Hi,
Great watch, but
This is my first post to the Garmin Forums. I have had a Vivoactive for the past year and the hardware has been absolutely brilliant. It's a brilliant watch in terms of tracking my steps, accurately capturing my heart rate via the chest strap and my distances via the GPS. The battery life is superb. I really appreciate the support for Windows 10 mobile (I am one of those few weirdos with a windows phone). The phone has been ultra reliable and the battery life is still going strong despite me heavily using this watch over the past year, and the watch still looks newish. I look at all the new products coming on the market of late, and to me the Vivoactive is still an excellent watch as I like the accuracy of a chest strap HRM and the GPS and good battery life, so some of the recent products have yet to tempt me (Vivoactive HR, Charge 2, Apple Watch 2).
A few things annoy me however:
(1) There is a lack of transparency in calculations in general and poor explanations in the Garmin Connect software or website;
(2) Downloading your data from the website is unnecessarily difficult (getting Excel to recognise Garmin dates for example is a nightmare of 'IF' statements and character counting formulas) and smells of cynical consumer lock in strategies
(3) I strongly suspect some of the summary data such as active calories is flat out wrong and these are due to some really basic errors.
Problems with 'active calories'
The 3rd issue listed above is really my major bug bear and may prevent me from buying another Garmin device if I can find another company that meets my needs. Let me give an example from yesterday:
My day yesterday:
I walked generally (i.e. not part of a recorded activity; not sure of exact number steps but will infer below)
Recorded activity (1) I recorded a 700m walk with HRM estimated at 21 calories
Recorded activity (2) I ran 4.9km run with HRM; estimated calories 446
Recorded activity (3) I walked 717m with HRM post run (so still elevated heart rate); estimated calories 112
Total number of steps for the day according to Garmin Connect: 10,619, which I think includes my steps embedded in my recorded activities plus my general walking around the house steps).
Total number of 'active calories' from the weekly summary view of active calories in Garmin Connect Windows 10 app version for yesterday: 1178 (same number appears in equivalent page on IOS app on iPad; and also in 'reports' -> 'active calories' on the website)
Total number of 'active calorie' when I click on the individual day in the weekly summary view in Garmin Connect and get the screen which shows 'active' 'resting' & 'total': 599.
Why are these two last numbers different? They should be identical. This is clearly a very obvious bug from some simple calculation error.
The numbers are not different on days when I don't have recorded 'activities'. That is it will calculate active calories from the number of steps I take at roughly 35 steps per active calorie. It will display the same number on the weekly summary screen for active calories on that given day, and when I click on the day, it will give the same number again.
This suggests that the software is double counting the steps when calculating 'active calories' when displayed on one screen (in the weekly summary display) but not double counting on individual 'active' 'resting' & 'total' display for that day.
If I reverse engineer my numbers above:
My average stride when walking is 0.7 metres.
My average stride when running is 1.2 metres.
Total number of steps during my activities then is: 700/0.7+4900/1.2+717/0.7= 6107 steps.
Estimated steps that occurred outside recorded activities = total number of steps - steps embedded in recorded activities = 10619-6107 = 4512 steps outside of recorded activites.
Estimated active calories from steps outside of recorded activities = 4512/35 = 128 calories (assuming 35 steps per active calories, which is what Garmin typically estimates for me)
So my total active calories for the day should be:
Active calories from general walking + active calories from recorded activities = 128 + 21 +446 + 112 = 707 active calories.
The 707 activies calories number that I calculate is much less than the 1178 active calories from the weekly summary page of active calories and a little bit above the 599 active calories from the individual 'active' 'resting' & 'total' screen for that same day.
I get a bit of a clue of the error when I look at the website 'reports' -> 'active calories'. For the day in question it says that I did 446 calories from running and a mysterious 732 calories from walking. When the *** does the 732 calories from walking come from?
These basic calculation numbers are all over the place and unfortunately I cannot trust any of the derived calculations in the Garmin software.
Personally, I would rather a proper Excel export data tool that I can easily just do my own calculations: i.e. steps from non-recorded walking; average heart rate and duration for given activities.
Please tell me that all I need to do is reset my watch or something basic and that no one else gets these same basic errors. As I said the Garmin hardware is awesome. The software interface is ok, although a bit cluttered. However, the simplest and most important bit - the actual derived summary data, just seems wrong and the inability to easily export the data to cross-check is frustrating.
End rant; thank you for bearing with me!!
