Garmin vivosmart 4, Activity and Fitness Tracker w/ Pulse Ox and Heart Rate Monitor

I have had this for nearly a year and have been waiting to give a review as I have been using it during a unique time and wanted to give my input.I bought this tracker while pregnant because I wanted to encourage myself with what I was doing rather than thinking I wasn't being active at all. For starters, the activity tracker made me feel justified in taking it easy, haha. It's "body battery" feature was rarely above 50% during my pregnancy even after getting 10+ hours of sleep. Yeah, pregnancy is tiring. And it usually felt pretty accurate. Days it said my "battery" was low, even if I felt ok to start, once my day got going, I would feel drained. Days it said it was high (like 75% - wow!), I really did feel it. In comparison, after baby was born and I was getting way less sleep, the sleep was more refreshing, so I regularly started seeing 80-100% "battery" even though I was only getting 4-7 hours of sleep. I don't know what magic it uses, but it's good!Now speaking of sleep, that may be it's largest failure. It wants to know between what hours you normally sleep (maybe 10pm-7am) and it only tracks sleep in those hours. If you take a nap, no record. If you stay up for a couple hours in the middle of the night to feed a baby, it either says you totally woke up then or that you were in a light sleep at that time. So highly inaccurate, I wish you could treat it like an exercise where you tell it you're about to go to sleep or it does better at recognizing sleep.One feature that I thought I would like but was actually super annoying during pregnancy was it's high stress detection. Pregnancy is weird, and with that the body does not function normally. Now the app has a menstrual cycle setting that I set to pregnancy and it had its own little information thing each week. but it clearly doesn't apply that information to other things. I could be sitting doing nothing and my watch would inform me that I was highly stressed and needed to take some deep breaths. I have seen that a lot less since baby was born.It's heart rate feature is pretty cool, and I imagine what they base the stress levels off of. I don't know if it takes a couple weeks to learn your normal heart rate or not.I haven't used the exercise tracking all that much, so I can't say much on that, lol.I learned that if you want to get notifications on your watch that option only comes up once and it's in the initial setup. I opted out at first and then tried to find the setting again later to change it. I think the music control settings only work if notifications are allowed. I had to reset up my watch with the app to change it.Their customer service is pretty good. My original watch stopped vibrating for notifications or alarms or anything. They confirmed that I had tried everything to get it to work, and then I had to mail mine back in and I got another one. I think my first one had some other defects as the alarms were kinda iffy on the first one, but they are pretty reliable on my second one.Overall I am very pleased with it. I researched a lot of activity trackers before settling on this one and I believe I made the right choice for me!

Two Fitbit charge 5’s failed so I figured i would try a new brand. Garmin came to mind so after researching I wanted to try this one before maybe upgrading to the Vivosmart 5. I didn’t need all of the power of a smart watch just wanted a fitness tracker that had a bit more capability than steps and heart rate. So far this has performed perfectly. Battery life is the only downside, which is notable, considering I don’t use the gps tracking usually, it only lasts maybe four days between charges. I could only imagine how poor it would be if I used gps more. Other wise it’s fantastic. I can pause and skip what ever is playing on my phone. It sleep tracks, not super precise but good enough for me. Heart rate seems more accurate than the charge 5. The garmin more closely reflects my chest strap heart rate monitor than the charge 5. It also automatically switches to do not disturb so the face doesn’t turn on while sleeping. The app is free, with features that I like better than Fitbit. More details on the app than Fitbit. It has relaxing breathing reminders. FITBIT KILLER! and this is the cheapest tracker garmin offers. The charger is annoying also. Two “negatives” buried by mounds of positives. Exactly what I was looking for. Not over powered and loaded with useless apps.

I’ve been using this fitness tracker just about every day for the past 6 months, and am glad I bought it. The battery still holds a charge for about 7 days.I mainly use it for monitoring my heart rate, tracking activities, and sleep monitoring. I have to say the sleep monitoring (sleep cycles, HR, and movement) seems to be pretty accurate. The HR monitor does a solid job, except when I’m riding a bike. I assume this is just due to its position on my wrist with my hand bent slightly on the handlebars, but for whatever reason it just can’t seem to measure accurately during that one activity.I’m sure there are fancier fitness trackers out there, but this one keeps it simple while still including some neat features. The Garmin App that works with this device is, in my opinion, informative and easy to use. If you’re looking for something with a slim profile that’s fairly customizable and does the basic stuff well - I’d recommend it.