Garmin’s lineup of GPS watches offers something for everyone: Affordable golf watches, running watches without touchscreens and the Vivoactive line with health and fitness features and a touchscreen display. The brand new 45mm Vivoactive 4 and 40mm 4S, include almost every feature you could want from a smartwatch- music, GPS, heart rate- plus all of the excellent fitness-tracking capabilities that Garmin does best. The Vivoactive 4 is the best smartwatch you can buy for fitness.
So Many Features
Garmin continues to improve on what it does best, which is track fitness. The Vivoactive 4 series, which includes the 45mm Vivoactive 4 and the 40mm Vivoactive 4s from Buydig.com, has a better combination of features than its predecessor. A ton of fitness improvements have been added to this Garmin watch, including optional all-day Pulse Ox measurements, hydration tracking, new breathing exercises, new custom workouts, on-screen animations, and more. These features add a lot of value and push the Vivoactive 4 to the head of the smartwatch line.
Hardware
As soon as you put the new Garmin smartwatch from Buydig.com on your wrist, you’ll immediately notice the newly added sleek-and-shiny touches on the Garmin watch’s case. The circumference now has a thin casing of metal, and the two side buttons are metal as well. The Vivoactive 4 includes an additional side button for lap, back, and menu access. You’ll be able to navigate the Garmin smartwatch using that side button, the other side button, and the color touchscreen with ease. The Garmin smartwatch display itself is a backlit, transflective memory-in-pixel panel. The Garmin smartwatch face is always visible, and you won’t have trouble reading it while running outside in the sun. The Vivoactive 4 series smartwatch is packed full of fitness-tracking sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope, altimeter, optical heart rate monitor, onboard GPS/Galileo/GLONASS, Pulse Ox, compass, and a thermometer. Both the heart rate monitor and the GPS have been updated with new sensors, making them even more accurate and more efficient than those in previous Garmin wearables. There’s also storage space on the Vivoactive 4s for music, and all Vivoactive 4 smartwatches have onboard music storage as a standard feature.
Vivoactive 4 Music
Garmin has improved its devices significantly over the past year or two when it comes to music storage. Garmin has added support for downloading tracks and playlists from Deezer, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and Amazon Prime Music. Now you can download music to listen to while running without your smartphones.
All-day Pulse Ox
There are a lot of new fitness features on the Vivoactive 4s, but let’s talk about the optional all-day Pulse Ox. The Pulse Ox sensor inside the Vivoactive 4s allows it to measure the level of oxygen in your blood based off of the heart rate and breathing data it collects. Like most consumer wearables on the market today, the Vivoactive 4s isn’t a medical device, but it can capture useful information that you can share with your doctor who can then decide if there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
Custom Workouts and Animations
The Vivoactive 4s tracks a number of workouts including indoor and outdoor running, walking, and cycling, skiing, yoga, Pilates, rowing, elliptical workouts, and more. The strength, cardio, yoga, and Pilates workout profiles now support animations. So when you’re completing a premade workout downloaded from Garmin Connect, you’ll see human animations on the Garmin smartwatch screen showing you how to complete each exercise. Garmin’s smartwatch animations actually look like people, which is a nice change of pace from the colorful stick figures you typically see in workout animations. Animations like these make it easier to do any type of exercise.
Breathwork and More
Garmin expanded its guided breathing exercise feature with the new Breathwork workout profile that’s now included in the Vivoactive 4 workout menu. Garmin has programmed different breathing techniques into the Breathwork workout profile so you can choose to complete a session focusing on tranquility, coherence, or relaxation and focus.
Other Extras
There are a few other software updates to note on the Vivoactive 4s. Garmin added a new health stats widget that shows real-time heart rate, body battery, stress level, and respiration data on the screen. Like all other widgets, you can reorder it in the sequence or remove it entirely. There’s also a new hydration widget that lets you log cups of water you’ve had to drink with just a few taps. Finally, the Vivoactive 4 has the added shortcut that’s accessible by swiping to the right from the Garmin smartwatch face. This is basically a customizable screen where you can program one of your most-used apps, including Garmin Pay, timer, stopwatch, music controls, flashlight, and more.
If you want your wearable to work harder for you, particularly in the health and fitness department, a Garmin smartwatch from the Vivoactive 4 series is the best option.
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