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Garmin Vívoactive

By Women & Golf Staff on January 6, 2015

Look out for Garmin's new Vívoactive – a lightweight and ultra-thin GPS smartwatch with built-in sports and activity tracking apps helping you develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Vívoactive captures activities with GPS-enabled running, cycling, golfing, swimming and activity tracking apps. It is comfortable for all day wear and smart notifications keep you connected with pressing work matters, family and friends.

With the new Connect IQ store, the Vívoactive can be customised with free watch face designs, widgets and additional apps - and features a sunlight-readable, high-resolution colour touchscreen that can be accessorised with interchangeable bands to complement any outfit or occasion.

Whether hitting the links or the pavement, users can track stats even when out of range from a smartphone with Vívoactive’s built-in GPS-enabled sports apps. Vívoactive also connects to a whole range of sensors and devices. Capture even more data by pairing Vívoactive with a heart rate monitor¹ or bike speed sensor, or use it as a remote for a Garmin VIRB Elite action camera².

Golfers can download course maps from more than 38,000 courses worldwide, which stay up-to-date automatically, to Vívoactive’s golf app. Using GPS Vívoactive measures layup and dogleg distances, as well as distances to the front, middle and back of the green. It can also keep individual stroke play scorecards and measure shot distance on favourite and new courses.

The running app displays pace, time and distance using GPS and Vívoactive’s built-in accelerometer tracks speed and distance when GPS is unavailable, such as when running indoors. Additional app features include Auto Lap, Auto Pause, and vibration alerts for heart rate, pace and run/walk intervals. The cycling app measures time, distance, speed and calories for training rides or a daily commute.

Water-resistant to 50 meters³, Vívoactive uses sensor-based technology for its swimming app to compute the number of lengths, total and interval distances, paces by length, by interval, and for the full session, as well as calories burned. The app also counts the number of strokes and uses this to determine the SWOLF score, a measure of swimming efficiency.

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Between workouts the activity tracking app monitors progress by tracking steps, calories and distance, setting a personalised daily step goal and sending a gentle reminder when users have been inactive too long by displaying a red move bar.

Ultra-thin and lightweight, Vívoactive features up to three weeks battery life in watch/activity tracking mode or up to 10 hours using GPS⁴. Its sunlight-readable, high-resolution colour touchscreen displays all the same notifications as a smartphone and can send an audible alert to help users locate their smartphone.

Throughout the day Vívoactive automatically syncs with paired mobile devices⁵through the Garmin Connect Mobile app, so users can see a complete picture of their daily activities. In Garmin Connect, a free online fitness/golf community, users can track workouts, sleep patterns and trends, join online challenges and earn virtual badges for extra motivation. For detailed calorie tracking, users can link their Garmin Connect account with MyFitnessPal.

Users can personalise Vívoactive to represent their interests and style with colourful interchangeable watchbands⁶and free downloads from the Connect IQ store. Coordinate with casual or active wear by swapping Vívoactive’s bands with colourful accessory bands, or dress it up with leather bands. Available in slate, red, blue, berry, purple, and black or white leather.

With Connect IQ, the first-ever open platform for third-party developers to create apps for Garmin products⁷, users can customise Vívoactive’s watch face, add data fields and get additional apps and widgets that provide information at a glance. Garmin is working with several app developers to bring a range of Vívoactive apps to the Connect IQ store.

Tempo, for example, is creating a smart calendar app that will let users see their upcoming events, and send an email from their watch if they are running late. LifeLine Response is creating an app that allows users to alert LifeLine to send their exact GPS location to the nearest first responders in the case of an emergency.