Garmin Vivofit 3 Review

With Garmin trying to snatch some attention away from Fitbit in the fitness tracker market, the Vivofit 3 certainly has some great things going for it. It’s slim and light, and easy to forget you’re even wearing it, and being fully waterproof means you never need to take it off. The battery lasts the best part of an entire year, so you won’t need to remember to keep it topped up every few days, and it does its best to work out what activities you’re doing, dropping the need for you to work out for yourself just when all those calories got burned off.

It’s a shame, then, that while there’s nothing to actively hate about this, as a whole package the Vivofit 3 doesn’t quite feel like an amazing product. While the step counter is generally accurate (or at least as accurate as any others) the automatic activity choice isn’t always right, and without a vibrate function the various things it tries to notify you about – lack of activity for example, or the alarm – can easily go missed. The strange omission of a heart rate sensor is a shame too, given that such information can provide crucial feedback in terms of ongoing fitness changes.  The accompanying app isn’t too bad though, and the ability to track sleep quality is a neat touch.

Generally then for a lower cost fitness tracker, the Vivofit 3 isn’t a bad option at all, but that’s not to say there aren’t better alternatives. Indeed, you might decide that for a few quid more a higher spec tracker from Garmin themselves might be a shred move. Worth considering, but not worth grabbing without some thought.