Garmin wants you to know it has a watch for whatever kind of active lifestyle enthusiast you are.
At least, that’s the impression I was left with after attending the media launch for their new smartwatches: the Venu, the Vivoactive 4, and the Vivomove 3.
From the press release:
With GPS, Elevate wrist-based heart rate, and over 20 built-in indoor and outdoor sports apps including Pilates, yoga, running, pool swimming, golf and more, Venu, Vivomove 3 and Vivoactive 4 are packed with features to keep up with a varied and active lifestyle. Need to take a breather or boost mindfulness? The Venu and Vivoactive 4 offer new structured breathwork activities designed to promote focus and relaxation.
The latest smartwatches boasts the broadest range of 24/7 health monitoring features available in the market, including advanced sleep with Pulse Ox, new respiration tracking, abnormal heartrate alerts, menstrual cycle tracking, stress tracking with relax reminders, new hydration tracking, new breathwork activities and more. Innovative Body Battery energy monitoring lets users check energy levels at any given moment, which can help with scheduling workouts, rest times and sleep. Using a combination of data gathered from stress, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep and activity, a higher Body Battery indicates the time is optimal to be active whereas a lower number suggests rest is in order.
When it’s time to wind down, advanced sleep monitoring estimates light, deep and REM stages of sleep. New respiration tracking measures the number of breaths per minute, and Pulse Ox gauges blood oxygen saturation levels. Together, this data can illustrate the sleep quality. Upon awakening, users can review their sleep stats in Garmin Connect to see whether they are getting the quality sleep they need to feel rested and recharged the next day.
The newest additions provide all-day connection and convenience with a host of smart features including:
- Notifications: Receive smart notifications for incoming calls, text messages, social media updates, calendar reminders and more. Android users can reply to text messages from the device.
- Music: Download songs or playlists, including those from third-party music services like Spotify right to the Venu and Vivoactive 4.
- Safety and tracking: Incident detection (during select activities) and assistance send real-time location to emergency contacts.
- Personalization: Choose from a variety of gorgeous live watch faces, apps and widgets from the Garmin Connect IQ store app. Users can even upload their own photos and turn them into watch faces.
- Compatibility: Use the latest smartwatches with almost any smartphone (compatible with Android and Apple devices).
While there is some overlap in function with the Garmin Forerunner series (featured previously), these smartwatches have sleek designs that fit in at the office as well as when you’re working out. They help you monitor your health to ensure your fitness is improving and you’re also getting the recovery you need. They also facilitate convenience and connectivity with seamless compatibility with most smartphones.
If you consider yourself a stylish young professional living an active lifestyle in the city (goes to the gym, but equally runs, swims, and cycles for fitness), you may be the target market for this range of smartwatches.
Garmin Venu and Vivoactive 4
Venu is Garmin’s first smartwatch with an AMOLED display, so it’s like having the clarity of a smartphone display on your wrist. This helps when you use its 40 built-in animated workouts demonstrating proper form and technique for strength training, cardio, yoga, and Pilates (no more squinting at the screen!).
The Venu is available in three colorways: Black with Slate Hardware, Light Sand with Rose Gold Hardware, and Granite Blue with Silver Hardware. It features a battery life of up to five days in smartwatch mode, and up to six hours in GPS + music mode. It retails for P23,595.
The Vivoactive 4 is all that except larger (45mm) and without the AMOLED display. Due to this, it features a longer battery life in smartwatch mode (eight days!) and retails for slightly lower at P21,595. However, it’s only available in two colorways: Shadow Gray with Silver Hardware, and Black with Slate Hardware.
Both the Venu and the Vivoactive 4 have internal GPS (the runner in me says yay!) and also feature Garmin Pay for NFC payment capabilities (not really useful in the Philippine context yet, but you never know…).
Garmin Vivomove 3
With its hidden touchscreen display behind an analog watch face, the Vivomove 3 looks like a regular wristwatch — until you twitch your wrist and bring the display to life. The watch hands move out of the way to display several different screens you can swipe through. When you’re done, put your wrist down and the watch hands move back into displaying time.
They call the Vivomove 3 a “hybrid smartwatch” because of this. It’s a health and fitness tracker coupled with smartwatch capabilities like synced notifications via Bluetooth from your smartphone (SMS, social media updates, email, calendar reminders, and more). Unlike the Venu and the Vivoactive 4, the Vivomove 3’s ability to track your outdoor running or cycling activities depends on the GPS capability of your phone because it uses “Connected GPS”. However, if you’re more of a gym fitness enthusiast and only run outdoors occasionally, this smartwatch would be pretty full-featured (as well as really, really pretty).
In fact it was so pretty that apparently most of my photos are of the Vivomove 3. LOL.
Available in 44mm, the Vivomove 3 comes with a stainless steel bezel in two colorways: Powder Gray with Silver Hardware and Black with Slate Hardware. It also has a selection of silicone bands you can swap out for to match your outfit or mood. The vívomove series has a battery life of up to five days in smartwatch mode and will keep ticking for an additional week in watch mode. The Vivomove 3 will retail for P16,595.
Garmin is really coming on strong with its latest watch updates. The Venu, Vivoactive 4, and Vivomove 3 are competitively-priced relative to other smartwatches on the market, and their form factor is definitely a plus in my book.
For more information, please visit ph.garmin.com.
Venu and Vivoactive 4 will be available by third week of October 2019. Vivomove 3 will be available by third week of November 2019 at the following retailers:
Garmin Brand Stores (Glorietta 5, SM Megamall, SM MOA, Uptown Bonifacio, Alabang Town Center, SM Aura, SM North EDSA, The Podium, Ayala Malls Vertis North, SM City Pampanga, Shangri-La Plaza, SM City Ceb, SM Lanang, Festive Walk)
Department and Retail Stores (Rustan’s – Makati, Shangri-La Plaza, Ayala Town Center Alabang, Gateway Mall, Cebu; Meridian – Glorietta, Newport Mall; Watch Republic – MOA, Robinson’s Manila; Washington – Shangri-La Plaza, Powerplant Mall; SM Store – MOA, Makati)
Sports Superstores (Olympic Village – Trinoma, Glorietta, Alabang Town Center, Cebu; ROX – Bonifacio High Street, The Bay, The Block, Nuvali; TOBY’S – Flagship BGC, Glorietta; RUNNR – Bonifacio High Street, Trinoma, Alabang Town Center; Chris Sports – Robinson’s Manila, Glorietta; URBAN – Bonifacio High Street, Ayala Vertis North, Ayala 30th, SOLENAD Nuvali)
Online (Kinetic.com.ph)
