Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is not a product category that has a lot of well thought out, fully baked products. Smartwatches can be useful and fun but can also be flakey, complicated, amazingly bad at simple things, and visually hideous. Garmin has a pretty nice product in the vívomove HR that rarely leaves my arm with some real strengths but also some all too common (among smartwatches) flaws. I think it's the best product on the market but I am still constantly annoyed in small ways and bewildered why simple things are not done properly. Before I list a bunch of negatives, please keep in mind many of these negatives are industry wide issues. Garmin may not be pushing innovative approaches in this watch but it's comparatively pretty great. As such, I'd only compare this to similarly detailed reviews of other smartwatches or best for someone looking at this vs living without a smartwatch. Pros: -Battery life is awesome. A week in actual use if not more. It's plenty. It's at least twice as much as plenty. -The hands show the time, all the time. They also move out of the way (minute hand goes to 10minutes and the hour hand goes to 10 hours) which is cool to look at when you utilize the screen. -The touchscreen is completely invisible when you're not showing something. It really looks like a normal watch. It's tasteful. Not too nerdy. People won't think you're wearing a fitbit or a calculator watch. -It has weather data. I can't live without quickly accessing the weather for today and tomorrow on my watch. This is why I have a smartwatch and in and of itself rules out most of them. -The screen is sufficient for text messages and showing you the name or number of who is calling. It can also tell your phone to pick up which is a great thing for iphone users who can't properly answer their own phone by sliding the answer button across the screen due to OS lag. -The heartrate meter and the pedometer work fine. I'm not totally into fitness stuff but they don't get confused by my leg shake while sitting or similar. The meter does not dig into your wrist at all. It’s like a normal watch level of comfort. The meh: -The screen could be bigger. The second and minute hands move out of the way so the entire lower half of the watch could be a screen. Would give a few more characters of room for text messages which would help a little. -The hands move to 10 and 2 regardless of if they interfere with the screen or not. If it's 10:01, they'll move to show 10:10 when you interact with it. There's no need to move the hands in that situation. This might be intentional, the moving hands is kinda a party piece. -The interface consists of touch left, touch center, touch right, swipe left, swipe right, and hold. It's still remarkably repetitive within that design to get through the menus. Something like touch, hold, swipe left, swipe left, touch center, touch center, swipe left 4 more times, touch center is probably a typical interaction for like, asking it to resync. It's not super bad but it's not properly optimized. -The watch is a little thick and is a little big (44mm). Neither is particularly noticible but put a normal 42mm watch next to it and it will look decent sized. Considering the battery life I think the thickness is pretty impressive really and 44mm is hardly “large” in today’s oversized world but it’s important to point out. I got confused by the different watch choices Garmin offers in this product but as far as I know, they’re all 44mm around with 20mm bands and roughly the same thickness. -The screen isn’t bright enough in direct sunlight. The hands however are great in direct sunlight. Few smartwatches have hands. You will know what time it is while somebody with an apple watch tries to shield their screen. -The fitness monitor concept seems pretty pervasive in our society but it’s really pretty half baked. You want to know if walking more and using the stairs more is going to burn a couple more calories a day? Yeah, it works. I guess that’s nice. It’s far from a life-altering wellness partner or a substitute for a personally designed exercise program. -No replies to text messages or text replies to declining a phone call. I had a pebble and this sorta worked, it was buggy. In concept it’d be nice to have a few canned messages like “ok” or “I’m in a meeting I’ll get back to you in a couple minutes” that you could pick from. I don’t think many watches do this well so I put it here. The bad: -The face is not lit and the hands/hashes are not glow-in-the-dark. Why? This seems so simple. The “black sport” version I got has a very yellow minute hand and a very yellow 12 and 6 hash markers but both have no glow. The whole point of this watch is the hands, isn’t it? Why make them useless in the dark. You can of course activate the smartwatch (which I set to double click) and it can show the time digitally which will be QUITE BRIGHT when it’s too dark to see the hands. -There is no (or does not function well ) automatic LED backlight adjustment for ambient light conditions. It’s too bright or too dark nearly every time you use it. -The sleep tracker thing is somewhere between nonsense and inaccurate. -The price is nearly twice as much for the metal casing ones with nice bands. The cheap version at least has some yellow paint to help you read the hands (not glow though) and the band has some easy quick-release pins but I am disappointed Garmin wants >$100 more simply for a metal case. The band got replaced by a conventional metal mesh band which I like a lot better. Annoying how poorly packaged the nice watch hardware is. The really bad: It loses sync 1-2 times a day. Every morning when I wake up I have to spend ~60 seconds going through a specific process. 1) Open the phone app (even if you left it on your phone all night) 2) wait for it to sync 3) select pair now under settings+Bluetooth settings. Only then can I get the high and low temperatures for the day streamed to my wrist. Certainly not going to be 5 seconds after I open my eyes in the morning. I like it. I’d recommend it. I just don’t understand why more thought can’t go into the basic operation and layout of these products. Technology wise it all seems pretty great. Clean up the interface. Add glow paint to the hands and a couple hashes. Come up with some way to have it sync without me telling it to on my phone in the morning. Make the screen a little bigger. Stop making me swipe through your menus so much, you have more control points than you’re utilizing. The device works pretty well as a business tool. You get notifications of upcoming meetings that show up on your phone. You can see who’s calling you in a meeting politely. You can even sneak reading a text message in a meeting. The hands and invisible screen make it very stealthy and it’s fairly conservative design means you can wear it with most attire (even a suit if you change the band to something nicer). It seems targeted more at the fitness crowd but it’s strengths lie more with work.