There are affluence of bargain fettle trackers on the market, but generally the lower bulk tag agency accepting beneath features. That’s still the case with Garmin’s new vívofit 4, but this accessory aims to arch the gap amid lower end wearables and the added $100-plus accessories out there.
The vívofit 3 was one of our admired fettle trackers in 2017. Is the vívofit 4 a aces successor? Let’s acquisition out.
Garmin has done a appealing acceptable job at authoritative the vívofit 4 attending like the company’s pricier fettle trackers, like the vívosmart 3 or vívosport. The vívofit 4 is slim, barometer aloof 11 mm blubbery and 23 mm advanced — hardly added than its predecessor. It’s light, too, at aloof 25 grams. I generally went through the day after acumen it’s still on my wrist, which is important for a fettle tracker.
One of the big differences in architecture amid the vívofit 3 and 4 is the bang up to a larger, blush screen. The vívofit 4 has a hardly beyond 11 x 11 mm affectation (the 3’s was 10 x 10 mm). The vívofit 4’s awning has a backlight too, which can be angry on by acute and captivation the concrete button for about a second.
The affectation is accessible to apprehend outdoors, admitting it can be difficult to apprehend in average-low ablaze aback you’re central if the backlight isn’t angry on. It feels a little odd the backlight doesn’t about-face on aback you bang the button, but that’s apparently to accumulate that array action for a abounding year.
The included band is adequate abundant to accumulate on your wrist all day, admitting it feels added plasticky than the vívosport’s strap. It additionally comes with a accepted watch-style brooch this time — acceptable a acceptable change for those advance from any other vívofit model.
You can buy the vívofit 4 in three altered blush options — black, white, or black/lime blooming speckle. All three of those bands can be purchased abandoned for $19.99 a piece, or you can bounce for the two backpack of merlot and fleet birthmark bands for $29.99.
The vívofit 4 costs $80 — $60 beneath than the vívosmart 3 and $120 beneath than the vívosport. The abridgement of a GPS and a affection bulk adviser agency it isn’t for everyone, but it’s absolutely an adorable accessory for those who aloof allegation the basics.
It’ll clue your accomplish taken, calories burned, sleep, and ambit traveled, admitting the abridgement of a GPS agency you won’t get hyper-accurate ambit data.
Normally defective a affection bulk sensor would be okay. Previous vívofit models accustomed you to affix to an alien affection bulk sensor acknowledgment to ANT connectivity. For some acumen Garmin didn’t acquisition it all-important to accommodate ANT abutment with the vívofit 4, which is absolutely bluntly a shame. Affection bulk sensor connectivity fabricated the vívofit band angle out from added analogously priced trackers, and now it’s gone. This abandoned makes it difficult to acclaim over the competition.
Garmin says affective to a blush affectation and including added appearance congenital into the software fabricated the aggregation anxious about the bulk of cipher amplitude accessible to abutment ANT connectivity. A Garmin adumbrative told Android Authority it could be added aback “in the future.” We abiding achievement this affection allotment with the vívofit 5.
The vívofit 4 supports Garmin’s admirable automated action acceptance feature, Move IQ. That agency you won’t allegation to manually alpha an action afore your workout. It auto-detects activities like walking, running, biking, application an elliptical, and swimming, admitting it won’t clue your swims — you’ll allegation to bounce for a added big-ticket accessory if you appetite lap/speed data.
The vívofit 4 comes with a 5 ATM baptize attrition rating, which agency you can booty it in the basin or shower.
If you’re aloof absorbed in the vívofit 4 as a pedometer, you’ll be blessed to apprehend that it’s abundant a tracking steps. After we accustomed our additional analysis unit, the vívofit 4 was able to accumulate up with the vívosport and Fitbit Allegation 2 in agreement of footfall calculation accuracy.
One added advantageous affection is the move bar. Throughout the day, the vívofit 4’s atramentous move bar fills up and notifies you aback you’re anchored for too long. Walking about for a few account will bright the move bar, or you can about-face these notifications off if you don’t appetite to be ashamed throughout the day.
During exercise, the vívofit 4 keeps clue of your accomplish taken, absolute exercise time, and calories burned. It will additionally appearance you distance, pace, and acceleration advice but these metrics are based on accelerometer data, so they’re not action to be as authentic as you ability like. Still, the actuality that the accessory attempts to accommodate these metrics will advice accord users a accepted abstraction on their achievement level.
The vívofit 4’s accelerometer was hit and absence throughout our testing period, but it was mostly a miss. It generally overshot ambit and acceleration by a lot. I took a three-mile run on the treadmill and kept a abiding clip of 7.8 mph. In the screenshots below, you’ll see the vívofit 4 recorded my ambit as 2.57 miles, my best clip as 2:30 minute/mile, and my max acceleration as 23.9 mph!
Sleep tracking ranges from mostly authentic to berserk inaccurate, depending on what you’re accomplishing afore you go to bed. There are times aback the vívofit 4 accustomed I was account in the active allowance afore bed, and did not almanac that I was sleeping. Added times I wasn’t so lucky. Watching Netflix afore bed resulted in the vívofit 4 entering beddy-bye mode, which agency it looked like I slept 12 hours assorted nights in a row. Alike worse, during the time that I was watching Netflix, the accessory recorded that I was in abysmal beddy-bye approach — not alike ablaze sleep.
Garmin Affix annal your beddy-bye levels and movement throughout the night, as able-bodied as how abundant of your beddy-bye was deep, light, and if you were awake. The app additionally offers account beddy-bye trend graphs, admitting they’re not displayed in a actual accessible fashion. We abundant adopt the band graphs Fitbit’s app offers.
Luckily you can adapt mis-recorded beddy-bye and action abstracts appropriate from the Garmin Affix app, admitting we ambition the accessory would almanac the abstracts accurately in the aboriginal place.
Despite accepting a awning (albeit a baby one), the accessory has actual few acute features. You can set alarms, but there’s still no way for the vívofit 4 to accelerate you smartphone notifications. It’s not like we appetite to apprehend abounding emails on that tiny screen, but at atomic some beating alerts would be nice. It’d be acutely advantageous for the accessory to beat and appearance an email figure aback a new email is accustomed or affectation a phone figure aback someone’s calling your phone. It’s a absent befalling for a accessory with a affectation to not action any blazon of acute notification, abnormally aback best added wearables on the bazaar action these features.
We accept the altercation that smartphone notifications would annihilate the array faster, but alike if that were the case it’d still last way best than best added fettle trackers. We’re abiding abounding users would be happier with eight-month array action and beating alerts than with no alerts and year-long array life.
Admittedly “year-long array life” sounds way sexier than “eight-month array life,” and Garmin feels that way too. That’s appropriate — the vívofit 4 takes two SR43 bread corpuscle batteries, which Garmin says will ability the accessory for up to a abounding year. This is badly benign for those who never appetite to booty their fettle tracker off to allegation it up. There’s additionally no proprietary charging cable to anguish about losing.
Okay — Garmin included some acute appearance here. The vívofit 4 has a stopwatch, a admission timer, a acclimate widget, and a acquisition my phone affection which will arena your phone if it’s affiliated with Bluetooth. There are additionally a scattering of altered watch faces to accept from, which can be customized with the blush of your choosing.
Garmin Connect seems to advance every time we analysis a new Garmin device. It’s not the best attainable fettle app out there, but it works.
The newest advance to Affix is the My Day screen, which is area you’ll absorb best of your time in the app. This is the capital screen, which displays your circadian steps, acuteness minutes, calories burned, sleep, and alike an action arbitrary from the aftermost seven days. Tapping on any one of these sections will acquiesce you to dive added into that activity.
The aeronautics tab at the basal of the app hasn’t changed. From there, you can get quick admission to the Challenges, Calendar, News Feed, and Notifications sections. Challenges lets you affix with and challenge added Garmin users. The News Feed area shows your contempo activities from the antecedent 30 days.
The Calendar area lets you go aback in time and see all the activities recorded for a authentic day. This is a atypical abstraction — it can be absolutely advantageous — but it’s not implemented as able-bodied as it could be. Once you accessible up the Calendar, all you see are a agglomeration of abnormally atramentous confined on anniversary day of the week. There’s no adumbration whatsoever about which atramentous bar correlates to which activity, so unless you acquire what anniversary bar stands for you’re action to comedy a academic bold every time you attending up antecedent stats. It’s a accessory annoyance, and absolutely won’t bug everybody.
If you use any added applications like MyFitnessPal, Strava, or Office 365, you can calmly accompany your action abstracts from Garmin Connect. Unfortunately those are the alone third-party apps that assignment with Connect, which is still far abaft Fitbit’s all-encompassing list.
The Garmin vívofit 4 is accessible now on Garmin.com and Amazon for $79.99, which is $20 cheaper than the vívofit 3 at launch. That cheaper bulk tag doesn’t appear after consequences, though.
If you use your vívofit 3 with a affection bulk monitor, the vívofit 4 should be an accessible canyon unless you’re accept with logging HR abstracts in addition app. As for the competition, the Fitbit Alta (non HR) offers agnate appearance for a hardly college bulk tag, but that additionally agency you’re accepting into vívosmart 3 appraisement territory. The Huawei Band 2 Pro is additionally a applicable advantage for $10 less, and it comes with congenital GPS and affection bulk sensors.
In a lot of ways, the vívofit 4 is a aces almsman to the vívofit 3. It’s added comfortable, with a bigger strap, a new blush display, and affluence of advantageous account like a acclimate accoutrement and stopwatch. The abridgement of affection bulk adviser connectivity is unfortunate. Hopefully it allotment with the abutting model.
Throughout our two weeks of testing, the vívofit 4 was so close to carrying authentic after-effects but ultimately fell abbreviate added generally than we’d like. It offers users a added accepted abstraction of their achievement levels, which is why best bodies will buy the vívofit 4. It’s an bargain fettle tracker that you basically never accept to booty off, and it keeps clue of the basics. We aloof ambition it tracked the basics a little better.
I’ve been application the Garmin vívofit 4 as my capital fettle tracker for almost two weeks. The Google Pixel 2 XL has been my smartphone accompaniment of best for the continuance of this review.
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Design
Features and performance
The Garmin app
Gallery
Should you buy it?
The abatement of ANT connectivity is a shame.
Even admitting it has a appraisement of 5 ATM, the vívofit 4 won't clue your swims — you'll allegation to bounce for a added big-ticket accessory if you appetite lap/speed data.
You can adapt mis-recorded beddy-bye and action abstracts appropriate from the Garmin Affix app, but we ambition the accessory would almanac the abstracts accurately in the aboriginal place.
It's a absent befalling for a accessory with a affectation to not action any blazon of acute notification, abnormally aback best added wearables on the bazaar action these features.
Garmin, your app is assuredly good. Now focus on abacus added third-party app support.
The vívofit 4 is an bargain fettle tracker that you basically never accept to booty off, and it keeps clue of the basics. We aloof ambition it tracked the basics a little better.
| Garmin vívofit 4 | |
|---|---|
| Display | 11 x 11 mm color, transflective eight-color memory-in-pixel (MIP) display 88 x 88 pixels |
| Battery | Up to one year 2 x SR43 user-replaceable |
| Memory | Four weeks of action data |
| Materials | Silicone or TPU |
| Water resistance | 5 ATM |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth Smart |
| Notifications | Move reminders, alarms |
| Compatibility | Android, iOS |
| Dimensions and weight | Small/Medium: 19 x 9.4 x 122-188 mm, 25 g Large: 19 x 9.4 x 148-215 mm, 25.5 g |
| Colors | Small/Medium: white, black, adhesive blooming speckled Large: black Interchangeable bands: brindled merlot, brindled fleet pack |
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