Garmin Small/Medium vivosmart 4 Smart Activity Tracker
Garmin Small/Medium vivosmart 4 Smart Activity Tracker with Wrist-Based Heart Rate and Fitness Monitoring Tools – Grey
Keep Track of Your Active Life
Your vívosmart 4 greets you each day with a personalised step goal. Then it tracks and displays your progress. In addition to steps, its activity tracking capabilities include floors climbed, calories burned, intensity minutes and more. You’ll also see a move bar and get vibration alerts to remind you when it’s time to get up and move.
Track Your Workouts
You can use the preloaded activity timers to keep track of your exercise times and more. When using the strength training activity, it estimates your exercises, reps and sets along with your work and rest times so you can leave the notebook at home. And if you forget to start a timer, the Move IQ feature on vívosmart 4 will automatically detect exercises such as walking, swimming, cycling and elliptical training — and it even starts timing select activities. When finished, your activities are pushed to Garmin Connect, Garmin online community, where you can review, edit and share the activities with your connections and friends.
| Dimensions: | 1 x 19.7 x 1.4 cm; 18 Grams |
| Model: | 010-01995-02 |
| Batteries Included: | 1 Lithium Polymer batteries required. (included) |
| Manufacture: | Garmin |
| Department: | Women's |
| Dimensions: | 1 x 19.7 x 1.4 cm; 18 Grams |
| Origin: | China |
It’s honestly made a huge impact on my health and its so easy to monitor everything. I wanted something that was discreet on my wrist and its such an amazing gadge
I have given only 4 stars not because of the performance or the connectivity to the app,but because the strapp it’s not replaceable. Had to purchase a new one as accidently damaged the strap I don’t like the V5 versio
After 10 months a bobble has appeared on the strap above the charging points. I worried this might be a battery expansion fault.
Contacted Garmin and was assured this was a problem with the glue coming undone and moisture getting into the device.
!! Great service from Garmin – I returned the bobbled tracker and was sent a refurbished replacement within a week.
Steps recording seems accurate, but activity recording isn’t as good as on the fitbit, it hasn’t picked up a workout yet.
Sleep recording is again not up to the standard of the fitbit charge, rather than a sleep score you get body battery but there seems to be no pattern to this, I can have a good night’s sleep and body battery barely charges, other similar nights and it goes to 100% rarely anything in between. It also doesn’t detect naps for some reason.
The mobile app is OK, gives lots of data, particularly if you’re a runner, and it doesn’t have anything you need to subscribe to, which is better than fitbit.
Battery charge seems to last 5 days rather than the 7 promised. The watch itself is small but the screen is readable in sunlight which was a huge problem with the charge or inspire. The watch is also more comfortable than the fitbit charge, and for about 40 cheaper and no subscription. Is good value, it also connects to plenty of apps including mfp.
I definitely find it interesting/useful to be able to see how much energy this believes I have, although I always make sure I listen to my body.
I already have, and love, my Apple Watch and have been wearing both devices for a couple of months now. The Apple Watch doesn’t have the body battery or anything similar, but is definitely better at tracking my sleep. The Garmin tells me I’ve had a good nights sleep, when I know I’ve been awake for a few hours in the middle of the night and even got up to make a cup of tea! I can’t help but think this will impact the accuracy of the body battery.
The other thing it uses to inform the body battery is your heart rate variability (HRV) – this is definitely worth reading up about, particularly if you have Long COVID, but there are other free options to measure this – the best one I have found is the Welltory app.
Having said all that, I am still wearing my Garmin, and do find it useful to review the graphs in the app to see the impact of various activities and how they have affected the physiological stress my body is under (my HRV), but that may be because I’m 26 months in to my Long COVID journey and still desperately searching for answers!
Having always worn dress watches for every day, I wanted to first get a small fitness band to see if it would just be a fad and if I would actually wear it, use it and find it comfortable enough to wear while sleeping to monitor sleep.
I got the small Vivosmart 4 watch and loved it. I found it comfortable to wear both in the day and night.
I like the Garmin Connect app and how it displays the information and find it useful for what I want to track: Steps, sleep, oxygen level (SPO2)
As I then saw how useful and informative it was, for further health monitoring reasons (building up exercise after recovering from illness/surgery and monitoring sleep oxygen levels), I decided to progress to a Garmin Vivoactive 4s smart watch (found out these are the big round/square ones). I hadn’t wanted to invest in one before knowing if I would wear/use/like it.
But I still use the small Vivosmart 4 smart band for when I don’t to wear the big smart watch, but still want to monitor steps, etc. e.g. going out for the evening, or if my big smart watch runs out of battery just as I want to go to exercise (have to remember to keep Vivosmart charged). So it still has its purpose and am still very happy with it.
Sleep and VO2 is where I really wanted it though, and I’m happy (and mildly depressed) to say that it is very accurate and gives lots and lots of information about it all.
Overall, it’s good for the money, however if you can save an extra 20/40 for some more accuracy, I would do so.
PROS:
— heart rate monitor
— pulse ox
— stress monitor (with breathing timer thing for relaxation)
— pedometer
— vibrates to prompt you to move
— waterproof (for swimming and shower)
— excellent app; lots of features, very customisable (like linking to calorie journal MyFitnessPal)
— syncs to app quickly
— plus a lot of other features that I haven’t used yet (GPS, phone notifications, etc.)
CONS:
—the most annoying thing is the strap: because of the charging port, it’d very difficult to remove/change/buy a cheap replacement/different colour, but also the soft rubbery material and the buckle are irritating to my skin. Fortunately, wearing it much looser seems to help a lot (and doesn’t affect the monitoring tools) as well as taking it off/drying it thoroughly when it gets really wet (although that somewhat defeats the object of getting a waterproof tracker). This was not an issue on the vivosmart 2 which was a harder kind of silicon – if only they hadn’t changed it.
— you do have to charge it every few days but there’s a battery indicator on the screen (I used to have a garmin vivosmart 2 which never needed charging, so I’ll have to get used to this)
— the charger is proprietary (i.e. unique to this tracker) so if you break/lose it you can’t just use another spare charger
— the sleep data is interesting but dubious, although it does track when you sleep (not just between the hours you set, which I initially thought)
Overall, I’d say it was definitely worth getting (low price, thanks CamelCamel alerts!), and no tracker is going to be 100% perfect – but I’d say this is better than expected so far.
The accompanying app lets you personalise your step length etc to make the readings it gives you more accurate.
This last year the ability to measure your blood oxygen level has been very useful.
Tracking weight lifting was kinda tricky.
It’s handy to get call and text notifications on your wrist.
I’ve worn it every day for three years now including in the shower and the swimming pool, the bath and the sea, climbing, gardening, all kinds of everyday activity. It is still working just as well as it was when I bought it.
The strap has gotten a little worn, and the bevel on the face has just fallen off but I can probably glue it back on. I have to charge it more often now which is a little annoying but apart from that, it’s still working perfectly.
A good buy? Yes, but I’ve just upgraded to a smarter watch with more functionality, the kind of which wasn’t available for the price that they are now at the time. (mi watch).
The best feature is the body battery. Not just how much it says you have but how quickly you burn it. Really invaluable tool for pacing.
Other useful features include stress levels, heart rate monitor, oximeter, pedometer and exercise/activity tracker.
Oh and I’ve been admitted to hospital while wearing it and can therefore attest to it’s accuracy. Heart rate and oxygen saturation levels matched the hospital equipment every time I checked.
The app also gives you a summary of previous days which is useful for health professionals.
Only issue, which isn’t really a problem for me, is that when my heart rate goes out of control it thinks I’m exercising. Personally I think this is handy when describing how I’m feeling to the doctor i.e. my watch thinks I’ve done 2hrs of intensely vigorous exercise when I’m lying in bed….but I can see maybe some people might find this annoying or misleading.
I love it. It’s helped me manage my condition so much better. Thanks Garmin x
1. The tracker records more info and the app does much more than my previous Misfit Ray tracker.
2. I’ve used it to track cycling and swimming and for both it was accurate on distance.
3. The sleep function. I usually have 2 sleep periods an evening of around 3 hours broken up by half an hour to an hour awake. This tracker shows that pattern where my previous would only record 1 sleep period an evening.
4. Period calendar/tracking . I was using a separate app to keep a record but now I can do it all within the Garmin app.
5. Tracker and App is easy to set up and navigate.
6. The alarm function that gently wakes with vibration rather than a jarring noise.
What I don’t like:
1. Stairs climbed function. When I got this tracker a couple of weeks ago, it accurately recorded the flights of stairs I climbed. 2 weeks on, it records how many flights I descend but not how many I go up. Considering I live in a 1st floor flat, I definitely come back up the stairs.
2. I had a really busy day last week and the tracker kept notifying me to take a rest, I ignored it as I had to get stuff done.. When I finally sat down, it gives me a notification to move 😀
The sleep tracking is pretty much second to none and about as accurate as it can get. It shows rem sleep as well as time awake and deep/light sleep. I didn’t appreciate fully how accurate it was until I recently misplaced it and substituted it with a forerunner 30. The difference was remarkable. No rem sleep shown on the fr 30 and it also didn’t record any of the times I woke up in the night, even when I went to the loo.
Apart from the sleep tracking, it has a lot of other features that I had enjoyed but not fully appreciated until they disappeared when I was using the fr 30. When connected to the Garmin app it has a body battery tracker which is good at showing when you could do with either putting your feet up or going for a run. It also shows how many flights of stairs you climb/descend and there’s a stress tracker which shows levels of stress throughout the day.
Tiny downside is that the display isn’t always on. It comes on either when you tap the screen or when you raise your arm. So when using it as a watch it can be a bit of a pain but for me not a dealbreaker.
Size wise it’s by far the most delicate and pretty of any of the fitness trackers I’ve looked at. It’s waterproof and you can shower/swim without worrying it’ll suffer.
The garmin connect app is also really really good. It’s easy to see and easy to use and personalise.
Love it 🙂
It has a great feel and build quality. It feels solid.
It doesn’t have GPS built in, but it DOES allow you to use the GPS on your phone to track walks and activities. Some reviews say this isn’t possible, but it definitely is as of Oct 2019. I walked the dogs this morn and tracked it using GPS on my phone. See the attached image.
It isn’t 100% accurate when using the activity trackers for counting reps or distance (when not connected to GPS). But for me I don’t really mind. I use it more to monitor how active I have been throughout the day. Not to count the exact number if reps I have done or miles I have walked. When connected to your phones GPS, it is actually very accurate.
The Connect app is brilliant and does a great job of displaying your stats for the day. Really easy to read and understand.
The stress, sleep quality, heart rate and body battery features are great. I don’t know for sure how accurate they are but the readings are accurate enough for me. It definitely does a great job of capturing when my heart rate is high I.e. when I have been doing burpees or similar. And it uses all the information available to it (which is quite a lot) to determine your stress levels and body battery stats. I really like these features. The sleep tracker has been very accurate too.
The touchscreen is great. Some people don’t like it because it’s tiny. But I really like it. Garmin do a great job of displaying so much information on such a small screen. It’s pretty clever. It doesn’t respond to touch 100% of the time, but it’s good enough so as not to degrade the user experience or for me to not really notice.
Overall, I love it. I would definitely recommend it to people who are conscious of their health and fitness. If you don’t have unreasonable expectations, it seriously wont disappoint. Use it to monitor, health, well being and fitness. And to get an insight into how you’re looking after yourself. Not to track how far you ran to the exact meter or how many reps you did with 100% accuracy.
Because I have nice watches that I want to wear daily and because I often leave my phone on my desk etc, I wanted to get a tracker that monitored my activity 24/7, but also one that integrates with the fitness tools as seamlessly as possible. But it had to be ‘not a watch’, it had to be something to wear on my no-watch arm.
Many years ago I had a FitBit, so my first order was for a Fitbit band. While I waited for it to arrive I got back into my old FitBit account and then tried to set it up to talk to my other apps. Quite simply Fitbit does not integrate with Apple Health, nor does it like to really play nicely with anything else. You are expected to use their software and mostly their hardware too. I cancelled the order before it arrived.
Based on a recommendation I bought this.
My first impression was that it is a little but taller than I would like – the form factor could be better, if it were about 3mm shorter and that was offset with, say 2mm of width, it would be better, but you get used to it quickly, The display is tiny, you are not going to want to use this as a watch, nor is it going to be confused with one, this is a very good thing for my use-case.
Step counting accuracy is spooky, it is incredibly accurate I literally counted my steps for 200 steps, looked at the device and it said 199, before ticking over to 200. Pulse rate is also bang on – I monitored my pulse and again 100% accuracy.
Over the last few days I have been wearing it, it has tracked my sleep and my exercise, the mileage estimates are slightly low – I think I need to adjust my stride length, but that is fairly trivial.
Where this really shines though is the level of integration with Apple Health and MyFitnessPal. Rather than force you to switch allegiance to a different dashboard, it integrates the data it collects to Apple Health and MFP and augments the data from both into its own dash. This is integrations done perfectly.
In addition to all of that, battery life is brilliant too.
So, here are my Pro’s and Con’s
Pro’s
– Small Light, unobtrusive tracker that does not try to be a watch
– Decent battery life – 1week+ when tracking sleep too
– Sleep Tracking
– Very accurate Pulse and Step measurements
– Brilliant integrations with popular apps
– Great dashboard
Cons
– If you want a watch replacement, this is not it
– The strap is integrated, which means if you damage the strap, you need to get the whole thing replaced.
In summary, if you are looking for a highly integrated, very accurate tracker, this is the one to buy.