Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My wife uses the Vivosmart and I have the Vivosmart HR for about a month now (Currently it’s exclusive to BestBuy). A friend of mine has the Fitbit charge HR – so I considered them all Design: Vivosmart wins the beuty contest, looking more like a bracelet than a wearable electronic device. No buttons and you don’t even see there is a screen until it lights up. Fitbit charge HR is thinner, while the Vivosmart charge HR is certainly the ugliest. All 3, BTW, feels quite comfortable on the wrist. Winner: Vivosmart Battery life: Vivosmart really does give you 7 days on normal use. The smart HR can give slightly more than 5 days presumably due to the HR sensor. It has a menu option to turn it off – but strangely enough it remains on – probably a firmware bug. The Fitbit charge HR can last for ~3 days Winner: Vivosmart Software and support: Garmin devices were launched with tons of bugs. On the other hand - In the following week after getting the Vivosmart HR, there were 3 (!) over the air updates, that improved some of the features – and it seems the Vivosmart also just received another update. Garmin clearly didn’t abandoned their released products. The iOS Garmin Connect application is so-so, but their web interface (accessible from a PC) is actually quite good Winner: Fitbit Features: The Fitbit charge HR has the smallest screen, and does not do too much then activity tracking (Which it does very well). Vivosmart HR clearly wins with always on screen quality. Both Garmin devices offer phone notification. Sounds great on paper – but we both found ourselves turning off the notification – leaving only call indication. This feature is actually very nice – you can leave your phone in your bag, and you will feel a small vibration on your wrist when someone calls! I found heart rate monitoring to be very useful during workouts – but the ‘all day’ functionality is not too meaningful (Again – didn’t even saved me power…). Find my phone – is a nice touch in vivosmart and vivosmart HR – actually use it quite a lot (Before, I used another phone to call myself – no now its way less awkward). Never thought I will say that, but the move line and daily/weekly goals is indeed working. Lastly, water resistant is a deal breaker for both me and my wife. An activity tracker that you need to remove when you get into shower does not make too much sense. Vivosmart and Vivosmart HR can do 50M while Fitbit just got disqualified… Winner: Vivosmart HR Final verdict: If you don’t care for heart rate during workout – the Vivosmart is the one for you. Otherwise, and assuming you can live with the more geeky design, Vivosmart HR is the best tracker out there at the moment --------------------------------------------------------- Update 2/20/2016: Looks like firmware 2.9 suffers from a bug with the altimeter / stairs counting. This thing now count stairs climbing even when I am walking on flat surfaces - rendering it useful. I therefore disabled this feature at the moment by setting the goal to 999 and removed the screen using the menus. I hope Garmin will fix this annoyance quickly... ------------------------------------ Update 1/27/2016: Today Garmin update firmware to version 2.9 Noticed the following: - Notifications now support non-English characters (A big thing for me as I am using Hebrew a lot; Before this update the notification feature was not too useful) - 3 different options in run mode: Run, Cardio, Other --> this allows you to mark out what activity you are doing - Backlight brightness control Other updates: - I have recently learned to appreciate the barometer function. Its nice to get such feedback - especially when hiking - The 'find phone' feature is extremely useful (Before that - i always had to ask someone to call me when I could not find my phone) Aside of playing a sound, the screen also shows a sort of distance bar, so you know how close you are to the phone - My wife's Vivosmart (non-HR) had a screen problem - a deal pixels line appeared on the top. Sent to Garmin support and received a replacement. However - looking at responses from other reviewers - it seems to be a common problem of the older Vivosmart screen. Again - its not an issue with the LCD found on the VivosmartHR ----------------------- Update 1/7/2016: Recent firmware version (2.6) fixed the issue I had with turning off the HR monitor - now it really turns off and allows you to save precious battery juice! The upside: I turn HR on only during exercise - and just managed to get 11 days on a single charge The downside: there is no mode in which it will be off only for activity tracking. I therefore need to go into the menu to turn it on before I begin the exercise, and turn turn it off again at the end of the run. I wish they will add an option so it will be on only in 'run mode'... Still - its an improvements - and a single charge in 11 days is way better than what you get with the other products (and certainly better than the daily charge needed in real smart watches, like the apple watch or Microsoft band) Some additional insights: After using the product for over 2 month now, I can testify to be extremely pleased with the overall experience. I actually did get myself into a repeating workout schedule, I am motivated to move much more than before and my fitness has never been that good. Perhaps - other fitness trackers or smart watches could have made similar changes, but I would not have used them without full showerproof rating, and I really like the heart rate monitoring during my workout (Raised to 5 stars!) :) ------------------------------------------------------