Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Jimmy from Jim's review room welcome to another review today we'll be looking at the vivofit from Garmin and there's two different packages one without a heartrate monitor and one with and they're priced at 130 dollars and 170 dollars respectively at the time of this review and I just reviewed the polar loop with their heart rate monitor priced at 180 in total and you can click on this video or find it on my youtube channel so without further adieu we'll get started Garmin have been making fitness monitors for runners and Vipers for a while now but this is garments first attempt and activity band is a very simple and lightweight design the band itself is a silicone rubber like material that's actually separate from the activity tracker the screen itself uses the same technology that your home digital clock uses to indicate your steps taken remaining steps to reach your goal distance traveled calories burned the time in the day and lastly is your heartrate when you're wearing the heartrate monitor and the red band on top is the move bar the first long bar here is your first hour of being inactive additional smaller bars will eventually appear after every additional 15 minutes and for my test the band does a good job of distinguishing just moving your hands around for let's say typing or driving your car versus an actual movement like walking it's a great reminder throughout the day just to stand up a bit and take a walk to the fountain or restroom now as you can see the lettering is highly reflective so it does work perfectly fine in abundant to moderate lighting but in dark rooms or areas it's quite hard to see and if it's pitch-black you can't even see it at all and like many other bands on the market today the view of it does not have any fancy displays it's pretty similar to the old-school Casio watches but because of that though you don't have to recharge your band every five to seven days instead the built-in better it lasts for more than a year before changing now there's two bands that comes in the package one small and the other large but there are various notches like the Fitbit products to ensure a snug fit the brains of the device is detachable so you can swap bands for different colors and currently there's five colors on the market today and this is possibly just my opinion but where the view of it was actually released the pictures online really made the band look bulky and unsightly but in person it looks decent it's a slim profile and although there's a slight bulge on top it's still better than some of the other bands out there and it's quite comfortable to wear as well and I wear this in the shower and aware this is sleep as well to monitor myself 24 hours and yes the band is water resistant up to 50 meters and what I liked about this band was there are no ports for either syncing or charging everything is done wirelessly and it connects to both Apple and Android power devices to have Bluetooth and Garmin also includes a USB plug for your computer or laptop so you can sync this and view the data on there and if you forget to sync don't worry about that because the band does record up to three weeks of activity or two weeks if you're using the heartrate monitor as well so so far the band itself is very simple and again it's easy and lightweight to wear but something I believe that's even more important is its features and its software now going on to the app here the main page provides your basic details steps taken distance traveled calories burned and Garmin does provide auto goal based on your previous activity levels now this goal will adjust day to day based on your past activities and it's a good stepping stone rather than just having be standard 10,000 steps that most bands lead fixed until you change it but on the view fit you can of course manually set this up if you'd like by clicking on the details button gives you a chart of how active you were throughout your day and on the screen you can view activity for the week month and year to compare yourself and of course that's very important to basically continually self improve the next section is activities where it works in connection with your heart rate monitor now when you wear the heartrate monitor and as soon as it starts tracking your heartbeat it will trigger an activity automatically as I click on one of these workouts that I've performed you can see it records your time distance speed and calories burned and because of weight lift my distance and speed are pretty low but by wearing the monitor my calories burned only one can assume would be more accurate than wearing a band that didn't accompany your heart rate monitor like the popular three companies currently like jawbone Fitbit or Nike so with that being said this of course works for general and overall fitness but I believe the band the app and the heart rate monitor working together is more beneficial for runners joggers specifically now the last tab shows my charts and you can see the speed and your heart rate fluctuating throughout your progress and keep in mind the band that you're wearing as well also displays the beats per minute when you press through the menu button in regarding distance and speed Garmin Connect which is the app you downloading see on your screen is the same app that's used across all the other garmin products that has the GPS features in this case the distance and speed is an estimate since the view of it although it's made by GPS manufacturer doesn't have GPS capabilities and the band itself so although the app says this activity has no map data it's because this app isn't used on other products as well where the map would be utilized unlike the view fit where it doesn't have GPS capabilities and before moving on to the next section if you're deciding to buy the bundle this heart rate monitor comes in the box it's a long plastic strip in front with stretchable fabric if you've never worn a chest heartrate monitor before it's not bad it does have to fit snug pretty much around your chest and also just be sure to moisten the contact pads on the inside before wearing if you don't moisten them the monitor won't have good contact or register those heartbeats now it's been comfortable enough for me to wear at least although this long plastic strip again sits right here on your lower chest where your lower breastbone is located and I don't feel it too much but some have expressed discomfort so just a heads up on that though and it's been accurate as I do stop halfway to cut my pulse to ensure accuracy now going back to the app here the next section is sleep monitoring and before you sleep you press and hold the button on your band to trigger sleep mode when you wake up press and hold it again after doing so a chart does reveal a graph and how much movement was registered during your snooze now I wasn't too impressed though although the chart clearly shows throughout the night what you're up to in your arts to movement but other bands have been able to display light sleep versus deep sleep by percentage which gives me a better idea of my sleeping habits and lastly on the main page are your badges icons that review your accolades over time and once clicked will show you what you have achieved so far and lastly by pressing the top left Settings button you can access community which is where you can add friends or virtual friends found through the app by doing so you can view the leaderboard to compete against other vivofit wares out there third on the list is the device's tab that reviews what devices you have synced with this app and lastly the sprocket on the very bottom of the page here you can change your height and especially your weight to have your goals change over time so overall when I was first introduced to the vivofit it didn't see much because it was just so simple but over time I can see there's a real benefit to this band because of its app especially for runners all the main components are there to make this a worthwhile purchase and as I stated in the polar loop video you have to get this with the heart rate monitor bundle without it I think a different company is better suited as it does come with more smaller features that view fit is missing such as a vibrating alarm flights of stairs climbed some other bands have food logs and third-party apps support as well so hope you enjoyed this review of the view of it and it's heart rate monitor from Garmin please watch the other videos to see if the other products are more suited for you and if you have not please take your time to visit my Facebook and Google+ pages for behind the scenes information and of course do subscribe to my youtube channel for more reviews this is Jimmy from Jim's review room take everyone by