Garmin Vivoactive 4

amazon Garmin Vivoactive 4 reviews

Garmin’s amazing Vivoactive 4 fitness tracker provides insights into your breathing, sleep, stress, fueling workout plans, smartwatch features like contactless payments, downloadable apps, and built-in music storage.

If you’re looking for a fitness tracker that balances form and function, the $349.99 Garmin Vivoactive 4 should be at the top of your list. This feature-rich GPS smartwatch/fitness tracker boasts a stylish design, 20+ pre-loaded sports apps, built-in music memory, and Bluetooth headset support. It builds on its great predecessors by adding onscreen workout animations, Pilates support and advanced yoga stats, pulse oximeter readings, respiratory monitoring, and underwater heart rate monitor. It’s expensive, but it offers great value for the price, earning it the Editors’ Choice for high-end fitness trackers.

Vivoactive 4 vs. Vivoactive 4S

Vivoactive 4 comes in two sizes. The 40mm model, whose somewhat confusing name is Vivoactive 4S, is for wrists between 4.3 and 6.8 inches in circumference and comes in gold/pink, rose gold/white, silver/gray, or slate color options/black. The 45mm model, Vivoactive 4, is for wrists between 5.3 and 7.8 inches and is available in silver/gray or slate/black.
Garmin sent me the rose gold/white 4S for this review, but I’ll call it the Vivoactive 4 since the models are mostly identical apart from battery life, size, and weight. A 1.3-inch screen weighs 1.7 ounces, while the 4S has a 1.1-inch screen and weighs 1.4 ounces.

As for battery life, Garmin says the Vivoactive 4 lasts up to 8 days in smartwatch mode, 6 hours in GPS mode, or 18 hours in GPS mode without music. The 4S has an estimated battery life of up to 7 days in smartwatch mode, 5 hours in GPS mode, or 15 hours in GPS mode without music.
In testing, the battery dropped only 23% in 24 hours. During that time, I tracked a GPS-enabled short run and a 55-minute yoga session. After nearly three days of regular use, including another run tracked by GPS, the battery was below 20 percent.

Design and specifications

Vivoactive 4 features a color touchscreen with durable Corning Gorilla Glass 3, a comfortable textured silicone band, fiber-reinforced polymer case and polymer back cover with stainless steel bezel. It is rated 5ATM for water resistance, which means it can withstand pressure equivalent to a depth of 164 feet. It has an always-on display, and you can touch the screen to activate the backlight. The interface is sleek and simple, with a dark background, mostly white text, and colored icons.

In terms of aesthetics, it has a classic round watch look that I like. It’s compatible with standard quick-release straps, so you can swap out the silicone strap for something fancier if you want. It looks a lot like Vivoactive 3 and Vivoactive 3 Music, but with two buttons on the right side instead of one. The extra button (the button at the bottom) allows you to easily mark a new ring, pose, or pose during an activity. When you’re not tracking activity, you can tap it to return to the previous screen or hold it to see the settings menu and options for the monitor you’re using.

In terms of sensors, Vivoactive 4 has an accelerometer, barometric altimeter, compass, GPS with GLONASS and Galileo satellite systems, gyroscope, heart rate monitor, and pulse oximeter measuring oxygen saturation blood. It tracks calories you burned, distance traveled, floors climbed, active minutes, sleep, steps, stress levels, and more. In the Garmin Connect app (available for Android and iOS), you can even enable Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts, so it will notify you if your heart rate is unusually high or low.

Setup and Navigate

To set up Vivoactive 4, you need first to download the Garmin Connect app and create an account if you don’t already have one. After downloading the app and turning on Vivoactive 4, you enter the code on the watch’s screen to connect it to the app via Bluetooth.
From there, you can choose to turn on notifications and give your watch and calendar location access. When I turn on notifications for the first time, many old notifications appear all at once, so I have to clear them one by one, which is quite annoying.

You then enter your gender, height, weight, and date of birth. Based on your answers, Garmin sets goals for floors climbed, intensity minutes, and steps. If your goals are too hard or too easy, you can edit them in the app’s User Settings menu.

The app then takes you through a quick guide on how to navigate the watch. You can swipe up or down to see widgets like the Hydration tracker that lets you easily record every cup of water you drink during the day. You can swipe right to set a specific control shortcut from the watch face, a new feature on the Vivoactive 4. Garmin says it built the feature for users who require quick access to Garmin Pay and Music controls.

To start a timed activity, press the top button, use the touchscreen to scroll through the list of options, select the type of Exercise you intend to do, then press the top button again to start. When you’re done with your Workout, press the top button to end your Workout. To access the controls menu, press and hold the top button.

When you set up your watch, you can choose your favorite workouts from a list in the app or the watch itself. I love that Garmin offers a specific SUP or stand-up paddleboarding category because, as a Floridian, that’s one of my favorite things to do. I also added cycling, breathing exercises, cardio, Pilates, running, strength, walking, and yoga. Other options include indoor cycling, cross-country skiing, elliptical, golf, indoor running, swimming pool, indoor rowing, skiing, snowboard, stair steps, treadmill, and indoor walk. Unlike its predecessor, the Vivoactive 4 even tracks your heart rate while swimming.

Garmin has its app called Connect IQ, which is an app store for Vivoactive 4. There you can download apps like Find My Car and Maps, data fields like estimated body temperature, watch faces, and widgets. While I love having these options, it’s frustrating having them housed in a separate smartphone app.

Health stats widget

New Health Statistics widget showing Heart Rate, Stress Level, Body Battery, Respiration, and Pulse Ox.
I like the stress level stats. Garmin uses a metric called heart rate variability, or time between each heartbeat, to estimate when you’re stressed and when at rest and gives you a score from 0 to 100. Stress scores from 0 to 100. 0 to 25 indicates you are resting, 26 to 50 is considered low, 51 to 75 is average, and 76 to 100 is high. In the Garmin Connect app, you can see how much time you’ve spent in each range and whether you’ve had enough relaxation time to balance Stress.

I also really like the Relax Reminder. If Vivoactive 4 senses your stress levels are high, it will suggest a relaxing breathing exercise. On a particularly busy morning, it popped up a message on the screen saying, “Stress seems to be high at the moment. Breathe a little?” You can tap After, No, Thank you, or Yes. I decided to go ahead and do it.

It asks you to inhale for three counts, then holds your breath for three counts, exhale for three counts, then hold your breath for three counts. Yoga practitioners sometimes call this box breathing. I did the Exercise for five minutes, and it says my stress level has dropped from 75 to 36.
The Body Battery Index, which also ranges from 0 to 100, shows how much power you have left based on your activity, heart rate variability, Stress, and sleep quality. A score of 76 to 100 is high, 51 to 75 is moderate, 26 to 50 is low, and 0 to 25 is very low.

The respiratory rate shows your current breathing rate per minute, and you can click the widget to see the seven-day average. In the Garmin Connect app, you can also view graphs of your respiratory rate throughout the day, week, and month.

The pulse oximeter, or SpO2 level, measures the oxygen saturation of your blood. Garmin determines this by shining a light on your skin and testing how much is absorbed. You can read it once at any time from the Pulse Ox utility. The Vivoactive 4 also allows you to enable SpO2 tracking all day or continuously measure while you sleep, although Garmin warns that both settings reduce battery life. To enable them, go to your watch’s settings menu, select Wrist Heart Rate, then Pulse Ox.

Custom workout and exercise animations

Vivoactive 4 offers pre-installed cardio, Pilates, strength, and yoga workouts with animations that you can watch right on the watch. To access an activity, press the top button, select one of the four activities mentioned above, swipe up, select Workout, select the activity you want to do, and tap Workout. When you start, Vivoactive 4 displays the name of each move and the animation you can follow. For each category, there are three preset exercises. For yoga, for example, exercises include Improve Flexibility Now, Sun Salutation, and Wake Up Energy!

Vivoactive 4 also offers advanced yoga features and support for Pilates exercises. When you start tracking a yoga session, you’ll see your timer and heart rate on the screen, along with two new data fields: Stress and breathing rate. When tracking Pilates, the Vivoactive 4 displays your clock, calories burned, and heart rate on the screen.

Now you can also build your own Pilates and yoga workouts in the Garmin Connect app. To do that, go to the More section and tap on Training > Exercises > Create Exercise. As a yoga teacher, it’s always fun to browse through the long list of poses for ideas. In addition to Pilates and yoga, you can create custom workouts for cycling, cardio, pool swimming, running, and strength training.

After you create a workout, it will sync with your watch and appear in the list of pre-installed options. The only downside is that the custom-built assignments don’t include form animations.

where can you get a Garmin Vivoactive 4 online

Garmin vivoactive 4 GPS Smart Watch in Slate Stainless Steel Bezel with Black Case and Silicone Band (Renewed): Buy it now

Garmin Vivoactive 4 Smartwatch (Black/Stainless) 010-02174-11 w/Additional Metal Band: Buy it now

Garmin Vivoactive 4 GPS Smartwatch and Wearable4U Power Pack Bundle (Shadow Gray/Silver): Buy it now

Training Plan

One of my other favorite features of the Vivoactive 4 is the ability to get personalized training plans on your device. The Connect app offers training plans for a 5K, 10K, or half-marathon.
Because I am an average runner, I chose to set up a training plan for the 5K. When you sign up for a plan, you have to answer a few questions, including how much you run on average each week, your average running pace, and whether you want to run/walk, run, or run with a goal time. It then gives you a choice of three trainers, asking how many days per week you want to work out and what days of the week you want to work out long term.

Here’s the coolest part: You can enter your zip code to search for actual racing events or create your own personal 5K race. As I did this, many interesting options popped up, like Ice Cream 5K Tampa 2020 and Tampa Beer Run 2020. Assuming those events would be canceled this year due to COVID-19, I opted to create one. The 5K race and the app suggested a date ten weeks ago.

Based on your information, the app creates a plan for you and syncs the workouts to your device. After signing up for a training plan, the watch alerted me that I had won the Planning Ahead Badge.
It scheduled my first Workout — a Benchmark run — for the next day and added it to my calendars in the app and on the watch. The next morning, the Workout was easily accessible on the watch: I pressed the top button to start the track, selected Run, and the watch asked me if I wanted to do a Benchmark Run. The Workout includes two minutes of warm-up, five minutes of running, and two minutes of cooldown. Once you’ve tracked your Run, you can view your stats on your watch and in the app, including your average heart rate, distance, cadence, pace, steps, and time, plus your route map.

The day after my Benchmark Run was a rest day, which I enjoyed. A day later, the watch let me do a Walk/Run repetition exercise. That includes a two-minute warm-up, followed by three sets of alternating five-minute runs and five-minute walks, followed by two minutes of cooldown. The watch tells me exactly when to run when to walk, and I can see a countdown of how much time I have left in each block.
I like the Vivoactive four training plans. They help with challenging goals and can even motivate me to try to run longer in the future.

Music control

Like Vivoactive 3 Music, Vivoactive 4 offers built-in music storage for up to 500 songs. You can download music from your computer or third-party services, including Amazon Music, Deezer, Run casts, and Spotify. Pair it with built-in GPS and Bluetooth headset support, and you can work out anywhere without your phone by your side.

Setting up Spotify on the Vivoactive 4 wasn’t intuitive during testing, but I eventually figured it out by following the instructions in the online user guide. To save you trouble, I will list the steps here. It’s a two-part process that involves first connecting your Spotify account through the Garmin Connect app and then using the watch itself to download the music you want.

First, you open the Connect app, select your device, tap Music, select Spotify, and follow the onscreen instructions to connect your account. If you want to connect to another music service that is not installed, you can tap the Get music app to download it from the Connect IQ store.
Next, you need to connect your watch to Wi-Fi if you haven’t already (select your device in the Garmin Connect app, tap General > Wi-Fi network > Add a network, and enter your login details ). Then you open the music control widget on your watch, hold the bottom button, select Music Provider, select the connected provider and select the playlist you want to download.

Garmin Pay

Setting up Garmin Pay is relatively straightforward. First, you generate a four-digit code that you enter each time you pay with your watch. You need to enter your card information, accept the terms and conditions, and verify your account by entering the code sent to you via text or email.

When you’re at the register and want to pay with your meter, hold down the top button, tap the card icon, enter the four-digit passcode, and your payment card will appear. Within a minute of pulling up your card, hold your watch near the payment reader. When the payment is complete, the watch will vibrate, and you will see a checkmark on the screen.

I tested Garmin Pay at my local supermarket, Publix, and it worked fine, even though I had to pass the payment card reader several times. Being able to pay right from your wrist is convenient, especially with COVID-19, as it prevents you from having to enter your code on a payment card terminal that could be contaminated with germs.

Too many badges

Vivoactive 4 measures fitness by giving you badges for certain achievements. When you earn a new badge, the watch will vibrate, and a congratulatory message will pop up on the screen. To see all your badges, go to the Garmin Connect app, tap My Day at the bottom, then tap your photo or avatar at the top of the screen to open your profile.
That is a minor complaint, but I feel like it’s a bit too easy to earn badges. After less than three days of wearing Vivoactive 4, I’ve earned 12 badges, including Start, Two Tasks, Heat, Well Rest, Personal World Record, Let’s Boost Fitness, Weight, and Photogenic. You can decide for yourself how you feel about the badges, but for me, getting a lot of these is easy to devalue.

Compare and conclude

The Garmin Vivoactive 4 is a great fitness tracker/smartwatch hybrid, but at $349.99, it’s far from cheap. If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative, the Fitbit Charge 4 gives you many of the features of the Vivoactive 4, including built-in GPS, sleep tracking, and mobile payments for $200 less. Plus, the Fitbit app lets you easily record your food intake, a feature you don’t get with Garmin Connect. But you’ll have to make a few sacrifices: The Charge 4 isn’t as stylish as the Vivoactive 4, doesn’t have a color screen, offers only basic Spotify controls and doesn’t support Bluetooth headphones, so you’ll always need the phone by my side.
Meanwhile, the Vivoactive 4 can essentially work independently, similar to the Apple Watch Series 5, which starts at $399. The Apple Watch has a larger selection of third-party apps, but it doesn’t track your sleep right away, and it has a much shorter battery life. Vivoactive 4 tracks your sleep and lasts for days before it needs to be recharged, making it a better choice for overall health and fitness. Both are great options depending on which features you prioritize.

So while the Vivoactive 4 is expensive, it’s also one of the most comprehensive fitness trackers you can buy. If you’re looking to leave your phone at home while measuring advanced stats on any exercise, the Vivoactive 4 is well worth it and our Editors’ Choice for premium fitness trackers.

Advantages
Respiratory monitoring
Pulse oximeter readings
Workout animations on screen
Built-in music memory and support for Bluetooth headsets
Underwater optical heart rate monitor
Support Pilates

Defect
Using multiple smartphone apps
Too many badges