Garmin Vivosmart HR+ review: A brilliant fitness band still worth a look in 2018

Update: The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ remains a very good running wearable that does all the essentials right, however it’s not as good an option as it was in 2016. Why? Well chiefly because at the time GPS was a novelty for £170 – now it’s everywhere… even in wearables that can be had for just over £50 on import. 

Fortunately, the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ has dropped in price to compensate, and you’re looking at a price of around £120ish in 2018. That remains a good deal, but you can possibly find better for the money. The Garmin Forerunner 30, for example, is a great running watch with a bigger screen for notifications, and can routinely be found for under £100. TomTom’s Spark 3 series also offer GPS on the cheap – especially as the company has decided to step away from wearables in future, meaning discounts aplenty. 

Whatever you decide to buy, it’s worth reading up on the best fitness trackers around.

Read the original review below to see why the Vivosmart HR+ remains a solid choice.

Lately I’ve become so used to reviewing fitness trackers that my normal wristwatch barely gets a look-in. I’ve recently put together a list of the best fitness trackers you can buy, and my first act after putting the finishing touches to this review will to be to go in and edit that article.

Why? Because the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ is simply the best fitness tracker I’ve used. While pricey, it’s actually pretty damned competitive for what it offers. With that in mind, I’ll be putting this firmly in the number-one slot on said article in just a few minutes. All hail the king!

How does it earn this glowing endorsement? Read on to find out.

Garmin Vivosmart HR+: Design

There are two schools of design when it comes to wearables in general, but especially fitness trackers. Some manufacturers want their device to stand out, as “an extension of their personality”, and those who want to deliver features without drawing attention to the device doing it.[gallery:2]

The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ subscribes to the latter of these two philosophies, but still manages to look quite stylish in an understated way. The screen – a sharp, monochrome 160 x 68 display – dominates the top of the band, with the rubber strap connecting at exactly the same width to provide the illusion of a single band. Despite this, you can’t sub it out for another, so pick your colour wisely. Our review sample came in black and grey, but you can also go for purple or blue should you wish for something more punchy.

The soft rubber band has a crisscross pattern etched into it, which did attract tiny bits of debris, but these were easily cleaned away. It’s comfortable to wear and, although bulky, the design does a good job of disguising its heft. This is chiefly because the design doesn’t taper away to a thin strap until it’s off the top of the wrist, a slimming effect that other designers should lift wholesale.

In short, it looks a bit like a chubby, rubber Fitbit Alta, but the reasons for its weight gain are justified when you see what the Garmin offers over its svelte rival.

Garmin Vivosmart HR+: Features, performance and battery life

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, though. The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ is competitively priced, but that’s definitely not the same as being cheap. At £170, you need to be pretty sure that you want and need all that it offers. If you do, shop around, and you’ll quickly find there’s nothing else that comes close to matching it for bang-per-buck value.[gallery:3]

So what does it offer? Fitness trackers generally offer steps and sleep for £50-£90 (check), heart-rate monitoring at the £100-120 mark (check), and a built-in GPS sensor at £180-£200. Garmin includes all of these in the Vivosmart HR+.

To get GPS in a £170 wristband – although not 100% necessary in a fitness tracker if you’re happy running with your phone – is a bargain. For comparison, we’ve seen the TomTom Spark Cardio+ (£190) and the Fitbit Surge (£200) offer built-in GPS.

On top of that, the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ offers extras its rivals can’t compete with. It’s so happy getting wet that it lists swimming among the activities it can track, and it’s ANT+ compatible, meaning you can connect it to any number of other running accessories, essentially transforming this low-cost tracker into something much more sophisticated.

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Raw features only get you so far, however. How is it to actually use? Very good indeed. You set off the tracker for specific activities by pressing the small button embedded in the strap, at which point you’re given the option to use the GPS or not.

The Vivosmart achieves satellite lock quickly, and then you’re free to head off on your run, during which you can swipe between screens using the touchscreen, view various stats such as distance traveled, current pace, heart rate and more.

The band will buzz every time you pass a mile or kilometre, and you can set it to warn you if your heart rate gets too high or low. Tapping certain screens gives you more information: for instance, the weather screen will expand to show a five-day forecast, while tapping the heart-rate screen displays a graph that shows your ticker’s performance over the past four hours.[gallery:0]

There are a couple of minor downers I discovered when out and about with the Vivosmart HR+. The first is the lack of physical buttons. Yes, there’s one for beginning and ending exercise sessions, but rain and sweat aren’t friends of touchscreens, meaning its other functions can become uncooperative. This isn’t a deal-breaker by any means, but something to consider.

The second is the remote music-playback control, which is all too easy to activate by mistake, as I found when playing five-a-side on Monday. On returning to defend a corner, I heard the unmistakable sound of my running playlist emanating from the rucksack I’d left behind the goal. Luckily it was the Smashing Pumpkins and not Yakety Sax. You can add or remove screens from the device, so it’s quite simple to just take away music should this prove a problem for you.

The experience is solid, then, but how about the results? I took both the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ and Fitbit Surge out on a short run at the weekend to see how accurately their internal measurements clocked my vitals. They both agreed I’d run 3.93km, slightly different to the trace I plotted on Mapometer, which estimated that my route was 4.3km. The Fitbit said my average heart rate was 137 during the run, while the Garmin thought it was 140. Eerily close.[gallery:5]

The battery life goes on and on and on. It’s so good that I haven’t had to charge it since first getting hold of it last Thursday. Garmin says it will last you five days on a single charge or eight hours if you were to run non-stop with the GPS enabled. That feels about right to me, and should be good enough for anyone but multiple ultramarathon runners.

Garmin Vivosmart HR+: Garmin Connect app

The Garmin Connect app delivers a rabbit warren of options and settings that the serious runner will get terribly excited about. If Fitbit is all about accessibility and fitness for all, Garmin is about the kind of runner who wants to perfect every aspect of his or her performance in order to get that PB when race day comes.[gallery:6]

As a consumer, I’m probably somewhere between those two. I do Park Run every week, but I don’t sweat it too much if I don’t break a record every time (which is just as well, as I seldom do). Still, it’s hard not to be impressed with an app that lets you examine every session down to the most minute detail, all presented with polished screen transitions.

The nice thing about the software is that you can be as active or passive with it as you’d like. You can set it so the Vivosmart will badger you with the pace you should be running at in order to reach your running goals, or you can just let the software adapt to you. Case in point: I only got the band at 3pm on Thursday, so achieved a pitiful number of steps that day. The band picked up on this and told me it was setting a lower target for the next day in order to give me something more achievable. It’s a small thing, but a nice touch.

Garmin Vivosmart HR+: Verdict

The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ is hands down the best fitness tracker I’ve had the pleasure of using. It’s comfortable, looks stylish in an understated way, is practical when out and about, has great stamina and  has an app that number crunchers will love.

The price looks high initially, but when compared with its nearest rivals – the TomTom Spark Cardio+ and Fitbit Surge – it looks great value, delivering the best all-round package at a lower price. Whether you really need all the data it provides is debatable, and GPS should be considered a luxury for anyone who takes their phone with them everywhere, but it’s a luxury worth having.

The Garmin Vivosmart HR+, for me, is the perfect pay-off between price and features, and if I had a £200 budget to buy a fitness tracker tomorrow, this is what I’d get. It’s the best there is, no question.