GARMIN VIVOFIT 3: THE $100 FITNESS TRACKER YOU CAN LEAVE ON.
As the wearable fitness-tracker explosion rolls along, Fitbit has become the 800-pound gorilla. On Amazon, the top seven bestselling fitness trackers are all Fitbits.
The eighth bestselling tracker, though, is a Garmin, and it reminds us that not every good idea in fitness tracking comes from Fitbit.
These days, the trackers you can buy basically boil down to three categories. At the low end, there’s the $100 band. It counts your steps, measures your sleep (including deep and light cycles), reminds you to move if you’ve been sitting still for an hour, and lets you participate in “who can rack up the most steps this week” challenges with other owners of the same brand. These are fantastic motivational tools that almost can’t help but make you healthier and more fit.
If you’re willing to spend a little more (and strap a little more bulk to your wrist), you can get a midrange band. They track more things, like your heart rate and the number of stairs you’ve climbed. (Heart rate is an important indicator of your overall metabolism, how efficiently you’re exercising, and how healthy your heart is overall — your resting heart rate.)
Finally, if you’re hardcore — you run races, you know your PR (personal record), you know what VO2 means — you probably want a big fat athlete’s watch. It tracks your heart rate, location, lap times, and enough other stats to fill a lifetime of spreadsheets, but you might not want to wear it to your inauguration.
<5>Here’s what these three categories look like, as presented by Fitbit and Garmin:Our subject today is the latest $100 band from Garmin: the Vivofit 3.
What’s new
The Vivofit 3 doesn’t actually pack many more features than the model it replaces, the Vivofit 2. Now it autodetects certain kinds of exercise (running, swimming, cycling, elliptical), which is very helpful. It tracks a new measurement: intensity minutes (minutes of activity that really get you panting).
It still doesn’t show incoming texts, calls, and calendar reminders from your phone, the way the Fitbit Alta does. It doesn’t offer vibrating alarms to quietly wake you.
No, the big news is a nod toward fashion. Like its archrival, the Fitbit Alta, the new Vivofit is, in fact, just a little capsule that you can pop out of its band — and pop into a different one.
Unfortunately, the options for replacement bands won’t be mistaken for, you know, anything from Tiffany’s. They’re plastic and kind of tacky looking — and surprisingly wide.
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