
When it comes to fitness, though, Garmin's store has everything you could want - and then some. The Vivoactive 3 would be more useful when you're not exercising if it had more apps that can control smart home devices, deliver news headlines to your wrist and offer more insights into your health using the watch's sensors. It's a good thing that Garmin is so committed to fitness, but a smartwatch should be more versatile. An app that shows your Lyft driver's ETA and another that does the same for Uber are useful, but you still need your phone to hail a ride. There are apps for hiking, stretching, setting a stopwatch, skiing, biking and running, but you'll be hard-pressed to find popular smartphone apps that are unrelated to working out.
#GARMIN VIVOACTIVE 3 INSTALL#
There are plenty of watch faces and workout apps that you can install from the store in the Garmin Connect app, but they're extremely specific. But while Garmin says its Connect IQ store has more than 1,600 apps, big-time apps unrelated to fitness are few and far between. Like Fitbit and Apple, Garmin has an app store for its smartwatch. More card issuers are being added in the coming months, but the roster is nowhere near as expansive as Apple Pay, which has a lengthy head start. Bank and Mastercards from BECU, Bank of America, Capital One, First Tech Federal Credit Union, Security Service Federal Credit Union, U.S. Visa cards from Bank of America, Capital One and U.S. I was in a hurry when I used the Vivoactive to pay for a pack of gum at Duane Reade, and using the watch to pay was far faster than digging into my bag to find my wallet and pull out my debit card, especially given how slow chip card transactions have become.īut Garmin Pay doesn't support that many cards at launch, which limits its usefulness. You'll see a photo of your card and its last four digits to make sure you pick the right one. You can store multiple cards in your wallet and choose between them by swiping down. To actually use Garmin Pay in a store, long press the Vivoactive 3's side button and tap on the wallet icon. The whole process takes just a few minutes. You can add payment details manually or by snapping a photo of your physical card, then verify your card with the bank or credit card issuer. Setting up Garmin Pay in the Garmin Connect smartphone app is fairly easy. You can tell whether a store or restaurant accepts mobile payments if there's an NFC icon on the checkout stand. The company introduced a mobile payment system with the Vivoactive 3 called Garmin Pay so you can pay for items on the go by simply holding your watch near a payment terminal. Like Fitbit and Apple, Garmin wants to make its smartwatches capable of doing more on their own. Both the Ionic and Apple Watch support local song storage, so you can exercise without a phone nearby. You can control song playback from your smartphone using the Vivoactive 3, but if you leave home with just your smartwatch, you'll have to work out in silence. The watch also lacks onboard music storage and has no integration with music apps. Shouldn't a watch with a heart rate sensor be able to figure out that a human isn't wearing the device, let alone sleeping while doing so?

The next day, the device reported that I had slept solidly for 9 hours. One night, I forgot to wear the watch, leaving it on a table.

The device gets pretty decent battery life - about three days with GPS and heart rate use - which means you can wear the watch overnight, but the sleep-tracking leaves a lot to be desired. Downsides: Sleep-tracking and no songsĭesign and fitness are where Garmin's Vivoactive 3 excels, but it's not a perfect smartwatch. However, I wasn't able to respond to messages right from my wrist, which would be useful. More basic fitness trackers will tell you if you have a text but won't show you the whole thing.
#GARMIN VIVOACTIVE 3 FULL#
I liked that the Vivoactive 3 would show me the entirety of a text message or the full text of an alert. Swipe up from the watch face to see an overview of your day, check the weather or view your most recent notifications.

Compare Wearables Home About the Developer Smartwatches Amazfit GTR Amazfit GTS Amazfit GTS 2 Mini Amazfit Pace Amazfit Stratos Amazfit T-Rex Amazfit Verge Apple Watch Apple Watch 7 Apple Watch SE Apple Watch Series 2 Apple Watch Series 3 Apple Watch Series 4 Apple Watch Series 5 Apple Watch Series 6 ASUS VivoWatch ASUS ZenWatch ASUS ZenWatch 2 ASUS ZenWatch 3 Basis Peak Casio G-Shock GBA800 Casio WSD-F10 Casio WSD-F20A Coros Pace 2 Diesel On Full Guard Diesel On Full Guard 2.Pressing on the watch face reveals a menu from here, you can change your watch face, set an alarm, view your stats and change the watch's settings.
