I owned a Forerunner 235 for 1.5 years, followed by a Garmin Fenix 5s which I bought in May 2017 right after their release, and wore it daily until two weeks ago when it was stolen at the gym (MAJOR bummer). I decided to replace it with a Garmin Vivoactive 3 both for the lower price point as well as some of the higher-end Fenix-style technology being introduced into the more moderately priced Vivoactive lines. So I’ll compare my experience to both garmins below (as well as a FitBit Surge & Mio Fuse, which I started with before discovering Garmins several years ago). Note that I bought my Vivoactive 3 at Best Buy in mid-September 2017; Best Buy has an exclusive with Garmin to be the sole selling partner on the Vivoactive 3 for a month, so I’d expect it will be more widely available on Amazon, etc by mid/late October 2017.

AESTHETICS: I’m a female who works in a fairly dressy office environment, so one of the original reasons I had upgraded to the Fenix 5s was for the dressier look of the watch. I simply felt silly wearing the obviously plastic “I might go for a run later” Forerunner 235 with a suit, though I also wanted to wear my Garmin all day for activity tracking, resting heart rate, etc. The look of the Fenix 5S and the Vivoactive 3 (“V3”) are very similar, with the circular watch face being close in diameter/size, and the black casing with stainless steel rim giving the watch a dressy enough look to work in any office environment. The V3 is thinner than the Fenix, though, and boy is it lighter. SO MUCH LIGHTER. While the Fenix 5S weighs less than the larger Fenix 5 (67g vs 87g), the V3 comes in at a much more sprightly 43g. Yes, that’s less than half the weight of the Fenix 5. Even at “just” 50% lighter than the Fenix 5S, I can tell a huge difference in the weight on my wrist, and it’s generally more comfortable to do wrist-bent exercises like push-ups in. Now, if you’re really just going for what wearable out there is most beautiful, look hard at the Apple Watch or new FitBit Ionic that was just announced; both give Garmin a run for the money in aesthetics (and frankly, usually win). But in my opinion Garmin trumps the others in athlete-focused options/data/accuracy, so for those reasons if you’ve chosen to go Garmin, this V3 is by far my favorite in comparison to the Forerunner & Fenix.

WORKOUT FUNCTIONALITY: While the Forerunner at the time of its release was (in my opinion, at least) a great balance of price and technology features, there were a few things that bugged me about it. The GPS was always spot on, and for runners it was an all-around great watch. But for the more general athlete, it lagged in a couple areas, especially for gym exercise. The exercise modes for Forerunner were very limited; you could select from Run / Run Indoors / Cycle / Cycle Indoors, as well as a couple others, but there weren’t modes for “Elliptical”, “Cardio”, or “Strength”, and no way to add them. Yes, I could choose “run indoors” when I wanted to cross train on the elliptical (and I did), but the watch had a hard time trying to equate all the wrist movement into a run distance. And forget strength training, where in “indoor run” mode the Forerunner basically told me I’d burned no calories and really should stop slacking and start moving. The Forerunner also struggled the most of the 3 models with heart rate tracking during interval training. Now, I will say that the Forerunner was MUCH better than the Fitbit Surge I had at first in terms of HR accuracy for interval & body weight exercise training. Much, much better. (I had several memorable cross fit workouts where my heart rate was in the 160s and my Fitbit Surge consistently logged 85-90. Um, no.) But while better than Fitbit, the Forerunner would still drop off periodically and lag rather significantly during Insanity/HIIT style training. I hoped the Fenix 5S would do a better job with that and it was an improvement, but still not perfect. In an hour HIIT workout I’d typically notice 2-3 times where the Fenix either lost HR or was way off for 30-60 seconds til the algorithm corrected itself. The V3 has finally achieved what I consider is excellent accuracy on heart rate monitoring. In a recent workout that combined an outdoor run to the gym, followed by elliptical, weight reps, and body weight exercises (ie push ups, etc, that usually trip up optical heart rate monitors), the V3 did fabulously. Very quick to pick up on HR changes, minimal lags. It was honestly the first time in the multiple wearables that I’d felt like the data was 95%+ accurate. (As a side note, the Mio Fuse I owned was probably the most accurate technology for its time (~ 2014), but it has since been replaced with the Mio Slice, which has much more mixed reviews, so not much sense on dwelling on the Fuse days of olde in this review.)

MODES: Like the Fenix 5 series, the V3 offers a wide variety of workout modes, and during setup you can use the V3 touchscreen to select which favorites you want to display on the watch. I chose Run/Treadmill/Cardio/Strength/Elliptical/Yoga, but there are a ton to choose from. The V3 also lets you create structured workouts and have them loaded onto the watch – previously this was something only the more expensive Garmin lines like Fenix had offered, so it’s a nice touch to have them on the more reasonably priced Vivoactive line. Other nice upgrades of the V3 even over my way more expensive Fenix 5S include strength reps; once you start the strength mode, it will automatically count your reps based on the repetitive movement it detects. This hasn’t performed perfectly on the V3; out of a set of 15 reps I’ve noticed that the V3 will usually be 1-2 reps over or under, but a great new feature in the V3 is the ability to change the workout stats right from the watch. As soon as the rep count is done you can hit “edit” and easily adjust the rep # or add in a weight amount and the watch corrects the stats on the fly. Super handy (you can do the same correction in treadmill mode, by the way, to adjust the watch estimate of distance to your actual distance).

VISIBILITY: The V3 has a color screen, similar to the Fenix line. One nice feature on the V3 is an automatic backlight. If you lift your wrist up so its parallel to the floor a backlight automatically turns on, which is great for hikes/runs in the dark, etc. I did find that the backlight wasn’t terribly sensitive, so I had to not only lift my wrist but also tilt it slightly towards my body to get the backlight to turn on. Not a huge deal to me, it’s easy to get used to, and helps prevent the light from turning on all the time and draining battery. See pic below of "Run" mode at night to get a sense of the backlight.

ACTIVITY TRACKING ACCURACY: Historically I’ve felt Garmin products have been front of the pack for athlete data/use but “ok not great” on activity tracking. The V3 definitely improves accuracy over the Forerunner and I noticed a little bit of improvement over the Fenix 5s. I have two small kids, and both the Forerunner and Fenix would usually miss any steps I took pushing a cart, stroller, or carrying a toddler (and that’s annoying if I’ve done a 4 mile run with a jogging stroller and my watch then yells at me 10 minutes later to move since it didn’t count any of the steps from the stroller run). The V3 definitely does a better job and catches probably 75% of the cart/stroller steps the other Garmin watches missed. But let’s be honest here – if what you want is really a great activity tracker and you’re not that interested in the more athlete-focused features, you’ll get better results with a Fitbit. While I found the workout & heart rate accuracy of the Fitbit really struggled in comparison to Garmin, Fitbit shines in activity tracking. Their app is much, much sleeker and more intuitive than the Garmin app, there are easy community networks & challenges to engage friends in step challenges, more useful “gamification” of notices around steps/goals, and the list goes on. For me, I’d rather have all the athlete features and consider the better V3 step tracking accuracy as icing on the cake. But if what you really want is a great activity tracker, go check out Fitbit. They just announced the new Fitbit Ionic, which is at a similar pricepoint to the V3.

SMART NOTIFICATIONS: The V3 is the first Garmin touchscreen I’ve owned (neither Fenix nor Forerunner are), so in that sense smart notifications are easier to interact with than the buttons-only models that got clunky trying to get a text or call notification working. The V3 can also be turned 180 degrees and set up on either wrist with the button on either side, which is also sort of nifty. But in general I think Garmin’s smart watch notifications are pretty mediocre. There isn’t nearly the 3rd party app support that something like Apple has. And yes, the V3 has GarminPay, but one can only imagine the banking partnerships (still to be announced) will be much more limited than Fitbit or Apple. The V3 can play music from another device but doesn’t permit internal music storage like several other brands. And, of course, doesn’t offer LTE connectivity like the newly announced Apple Watch 3. Like fitness tracking, if what you want is really primarily a smart watch, Garmin probably isn’t the best fit. I’d go Apple Watch – or an android alternative like the Samsung Gear line – for pure smart watch functionality.

OVERALL: For the person who just wants a gorgeous smartwatch that gives great app support & phone notifications, go get an Apple Watch 3. For the person who primarily wants activity tracking & community/steps interaction, go get a Fitbit – perhaps even the recently announced Fitbit Ionic. But for the athlete who wants solid data for their workouts – be they run, cycling, cross fit, or general gym work – I’d definitely recommend the V3 as a moderately priced but excellently featured watch. In my view, Garmin has done a great job pairing athletic functionality & technology from their traditionally more expensive lines with a more reasonably priced Vivoactive.