Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Upgraded to the new vivosport after the (fairly useless) strap keeper on my vivosmart hr+ broke for the second time. My original fitness watch was a vivosmart and I loved it -- but not the pixel death that came along with it. I was not a big fan of the hr+ but everything that I disliked about it seems to be better in this new vivosport. For one, the screen is smaller and the hr sensor is more flush with the underside of the band. That means it fits my smaller wrist better; the hr+ always sat above my wrist and there was a weird gap on either side no matter how tight I made the band. The band itself feels softer, the clasp feels sturdier than the hr+ and the strap keeper has a better groove to actually hold the strap. Plus, it's just nicer looking. The color display is a nice touch, not really necessary, although I do think it makes things easier to read on the small screen. Not as pretty as some of the fitbits out there, but it's water resistant and that's what I need. There's no buttons. Everything is navigated by holding, double tapping, or swiping the glass screen. It tracks steps, stairs, workout intensity minutes, calories burned, distance, and more. It also can remind you to move if you've been sitting too long, give you weather information, and control a VIRB cameras. Then there is the other reason I am loyal to the vivosmart family: anything that sends you push notifications on your phone can be sent also to the watch. No need to worry if the app you like is compatible with the watch, and there's no downloading necessary. Just go into settings in the app and add it under smart notifications. Other cool stuff: you can set more than one alarm, and you can choose the individual days. This has been a complaint about garmin vivos forever, and it finally happened. It has gps ability for running and walking. I like the stress monitor and the relax timer. I haven't had it long enough to really interpret the data, but the relax timer did lower my stress number, so take that however you want. You can adjust the strength of the vibrating alerts. You can (slightly) customize the watch face. There's a couple analog and digital designs, and varying information on some of them. You can also orient it so that the display is horizontal or vertical. The time stays on all the time, but you can set it so the screen gets brighter as you turn it and raise your arm to see what time it is. There are choices in activity straight from the watch: walk, run, cycling, cardio, strength, and other. The battery life is supposed to last about a week, less if you use the GPS more often. It's as accurate as any of the other wrist based trackers I've worn, which is to say holding my wrist steady while pushing a stroller doesn't work so great, but sometimes I get credit for folding laundry. Tried out the GPS for the first time the other day. Worked well for me, didn't take very long (about a minute, I had to step away from my front door and into the driveway, but then it fixed right away) to get my location, and it was kind of cool to see my route in the app once it was uploaded. I was on a nicely wooded trail and in a relatively new neighborhood and the route was accurate. The not good: Screen can be hard to see in bright light. Also, I had it set to automatically turn on when I walked or ran for a certain amount of time. It would start randomly for no reason, usually when I had been sitting. Even after removing the settings both online and through the app and syncing multiple times, it kept doing it. A restore default reset on the watch seems to have fixed that. Another small negative: the screen is small, so notifications can be time consuming to read. The touch screen is sensitive. So far, my sleeve and submerging my wrist have both activated it. I will update this review as I continue to use it.