Gadgetory

hey everyone Jimmy with Jim's review room Garmin has clearly stepped up their game and is now offering an answer to the Fitbit charge HR this time completely redoing their vivosmart band and now offering heart rate tracking right on the wrist with a total revamp of a garment app to supplement the experience now I personally paid $149 retail for this band here and at this price point this makes the band attractive to casual to some mainstream Fitness folks and those interested in possibly getting an activity band for the first time I'll put a link in the video description below that gives you the most current and updated pricing as of today so without further adieu I'm here to help you make a purchase decision welcome everyone to jim's review room going over the physical features first there's two sizes available regular and extra-large for your reference in this video here I am wearing the regular size but because of this watch like locking system there's plenty of room for adjustments on both small to medium sized wrists the main straps are very soft flexible and more importantly they are breathable for me the main display in the brains of the device is hard plastic and although in photos or video it looks to stick up a bit here but while wearing and viewing in person it's not gargantuan or unusually large now if you seen the budget model the vivofit from Garmin it's very similar in size and style no overall from wearing this 24/7 most days it's been very comfortable and easy to wear even though there's a protruding piece here under the band where the optical heart rate sensor is located and yes you can wear this in the shower as well as it's rated at 5 atm in addition this is wearable while swimming snorkeling and diving into water / garments website but let's take a look at the very fluid touch sensitive screen here with a menu access button to the right the band will always show you the time and the date and below this I've always loved this feature about Garmin devices it's called a move bar a nice feature a nice reminder when you're sitting stationary for too long after 1 hour this first big bar shows up as every 15 minutes that would go buy a smaller additional bar will reveal itself until you've reached a total of 4 small ones I'll total 2 hours basically of you not really moving around and indeed the band will give you a decent vibration here to the wrist and alert you to get up and move no swiping right will review your total steps so far with your automatically adjusted step goal for that particular day swiping right again offers how many flights of stairs you have climbed next is the amount of active minutes that you've had for the week the following is calories burned distance traveled media controls to control your music of course on your phone the weather which includes both the highs and lows for that day notifications for your phone like incoming emails Facebook and text messages and the great thing here now if you tap swipe left or right to find a summary but another tap will allow you to read the entire message by swiping up and down now heading back out you have your current heart rate with the average heart rate reading on the bottom right and doing some research and reaching out to some of the IT folks Garman they did disclose and this is similar to what Fitbit does as well when you're not in running mode and casually wearing the band throughout the day your heart rate is read every five minutes not every second only when you are in running mode does the band read every second then Garmin a Fitbit does this to basic conserve the battery while you're still giving you an idea of what your casual or resting heart rate is that many people are aware of this now regarding my heart rate testing I use my trusty polar h7 chest strap which performs identically to garments very own chest heart rate tracker both chest straps are highly accurate with the activity band the vivosmart HR and his main competitor the Fitbit charge HR after my testing I found both to perform with similar characteristics both mainstream bands do have some slight variations where at times the deviation can go up to as high as five heartbeats however majority of the time this smart HR performed very well as you can see in these non-professional videos here I would stop randomly during my runs and check the band's readings versus my chest strap and as you can see time and time over the numbers are really close now for more precise readings and being transparent with my findings for you guys I compared my charts on both my V with smart HR and the chest strap and I noticed in the beginning of every exercise that I do there's just a bit of noise or a slight your regularity where you notice my HR jumping around a bit when in reality the heart rate should always be a linear progression up and a smooth movement down while at rest just like the chest strap chart that you see there however after about the two minute mark you can see for the most part the vivosmart HR signal begins to become more consistent and that's what you saw in the videos earlier during my run the HR was visually much more accurate overall for HR performance this does well for a mainstream band it's not spot-on as the Meo global rest activity trackers but comparing again to the popular Fitbit charge HR they performed very similar in my experience and one last thing about heart rate tracking features the V with smart HR does allow for you to have heart rate zones to display while working out now all this can easily be set up through the app or through Garmin connects websites now one common question people ask me will there be any notification from going into one zone to the other now from my experience there's no vibrations or any kind of indications unfortunately now I'm not an IT engineer but hopefully with the firmware update they can make this happen but going back to the V with smart-hr banned one more swipe will bring you back to your date and your time now another quick and easy test that I did here using this in bright sunlight sometimes other bands have this issue this you can see the band is very visible in bright sunlight and if you're in the dark as well tap the screen and a backlight illuminates the display an additional option that Garmin includes if you're not fun of looking at the band horizontally you can change the display via the app to show vertically which I'm sure some will prefer now going into your menu options tapping the action button offers you to start a run that timer will begin in while in running mode swiping right offers calories burned then real time heart rate tracking date and time and with last your distance but backing out here is the crescent moon offering a do not disturb option when you are asleep backing out again one more time the band offers a silent vibrating alarm which I felt was indeed more powerful than the fitbit's in above average than other bands on the market this will vibrate your wrist to wake you up in the morning without disturbing others in the room now swiping to the next screen offers Bluetooth on and off pairing your phone to enable notifications on or off and last is a connect alert to inform you if the band has lost Bluetooth connection with your pear phone now back to the main menu once again you have a manual sync button self-explanatory here and to the right is something really cool if you've misplaced your phone tapping this icon will cause your phone to emit a certain ringtone and the LED light on your phone will start blinking even if the ringer was completely off now on the band there is an antenna signal strength indicator and when there's more bars that means you're getting closer to your phone now of course the band still needs to be within Bluetooth range for this to work nonetheless a convenient feature to have scrolling right one more time to finish the menu options a folder that shows your previously recorded runs sprocket allows you to change the language time being displayed either miles or kilometers and then there is Auto lap which is another feature from Garmin at every mile or kilometer whichever one that you choose here the government app will indicate this as being a lap in your app helpful in a sense segmenting your won automatically now you can turn on or off the activity and the heart rate tracking as well and last is basically to restore your band to default settings very lastly in icon is a battery indicator and just other some miscellaneous information on the band itself like version number and whatnot and before I forget to mention the view of smart HR can store up to 14 days of activity and heart rate tracking and up to seven timed activities so yes you can definitely leave your phone behind when you go for a run and last this smart HR comes with a proprietary charging cradle that connects via USB and government claims up to five days of use and so far I've been hitting about four days in about 18 to 20 hours until basically the unit dies and recharging takes about an hour and a half which feels very fast so I know that has been a lot of information for you guys let's look at what is equally important as well it's basically how you analyze offer data and how easy it is to read here's the Garmin Connect app available for both Apple and Android devices the previous version of the app was really plain and not exciting to view like the competition now I'm thrilled the government finally here revamp their app experience here starting with the homepage is what they call a snapshot of your day steps are on the left with Auto adjusting step goals directly below and on the right is the total amount of sleep that you had last night but tapping on steps shows you your estimated distance calories floors climbed and going down here with a bar chart below giving you a quick and simple visual of how active you were throughout that particular day now going back and then going into sleep then before I forget to mention here the band does record your sleep automatically so you don't need to manually press any buttons before knocking out it's highly convenient but similar to jawbone numerix detailing deep light and awake moments and below is another visual chart indicating the aforementioned sleep patterns so far wearing this band here it's been very accurate and knowing when I do start sleeping and when I do get up but more importantly here and this really interesting clicking on movements is really great showing overall activity throughout the night now backing up the main page has some of the more general information but at the forefront informing you your active calories calories left to burn minutes you have been really working out here activities recorded calories consumed which links to my Fitness Pal a phenomenal app it is but oddly and my in here when I try to open this it's given me an error and last is floors climbed swiping right is the steps page a line that fills for today's performance here is up top with the last 30 days of performance down below now going to the right one more time we see garments sticks with a snapshot of today up top again but also the last seven days of sleeping performance on the bottom now clicking on the four white squares here on the top right allows you to view additional data like running cycling swimming golfing and whatnot and the app does show these activities but I didn't find an option on the physical band itself to say I want to record a weightlifting session or maybe a cycling session so after each activity you would have to manually go into the app or maybe the desktop application and then change it there afterwards so tapping on the hamburger menu icon here in the top left there's leaderboards to see where you rank against any friends that you've added a monthly 30-day calendar showing your activities and last a newsfeed basically a logger of all your activities recorded backing out and looking into activity stats this is where you can find all of your specific data collected for example opening up stairs climbed you can see your last seven days of performance with totals and daily breakdowns below now the following health information is very much the same the same formatting that is illustrating different ways to analyze your own data now moving back to the main area regarding workouts courses and segments if you go into your Garmin Connect account on your desktop you can set up a custom plan as a simple example you can create a workout profile to warm up for 10 minutes then maybe run for another hour and then end it with a cool-down period it's a predetermined calculated workout that you set up ahead of time and later use while you're running or exercising the courses and segments are other areas that you yourself have ran and have saved on to your app or other routes that others with Garmin products have saved themselves with their own data and information right there for you to view so you can maybe attempt to beat their performance or see where you stand with the rest who has been out there already and less finishing up this app connections and groups are really for social networking here which does help to keep you competitive and I'm not a goal for myself but you can download golf courses in your local area and have activity tracking while you play and then the very last set of features here on the app itself are just really self-explanatory so overall from my experience I gotta admit Garmin has really stepped up their game and I would say are more competitive this year versus last year when comparing this to the jawbone and Fitbit products I still feel the jawbone and Fitbit app experience is laid out better with easier to read information and the app just flows nicely but in my personal experience with Garmin I felt the app was laid out with more meat in your face example the emphasis on active and intense minutes or consistently having today's performance up top while your weekly progress is on the bottom all without having to go to separate screens to view it's always in front of you it's always reminding you of basically where you are and your fitness goals the band on the other hand despite losing its original slim and sleek body and now looking more like the garbin vivofit I still welcome the change considering all the features that is available on the band itself for $150 this displays our notifications and text messages works great in sunlight has heart rate tracking and a few other tricks up that sleeve now it's not perfect but a serious alternative to the Fitbit charge HR or even the jawbone up three so if this review helped you in some way be sure to like and comment below and add me on to Facebook Twitter or Instagram you can find me on there I'm Jimmy with Jim's review room you guys take care I'll see you the next one bye