discount card barcodes; Rain: which gives you a breakdown of the upcoming precipitation in the next hour; HassIQ which enables you to control your smart home from your wrist; and finally Watchlist which syncs with Microsoft To Do and means that you have the shopping list you drafted on your laptop right at your wrist!

Should I buy the Garmin Vívoactive 4?

Pros:

  • Long battery life
  • Great hardware (same Sony GPS chipset and optical heart rate sensors as its more expensive Garmin brothers such as the Fenix 6!)
  • Probably the most advanced health and fitness tracking within its price bracket 
  • Includes Pulse Ox which is not a common find on smartwatches
  • Numerous third-party apps

Cons:

  • No Speaker and microphone to take calls
  • Silent Alarm
  • Primarily a fitness tracker with some smartwatch functions… might be overkill if you are not a very athletic person
  • Control menu doesn’t show all apps… only 12!
  • The interface isn’t as straightforward as that on some other smartwatches
  • Upon first use, does not come already installed with too many apps and widgets, so it needs time to be set up in a way which brings the best out of it

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