Customer Ratings & Reviews

Uprgraded from broken Vivoactive HR. Much thinner and unobtrusive design, feels higher quality. Touch screen responds well. Display looks great with great ability to customize it. Took it out for a hike this morning, everything works great . Excellent GPS performance as is expected from Garmin. Very happy with this purchase. Glad my old one broke so I could upgrade ;)

I've been using activity trackers for years, most recently the Vivoactive HR. This is superior to all of them in every way, except one very simple, but vitally important, feature. The vibration is a fatal flaw. Even on the highest setting, the vibration is so week, that I rarely get any notifications. I'm a very light sleeper, but I've slept through the alarm on 5 of the 6 mornings that I've had it and I only get notifications of any kind during the day if I'm "really paying attention," which defeats the purpose of any smart features. I keep comparing the feeling to a fly landing on your arm -- you might feel it, but probably not. My Vivoactive HR actually just broke, so I guess I will have to be looking for whole new option. It's really sad, because I absolutely love the thing otherwise and am devastated at the thought of returning it, but I've become fairly reliant on silent notifications. I never thought that a $300 device would be insufficient in this area -- I've taken it for granted in all other trackers.

The field of fitness trackers, especially those incorporating elements of smartwatches (or even smartwatches that incorporate elements of fitness trackers) is extremely crowded these days, with Apple Watch arguably sitting at the top. So, when other devices cost almost as much, they really need to perform at least as well, especially since they don't generally carry the styling and overall cache that comes with the Apple brand. That said, considering a first-gen Apple Watch can be had for less than the Garmin Vivoactive 3, a 2nd-gen Apple Watch can be had for about the same price, and a 3rd-gen can be had for just a few dollars more, I had great expectations for the Vivoactive 3. Reality, though, was so far below those expectations that I felt nothing short of let down and even a bit betrayed by Garmin. First, the marketing images you see of the watch make it look bright, vibrant and even high-resolution. However, the display, once the backlight is turned on, has very muted colors, with a purplish tint to the light that makes things look like a cheap color graphing calculator, with just about the same kind of choppy resolution. It actually looks better without the backlight on, though this requires bright sunlight to see it well enough to be worth trying to use it. Second, its responsiveness, especially when using some downloaded watch faces, is sluggish, at best. The stock watch faces don't display enough data points to prevent the need to scroll through multiple screens to see the various bits of into such as steps, heart rate, battery life, etc., so you will have to download these aftermarket watch faces to get these capabilities. Throw in the fact that setting up the various watch faces can be cantankerous, at best, and it becomes a chore even for someone like me who loves gadgetry and has no problems learning how to operate new devices and their accompanying software. Many users will likely struggle to sort out all the fussy settings for these custom watch faces to get them set up the way they want them. Third, its sleep tracking is laughably inaccurate, to the point of being basically useless. I don't know if it's a software issue, hardware shortcoming, or both, but on any given night, it would show me having been asleep for about 1.5 to 2 hours, when I was in fact asleep from 4 to 8 hours, with very little tossing and turning. While I want to say this makes the feature a nonstarter, it would need to actually come close to doing what it's intended to to be called a feature. As it is, I can only call it a flaw, and it's a big one, considering Fitbits cost so much less while doing so much better. While we're at it, I have to say that I have a Garmin Edge 520 GPS cycling computer, and I use it with a chest strap heart rate monitor, and it has always worked very well for recording my heart rate during rides. And, while I could also sync that strap to the Vivoactive 3 for more accurate monitoring, considering the Vivoactive costs about $300 MSRP, its built-in wrist monitor should do a better job than it does. It flies all over the place, often even showing my heart rate at over 170bpm when I was simply strolling around a store or at work. My heart rate never gets that high even when peddling my bike at a steady 16-20mph. I'm sure its overall daily average is probably very close to reality, but for workouts, it's just too all over the place for my liking to get a good sense of how much I was exerting myself during any given portion of them. Throw in the fact that the Vivoactive doesn't come with the ability to store music directly on the device for playback, and it becomes even harder to justify its price over the Fitbit Ionic, which costs the same, but comes with a phenomenally better display, better sleep and heart rate tracking, and built-in memory for song storage and playback. And, again, for just a few dollars more, you can get the Apple Watch 3, which does all of this and more. And, to be sure, I'm not an Apple fanboi, as I much prefer PCs, but good tech is good tech, no matter how you slice it, and the Vivoactive just doesn't quite cut it, especially at its MSRP. If I were to venture a guess as to what its price is without knowing ahead of time but after spending some time with it, I would have pegged it for about a $150-$175 device, $200 at most. I can't help thinking the cost to manufacture it would allow it to be sold at that price point for still a tidy profit, but it seems Garmin has decided to slap a $300 MSRP on it just to see if people will bite. I strongly recommend against it, so much so that I even returned mine despite getting it on sale for considerably less and even using Best Buy reward points to knock it down even more. I give it 2 starts for turning on and working great as a watch, but I cannot give it any more than this, since more stars would require it to perform much more in line with its price, which I wholeheartedly feel it fails to do. And while the styling of the Vivoactive 3 might coordinate better with different outfits, be they suits or shorts or anything in between, the Fitbit Ionic or even the Apple Watch 3 seem to be much better buys for all they have over this offering from Garmin. I have long liked Garmin's products, especially their cycling computers, and I had hoped this watch would work out so that I could use Garmin Connect for all my fitness tracking gear, since it really is a great app (though it needs the ability to track one's caloric intake and such, too, like Fitbit's app has), but when you just can't trust the data that's being sent to it from the device, and using the device itself feels like more of a chore than a joy, it becomes all but impossible to recommend it. I would recommend it at the $150-$175 price point, but that's about the only way I could see it being worth taking the plunge for one over the competition.

Many fake reviews on this page...Have been using Garmin Vivosmart and Fitbit Charge 2. I was comparing the VA3 with the Ionic and chose the VA3 for mostly price and looks. The Ionic is just too much of a tech watch look and I prefer the round face. I do prefer the Fitbit app as it's much quicker and easier to scan results. The onboard storage was also attractive on the Ionic, although so many reviewers said it was a nightmare to use. There were no holiday deals for the Ionic and at least Garnin was more aggressive and offered incentives. The VO2 Max test is one of the things that I liked least about the VA3 as you need to perform the test while using GPS and it must be an outside activity. I was able to get it to work inside. The Charge 2 had me in better shape than the Garmin. Garmin is also too generous on steps and mileage for running. I believe there's a way to calibrate your steps in the desktop app but you need to know the exact # of steps per run where you have to either screen shot beginning and ending steps or write it down. The stock watch face is pretty lame so I found a decent one in Garmin Connect and prefer it. Too bad you can't buy Garmin devices and use the Fitbit app. Overall, for the sale price, the VA3 is a decent device and a big improvement over the very crude design of its predecessor. I could not justify spending $500-600 for a Fenix as the VA3 provides enough functionality while still looking good enough to wear 24x7.

The watch has great features. However the battery life was less than my previous. But it wasn’t an issue at first. However the battery life has dropped over the last 4 years and it has started powering off at 20%. I have to charge it every day.

I have been debating on which smart watch (FB Ionic or the vivoactive 3) to upgrade to, I have used the vivosmart HR + since it came out. I have used fitbit in the past as well. I tried the Ionic (not a fan of the square face but had great color resolution and was comfortable) decided to stay with Garmin since I have the scale and loved the HR + (and features that garmin offers) I had really high hopes for the vivoactive 3. I have not had it long enough to test the battery life or activities. However, the device will not stay connected to bluetooth. I am constantly turning off and on the bluetooth on my phone. It drops randomly even in close proximity to my phone (samsung). In 10 hours I have had to reconnect at least 9 times. I contacted Garmin Chat, she was not helpful, said she could not help me- must be my phone. I had no issues with the HR+. If I cannot get this resolved I will be returning it.

Garmin Vivoactive 3 gives me all the tools I need from a smartwatch. It has built-in GPS, waterproof and it also has the modern look. The battery last long so I could not ask for more.

Purchased this after viewing online. Photos looked great and I already had a Garmin Fenix 3 HR and was looking for something a little smaller for daily use. HOWEVER, as soon as I opened the box I realized I had made a mistake. The band is extremely thin and simple - not used to that from Garmin. I felt like I was wearing a quarter on my wrist - just too small for me. Returned it within a few days and purchased a Samsung Gear S3 and couldn't be happier even with pairing to my iPhone.

Beware if you have a newer Android phone. After doing some research it appears that Garmin is having major bluetooth connectivity issues with Android 7.0+ and iOS 11. My vivoactive3 initially worked with my Note 8, however shortly after my return window ran up, the connection dropped and couldn't be repaired. Unable to pair the device with my phone even after attempting all possible trouble shooting steps. Attempted to pair the device with my wife's iPhone 7 and no go there either. Garmin support isn't great either and the 2 out of the 3 people I spoke with were very condescending.

As of now. I have not had any problems with my watch. The connection is awesome. I haven't had any problem with any of the readings. It's not a fast draining battery. The battery last about 3 days. It doesn't take long to charge either.

I tried the Apple watch and a Samsung watch and for the most part the Vivo3 checks all the boxes a runner would like. Ideally I would have given this a 4.5 stars, but it get 5 for rounding. Battery lasts about 3 days with every day wear and doing 3-6 miles running at night.

This is my first smart watch and I love it! Bought it mainly for my mountain bike tracking to my Strava app, and golf gps. Easy to navigate the garmin connect app, All the other features are a plus also.

Great potential, but I bought it mainly for golf features and the golf features simply don't work. The auto shot feature doesn't work AT ALL. They finally admitted that after I wasted 3 hours on 3 different calls to support. They removed one of the most useful features from Vivoactive HR, simple shot distance measuring. I really like the form factor, face, etc. but the golf features just don't work.

I like the brand name and design, don't match my watch still aah' j I love the gear watch awesome etiquette

Returned the Fitbit Ionic. The Garmin app is in a different league and the watch is much better for running. The gps is spot on and very accurate. My only regret is that I did not have this watch sooner.

At first, I loved this watch. Great price for running, cycling, and swimming. Only problem, which is a huge problem, is that when running sometimes it takes forever to connect to GPS. I have at times had to wait 10-15 minutes. Sometimes I have to restart it several times before it will connect. This is not a problem I have ever had with Garmin so I am not sure why this watch does it. Overall, okay watch. Just beware of GPS problem.

Both my gf and I purchased one. We both have Samsung Galaxy S7 Edges and were getting only text notifications from Apple phones. We received no notifications from each others' phones or other Samsung users' phones. It was very comfortable and aesthetically very pleasing, but the notifcations was a deal breaker.

For $270.00 this is the worst watch in 2018. The watch has many sports and cardio functions and it also looks physically great. Till you turn the screen on because of how garmin cheaped out with the screen. Even just for normal daily activities as this watch is advertised also for, the screen makes you want to rip it off your wrist because of this expensive embarrassment. You can literally see every single pixel. I mean you dont have to even look close as the out screen circle is not even a circle. You can actually see the choppy pixelated line all the way around. The worst part is the clock hand, it is so choppy that it blends in with whatever else is in the watchscreen. What a poor design. I know this made for activites but so are some models from samsung and fitbit has a lot to offer. I returned this garmin watch with three hours and got a samsung, which does 10x more and I can actually enjoy the watch on my wrist. I wonder how cheaply made are garmins navigation systems for airplanes.

The video display on this watch is very small and hard to see. Navigation is confusing and the touch screen is not very responsive. The one positive is the appearance- I got the black and it is very sleek and stylish. Still this was not enough for me to be satisfied- I returned the watch to BestBuy.

I was really happy with the product until last week. I let it charged fully (i usually just charge it for 5 mins while I get ready) and all went down hill. It turned on for about 8 seconds then it shut down. It did all that for day until it drained all the battery (probably it killed the battery withing 6 hrs) after being charged 100%. I reset it to factory settings and it worked great for a day or two but it did the same thing today. I will be returning this product today and get my money back (good thing I extended the warranty on this item). I read about this issue in a few of the reviews before I bought it, but decided to give it a shot anyways, bummed it happened to me as well. I hope Garmin fixes those bugs. I work out and I read lots of notifications for work. I need it to be a little more reliable than this.