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TECH NEWS

Garmin launch £99 Vivofit fitness tracker

Monitor your daily activity with Garmin’s new fitness tracker watch

The latest product from Garmin is the £99 Vivofit, a fitness tracker  that monitors and records your daily activity and syncs to Garmin Connect. It’s also compatible with an ANT+ heart rate monitor strap and the battery lasts a claimed one year, and it will be available in five colours when it is launched in March.

The fitness tracker market is one rapidly filling with choice from a host of manufacturers, including the recently launched Samsung Gear Fit, plus current offerings from Nike,  Jawbone, Pebble, LG and many more. The market for wearable tech, with a particular focus on a gadget that monitors your heart rate and tracks your activity, fitness and health, is one that is expected to boom this year. Apple is rumoured to be developing something along similar lines this year.

Garmin’s entrant to the market is cleanly designed and boasts a one year claimed battery life, with batteries easily replaceable. It’s an always-on design, constantly monitoring your activity level.  The display is curved and it's a very slim design, and the clock face appears easy to read from a number of angles. I tried it on and it felt comfortable and does appear to be the sort of thing you could wear all day. The single press button simply cycles through the different modes, there’s no complicated menus here.

It records number of steps, distance walked and calories burned, and can set personalised goals too. An inactivity bar prompts you when you’re being lazy. It’s water resistant so you can wearing it swimming or in the shower. It even monitors the quality of your sleep too, so you have an  all-day activity monitor.

It is compatible with an ANT+ heart rate monitor, they offer it with one for £139, so you can add another layer of detail to your activity record.

The Vivofit is always on, constantly monitoring your activity. It's not the sort of device that you could use just to record a ride with heart rate, stopping and starting it at the beginning and end of a ride. It's constantly monitoring your daily activity.

What it doesn't do is offer any GPS functionality, which might seem a surprise from a company specialising in GPS devices. Garmin clearly don't want it to compete with their Edge or Forerunner GPS devices, and have instead opted for a device to appeal to people who just want a simple way of seeing how active they are throughout the day. Garmin tells us it can be used alongside an Edge or Forerunner, to track your recovery between rides and runs.

This data can be shared on Garmin's Connect website. Talking of which the new version is available now to Vivofit customers, and Edge users will be able to start using the updated Connect website from April onwards. We had a quick look and play with the new training website and first impressions are that it is vastly improved. There's also talk of segments and challenges, so it's clear they have Strava's success in their sights with this update..

Vivofit is available in five colours and will be in shops in March. It costs £99 or £139 with a heart rate strap.

David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

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7 comments

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blablablacksheep20 | 10 years ago
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I use my face as a monitor of my activity, if I begin getting a double chin it's time to get off my ass and do some exercise..

If I get bags under my eyes it's time to stop going out until 3am...

If I get wrinkles it's time to find a younger gf...

The human body is a great gadget.

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kitkat | 10 years ago
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I've taken a gamble on this and ordered one as a way of tracking 98% of my activity between exercise.

I've already got a Forerunner and HR monitor so I'm interested to see how the two data sources fit together. This along with the sleep tracker and something to prod me when I've been sat at the desk for 3 hours. I'm intrigued to see how it pans out.

Ideally it would have an optical HR monitor and could track activities a little better such as a cycle mode for small rides like down to the shops, I'm not going to break out the Forerunner or HR monitor for that.

One of my concerns about purchasing this is even in six months this will look like a dinosaur.

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nicholassmith | 10 years ago
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I've just preordered one of these: http://preorder.moov.cc/ which looks like a slightly different take on the fitness band tracker, and might be useful for cyclists as it measures cadence (I'd assume some other tricks as well).

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Simmo72 | 10 years ago
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Actually useful to about 0.05% of the people that buy it.

If you want a pedometer, get a free app, or you can easily approximately calculate. We are becoming suckers for buying anything, under the illusion we need it.

So to get any real value from this you have to wear a heart rate monitor. So I have to sit at my desk looking like I'm wearing a bra under my white shirt.

What next, strava segments on the office stairwell?
"Hey, look at me, I got a KOM, took 300 paces and burnt 40 calories taking a dump in the downstairs office toilet, high five"

Finally, great design.....if you are a girl. I'll stick to wearing a proper watch, not a bracelet. One for the skinny jean, top button done up , cardigan wearing metrosexuals out there.

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richdirector replied to Simmo72 | 9 years ago
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Simmo72 wrote:

Finally, great design.....if you are a girl. I'll stick to wearing a proper watch, not a bracelet. One for the skinny jean, top button done up , cardigan wearing metrosexuals out there.

Oooh now i am interested

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David Arthur @d... | 10 years ago
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With the heart rate strap you'll be able to do just that, but it won't do speed or distance or anything like that on the bike. Garmin have their Forerunner and Edge computers for that

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bollandinho | 10 years ago
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If this has come up with a way of counting activity on the bike, I'll definitely get one when my Nike Fuelband eventually gives up the ghost.

It's a bit frustrating that a brief walk counts for way more on it than a long, tough ride. And that it doesn't register a thing when I'm killing myself on the turbo.

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