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Is VivoActive 4 right for me? Help me decide

4828891
over 4 years ago

I got the VivoActive 4 two days ago and already regret it. Since part of my frustration is the rather minimal documentation, I turn to this forum to find answers to my problems, and ultimately to the question: is the VivoActive 4 right for me? :D

First impression: it's a toy, aimed at couch potatoes that need a serious dose of life-gamification to help them get moving. I paid money so I could deliver my data to Garmin, so they can properly optimize their upsell strategy. That might be an interesting proposition if the watch was free; it's not if I actually paid for it.

Questions:

1) When I'm on an activity, at Garmin determined distances/times the watch buzzes and gives me inspirational messages. Keep going! I'm not a 12 year old, I need nor want the encouragement of a piece of electronics. How do I turn these off? This, alone, is reason for me to return the thing. So incredibly annoying. And when I go for a run tomorrow I want the buzzing to mean i'm over/under the bpm levels i've set. I don't want this nonsense interfering.

2) During the day, generally while in a meeting, the watch buzzes and tells me it's time to move some. See my comment at 1. How do I turn this off?

3) The watch comes with daily goals for Stairs, Steps and Intensity Minutes or some such. Every day I either run, walk, or ride my bike, and when the gyms re-open i'll add fitness to the mix. I couldn't care less about stairs or steps. Unfortunately, in Garmin Connect the Goals section is empty. How do I remove these pre-existing Goals?

4) How do I download the raw data so I can do some analysis of my own?

5) The "reports" section in Connect is fairly useless. I can get average speed over all my activities (utterly useless), or for cycling. But I can't pull up options just for walking. Am I missing something here?

6) How do I convert a route I just walked or cycled into a Course to easily repeat?

7) It collects a bunch of additional data I have no idea of what exactly it tracks. Like stress level and body battery. Where do I turn this nonsense off?

8) According to the watch I went to bed last night at 5:30 and woke up at 8:58. In actually that was 12:15 and 7:45. If it can't even get that right, why would I think it gets things like sleep-mode and breaths/minute right? Why would I believe *any* of the data collected?

Am I just having a bad start with my watch? Am I expecting too much? Is there a better fit for my needs? I'll be grateful for any feedback.

  • +1 over 4 years ago

    https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/vivoactive4_4S/EN-US/GUID-5F584975-CE56-49BF-A039-0E63B3ECF990-homepage.html

    You will not be happy if you buy a watch without familiarizing yourself with the operation. Even without a manual and just browsing through the settings, many questions would have been answered by themselves. The VA4 is not perfect, but it is suitable for targeted training as well as for general everyday activities. I wish you success!

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Sure you can turn off inactivity alerts or notification for your step and stairs goals - although I'm unsure whether you can turn off that tracking at all.

    You can export every activity as a FIT file in Garmin connect (web interface in the upper right corner).

    But let's revert the question: What do you expect that watch should do for you?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to RCLAUSS1

    Hi. I did read the booklet it came with, and an instruction PDF from the Garmin site. And yet, the PDF you linked has much more information! For one thing, it explain disabling the auto-lap and enabling a pauze! So thanks for that link!

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 2b2bff

    Hi. I had 3 things in mind when I bought it:

    • Support while exercising: heartbeat boundaries, timing while running, etc.
    • Analise data to (hopefully) see improvement over time.
    • Day-to-day use as a smartwatch connected with my phone. This was more of an optional extra, I've already given up on this but won't hold that against the VA4.

    With the document RCLAUSS1 provided I hope I'll be able to set it up much better for the 1st. And with a custom walking setup maybe i'll even get the reporting I'm looking for. Otherwise I can at least export the data.

    So things are looking better. Time to spend some quality time with my watch. And for a run ;).