Sports

Garmin gets in on fitness bracelet craze with vivofit

Garmin's vivofit fitness bracelet
Garmin's vivofit fitness bracelet

With the new vívofit, Garmin is rolling performance-tracking into a package that's significantly smaller and sleeker than its typical fitness watch. The GPS giant believes the bracelet is more than just a "me too" device in a swelling marketplace, explaining that it packs a few features that set it apart.

Garmin has been designing and selling sports monitors for years, but many of them could be described quite rightfully as ungainly wrist bricks. The new vívofit joins the likes of the Nike+ FuelBand SE and Jawbone UP in offering fitness monitoring in a thin, lightweight bracelet. Unlike many other Garmin devices, the vívofit does not include a GPS chip.

Instead of simply tracking your movement, vívofit adds some intuition to your daily fitness routine. It creates attainable daily goals based upon your activity level, increasing the goals as you meet milestones. This way, you're inspired to keep striving for a fitter, healthier lifestyle.

"Vívofit is the only fitness band that automatically greets users with a personalized daily goal, tracks their progress and reminds them when it’s time to move," Garmin claims in a press release.

The vívofit's inactivity function provides a visual red bar after you've been inactive for an hour. The bar grows the longer you stay inactive, providing a reminder to get up and move around. Walk around for a few minutes and the inactivity tracker resets.

"Research shows prolonged periods of inactivity, such as sitting at a desk, decrease the body’s production of fat-burning enzymes," Garmin explains. "Taking frequent, short walk breaks throughout the day can reverse this."

Vívofit is designed to be a 24/7 monitor, tracking nighttime sleep patterns as well as daytime fitness. Its always-on curved display shows number of steps, goal countdown, calories, distance and time of day.

For a more in-depth analysis, the vívofit syncs wirelessly, via Bluetooth or included ANT USB stick, with the cloud-based Garmin Connect community. Here, users can review reports about their fitness, connect with other users, and participate in fitness challenges and games.

The vívofit is compatible with ANT+ heart rate models. It's powered by two replaceable CR1632 cells that Garmin says will last for more than a year.

The vívofit will hit the market in the first quarter of 2014 for US$129.99 or $169.99 for a heart rate monitor bundle.

Source: Garmin

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2 comments
Bryan P
details? Is it waterproof? Is it yet another glorified pedometer? Can it handle other types of exercise such as rowing, paddling, swimming?
Ribaarchitect
I have been using my Garmin Vivofit (birthday present) for six months and really enjoy monitoring my day to day efforts. Sadly the Vivofit wristband although comfortable, is very insecure, and the pop in button to close the strap on the wrist is a miserable failure. My Vivofit has opened up by itself and dropped off my wrist at least twenty times in the six months that I have been wearing it and psychologically I could sense that it was an accident (loss) waiting to happen. Luckily each time it popped off I was either at home and noticed it lying on the floor, in bed, or on the sofa, or someone else noticed it drop off and kindly pointed it out to me, as its impossible to hear it fall. However, on boxing day I was out for a walk and when I returned my wrist was looking naked. Bye bye Garmin Vivofit. I loved to use it but because of this DEFECT, I will not replace it as the mental stress of worrying about losing another is not worth the health gain. I have been a big fan of Garmin for many years and I am also the proud owner of a 620 for running, which is fantastic and secure. Garmin if you are listening, then please do something about the poor strap design, as I have noted this similar problem being raised on other BLOG sites.