A Comprehensive Review of the Garmin Vivosmart 4 Activity Tracker
The company Garmin was founded in 1989 and after a few years, its customers started to associate it with a GPS tracking company for cars. However, Garmin soon realized that they could use their vehicle tracking technology for the benefit of health-conscious customers and that’s how Garmin Vivosmart activity tracker was designed.
The vivosmart 4 tracker is both practical and stylish with its to-the-point display and minimalistic design. There are a number of things that this small yet so useful tracker does including but not limited to;
- Tracking your sleep during REM, deep and light stages
- Providing data on how much you moved during the night
- Comes with preloaded activity timers
- It has an Elevate heart rate sensor
- Uses Pulse Ox technology to monitor the oxygen absorption rate of blood
There are a lot more features that vivosmart has, and we will talk about them later in this guide so stay with us till the end. Also don’t forget to check our Fitbit review.
Garmin Vivosmart 4 Review
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What Makes Vivosmart 4 Activity Tracker Different?
The interesting thing about the vivosmart 4 that also differentiates it among other activity trackers is that it also keeps an eye on your stress levels. This makes vivosmart 4 one of the rare activity trackers that encourage the user to take a moment to breathe and prioritize their emotional and mental state. Honestly, the HULK needs it the most.
Moving on, another great thing about vivo 4 is that it leverages a range of different sensors and app features to provide a complete picture of what your health condition is right now. The tracker comes in different colors including azure blue, gray, black and berry. So now that you have become a little familiar with the vivo 4 let’s have a look at some of its pros and cons and then we will move towards its features.
Advantages of Using Vivosmart 4 Activity Tracker:
- It tracks your heart rate
- It monitors the oxygen in the blood
- Tracks activity and steps
- Its battery can last between five and seven days
- Available in Large and Medium/Small sizes
- Comes in four vibrant colors
Disadvantages of Using Vivosmart 4 Activity Tracker:
- Doesn’t have any built-in GPS
- It is more like a health tracker than a fitness tracker
- A little expensive than the vivosmart 3
How Vivosmart 4 Activity Tracker Tracks Sleep?
There are a few things that make Garmin Vivosmart 4 an excellent sleep tracking device. The first thing that makes it so effective is its slimness and lightweight that helps it easily sit around your wrist without interfering with your ability to go to sleep naturally.
Secondly, when you are ready for bed, it uses its Elevate feature that detects changes in your heart rate, and when your heart rate starts to slow down, it gets the indication that you have gone to sleep. This is when it starts to track your activity through the three stages of sleep; light, deep and REM.
The tracker leverages Pulse OX sensor that estimates how well oxygen is absorbed by your blood using the data of your current overall fitness. Furthermore, it makes notes on how often you move throughout the night and if you experience any disturbances while sleeping.
When you finally wake up, you can access all of the information that vivosmart 4 recorded throughout the night by using the Garmin Connect App on your mobile.
Remember, whenever you lay down to do some rest, you need to make sure that you are wearing the tracker tight enough on your wrist so that its sensors can effectively record the data. The best part of using vivo 4 is that it doesn’t record your sleep activity when you are taking a nap during the day that makes it highly accurate for tracking your night sleep activity.
Features of Vivosmart 4 Activity Tracker:
There are tons of features that come with this incredibly useful tracking device. Have a look at some of the primary ones below:
- Sleek Design: Vivosmart 4 is very slim and rocks a very minimalistic, futuristic design that most of the modern fitness trackers do. It has an aluminium bezel around its screen that comes in several colors and has two sizes large or medium/small. The best part is that unlike the bulky smartwatches, the vivosmart 4 looks just right even on small wrists. Lastly, it features an OLED screen that comes with auto-adjust brightness so you can see clearly whether you are in bed or outside the home.
- Notification Alerts: Another very useful feature is that it has vibration alerts for all your notifications including your text messages, apps and calls. You can customize the type of alerts you want to get in the companion mobile app. This is very useful in situations where you don’t take your smartphone with you like when swimming. So if you receive an important email or text, you can quickly grab your smartphone and respond.
- Battery: The best thing about this sleek but feature-filled tracker is that it packs an incredible battery in its small size that can last anywhere between five and seven days in a single charge. Furthermore, it can be fully charged in just an hour that makes it even more attractive for people who have tight schedules.
- Heart Rate: Vivosmart 4 comes with an optical heart rate sensor that tracks your heart rate for all activities that you do. And when it is combined with the VO2 max estimate, you will get an idea of what your fitness level is. People with heart conditions will find this device pretty useful as it can alert them if their heart rate increases above the set mark.
- Body Battery: This one is a unique feature by Garmin through which they measure how worn out your body is each day. It takes data such as your stress level, heart rate variability and your activity to provide you with a score that ranges between 0 and 100. The lower this score is, the more rest you need to have and the more you need to go easy on yourself.
- Sleep Tracking: Though we have already discussed it above in detail, mentioning it, again and again, is imperative because this is the star feature of this device. Vivosmart 4 excels at sleep tracking, and its sleep tracker is highly accurate and provides a very detailed reporting. It presents a series of graphs that tell you about your sleep stages in detail so you can know how much action of each stage you got.
- Stress: By leveraging the data of heart rate, vivosmart 4 tracks your stress level throughout the day and tells you if you stayed calm, balanced or stressful that day. It also has a ‘Relax Reminder’ feature that sends you a notification to take a moment to calm down when your stress levels go high.
So these were some of the features that make the vivosmart 4 the awesome tracker that it is. Make sure to read the guide till the end to know more things about it.
Some Considerations for the Vivosmart 4 Tracker:
Compatibility:
The Garmin Connect App that comes with the vivosmart 4 is compatible with the Apple devices that are operating at iOS 10.0 or later and the Android devices that have 4.4 OS or above. Virtually everybody has higher versions than the mentioned operating system versions so compatibility should not be an issue. Furthermore, to connect the tracker to your smartphone, the Bluetooth version should be 4.0 or above.
Maintenance:
The best part of having the Vivosmart 4 is that it features a silicone wrist strap and polycarbonate lens making it waterproof so you can easily wear it while swimming, showering or walking in the rain. Although the tracker is highly durable, you need to keep it away from solvents, insect repellents and chemical cleaners because they can damage the tracker.
If you want to clean your tracker, you need to rinse it gently using fresh water and make sure to always do it whenever it comes in contact with chlorine, cosmetics, salt water or sunscreen as chemicals can damage it. Furthermore, do not expose it to extreme temperature changes and do not use sharp or hard objects to clean its screen.
Price:
Granted that vivosmart 4 has a little bit higher price than the vivosmart 3 but seeing the highly accurate sleep tracking and a wide range of features that it packs in a very small size, it deserves a premium price tag.
The tracker comes with an extensive range of capabilities that are similar to the trackers and even smartwatches within the same price range. So its price makes perfect sense because of the features it has.
| Size | Price |
|---|---|
| Price | $99.95 |
Conclusion
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Overall Summary
If you are health conscious or have conditions like sleep apnea, then this futuristic sleep tracker can help you keep tabs on your activities during the sleep and also tell you how stressed you are. Furthermore, it can tell you at what fitness level you are so you can start working on your fitness and make changes to your routines.
Considering the plethora of features that this small trackers packs, it is definitely a must to have if you are looking to track your routine activities and take actions based on it to improve your overall health.
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