Page 48 - 2017 AMA Winter

Garmin Vivo Active HR
Reviewed by Sean Mackey
For many years my go to watch for exercise and outdoor activities has been the Suunto Vector. I’ve had
three of them and they have always had exactly what I have wanted. This has mainly consisted of a large clear face that is easy to read and an altimeter function that is simple to work even with thick winter gloves. My move over to the Garmin Vivoactive HR was partly for a change and to see what other Garmin watch owners were raving about. I have been impressed.
Straight out of the box its felt like a step up from my old suunto, whose design hasn’t changed much in the past decade or so, with easy to navigate features and a slim-line, light weight design. Standard attributes such as stop watch, waterproof to 50m and backlights can be personalised via its intuitive program as it interacts with other devices via Bluetooth. It has a battery life of around ten days before needing a single hours recharge, which I thought would annoy me as a limitation, but hasn’t so far. However, if I had little or no access
to a charging point while on expedition or in a remote location the whole system would fall down and I’d be wearing an expensive bracelet.
The built in training apps allows you to track your running, cycling and strength training (to name a few) and analyse your performance against your heart rate, once registered online against others too. While this might not appeal to every outdoor enthusiast its does mitigate the need for other training watches and allows to you work or train in a heart rate zone.
The built in GPS will track your walk or run and overlay them onto a map either on your phone, computer or tablet. This is in itself useful but with a simple download it will display a ten figure grid reference of your location in a variety of formats (Lat/Long, BNG or MGRS grid for example) on your watch face and another similar download will display your altitude. As suunto owners are aware the altimeter function on their watches works off atmospheric pressure
via a built in barometer. As you ascend a slope the pressure will change and you’ll have to keep updating your precise height from a map every so often to keep the watch calibrated. The vivoactive HR doesn’t have a barometer and therefore this isn’t an issue as the altitude is taken from the GPS and not the air pressure around them. While this does make the altitude function much more user friendly the Garmin’s lack of a barometer means you’ll rely on weather reports or a separate barometer for sudden storms or weather changes.
Overall, I would recommend the vivoactive HR as a basic GPS and training watch. It doesn’t have all the functions of a complete outdoor watch but its 80% there. If I wanted more features and better training analysis (and I had the money) I would go for a Garmin Fenix 5 or if I didn’t want to be charging the watch every 10 days I would stick with a Suunto.
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