We are all caught up in making a living day after day, shift on top of shift. Trying to stay on top of things, keep’s us focused on getting our work done. And in a timely fashion. Doing this we sometimes neglect the fact that we need to be active on a regular basis, and we can’t be active while we’re sitting at a desk, pounding a keyboard trying to get that report off. We keep track of the deadlines we are faced with, but usually, we’re NOT keeping track of how much physical activity we do, or don’t do on a daily basis.
We know full well that we need to be physical, each day, every day! It’s important to our living a healthy life. And physical exercise is important as it can also help us with the daily stress that life throws our way too. Today’s technology can provide a helpful nudge in getting us up off of our chairs and moving around as much as we can while we’re at work. Or after work, instead of walking out to that parking lot and getting into our cars, we can choose to walk around that parking lot a few times at lunch, or take our lunch time and walk a few blocks at a good enough pace to increase our heart rates. Getting back to today’s technology, there is a device that’s simple enough, but advanced enough to even remind us to get up and get moving. It’s called the Garmin Vivofit 3 The Vívofit 3 features a red move bar that appears on the display. This is to indicate all your movements. It also indicates inactivity and even offers a friendly reminder to get off your backside and get moving again. After every 1 hour of inactivity your Vívofit®, 3 will notify you with a gentle alert sound, just to keep you on your toes.
This little wrist-based tracker goes a long way in keeping you honest, in promoting a more active lifestyle. The Vívofit 3 comes with Move IQ, which recognizes your activities and changes in your movements using an elliptical. All your activities including walking, running, swimming, biking etc are captured by Vívofit 3. Additionally, you won’t even have to enter changes manually on your watch when you start a new activity. The watch itself knows how you move. You can later access this data in detail on Garmin Connect.
And what is Garmin Connect? It's basically a community of other like-minded fitness people that are able to upload the data of their choice, depending on the devices they have, automatically to the Garmin Connect app. It’s the only online community created specifically for Garmin device users. It’s basically an online training tool that allows you to analyze and share your data once it's uploaded.
Garmin Connect will, after carefully monitoring your activities will deliver consequential and attainable goals to you, recommended just for you. It will also remind you to move if in case you lose track of time and fall behind in meeting your daily goals, this watch will act as your conscious to help you stay active in order to maintain your goals.
Additionally, it includes health tips from experts so that you can have your virtual trainer and coach with you at all times in the form of a watch.
The Garmin Vivosmart 3 is slim, very comfortable to wear, has a built-in heart-rate monitor and is fully waterproof. It's loaded with extra features, including stress-level measurements, VO2 Max readings, and a rep counter. It shows notifications from your phone.
Its heart-monitor capability provides 24 x 7 monitoring and adds new, smarter features while keeping with the slimmer design and hidden display of the original Vivosmart. It's a nice improvement and very comfortable to wear. Like its predecessor, this model is waterproof. It automatically tracks activity, including steps, floors climbed, calories burned, intensity minutes, sleep and more. As part of that 24 x 7 monitoring, the device will measure your heart-rate variability and translate it into a stress level, then prompt you to breathe and relax when that level is elevated. With its ultra-slim design, you get higher-end fitness-tracking tools such as VO2 max and fitness age, all-day stress tracking and a rep-counter when pumping iron, doing pushups or pull-ups.
Battery life is rated at up to 5 days of use between charges, which we confirmed in our testing. As with most fitness trackers, this one comes with a proprietary charging cable (it clamps onto the watch), not a standard Micro-USB cable.
This is the first product in the Garmin Vivo family to estimate VO2 max, a measurable indication of aerobic performance that was previously available only in higher-end Garmin running watches. Your VO2 max score translates into a fitness level, ranging from poor to superior, and it's also used to calculate your fitness age, "a relatable metric that puts a user's fitness level in terms of an age."
Overall, we liked the feel of the Vivosmart 3, particularly its light, slim design, and thought both the touchscreen and the device were pretty responsive. We found it more comfortable to wear than the Fitbit Charge 2 and liked that we didn't have to worry about jumping into the pool or another body of water with the device on. It really is great for wearing all day, every day.
Why not try it for yourselves and see if you agree that this tracker could be just what you or a family member could use to get started on the path to being more active, and in turn, healthier!