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So many little things.. on the fence about keeping

Former Member over 7 years ago

I like the Vivoactive 3 and I can deal with certain quirks, but after owning it about a week, I am seeing so many inconsistencies that I may have to return it and see if fit bit is any better.

Stair counting - worked fine for the most part, although an outside walk with elevation changes tracked as stairs. But today, it is showing many stairs down and few up. I live in a 2 story house with a basement. Every down has an up and today 90% of ups are not registering and 50% down are not registering.

Music widget - i don't use it, but this AM it shows the pause button and http:://smile.amazon.com scrolling below ... no music playing on phone.

7-minute workout always uses GPS and running around my 10 x 10 room shows me running between my house and my neighbors - can't i tell the watch to not use GPS for this?

Default watch face stopped updating (time stopped changing), had to power cycle (a few days ago)

No HR recorded after full charge - happened 1 time - but now i have to make sure things are working after every full charge

Also this AM after Garmin was offline last night for updates, connect says it is installing an update, yet the watch still shows 3.5 - what is that about? No reference anywhere.

Connect app seems to want to sync with Garmin site as much as it wants to sync with the watch. I have no friends i want to work out with. I want my watch and app to sync with each other. The website is just convenient for data entry. And now the connect site is down.

And if I create a workout and download it to my watch, why is it no longer in the phone app without syncing the phone app to the web? The watch can save the workout, why can't the phone app? My phone has more memory then the watch.

And finally the backlight - i like the gesture to turn it on, but it happens while i sleep. I either have to disable the feature, or live with it.

What i do like is the auto rep count and pause that is in beta under strength - it seems quite accurate, and I can deal with the watch not always picking the right exercise. But if i do a new workout, there is no way to save that as a predefined workout after it is recorded. And custom workouts i create, don't keep their name - they all show up as "strength when recorded in connect, even though i have back, chest, arms, legs, etc. named workouts.

So for $300 I have a GPS watch that measures heartrate and it has a lot of bugs. Target has a 30 day return policy, and i have no illusions that Garmin will magically fix these things either. Their forum support is not great as it is, but I had to vent.

Maybe it isn't Garmin's fault. All smartwatch forums are full of problems. Maybe the tech is just not reliable yet, or the software developers need to catch up. I am not sure. But as a consumer that is tech geek, it is annoying to get something that has issues daily. I want my tools to work. If my cell phone required daily reboots or had this many issues, I would go back to land line,

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Garmin always seems to have bugs and issues after an initial release of a new device, but they are usually corrected soon with updates. I have no idea what is going on with the VA3. It's been more than 6 months since it hit the market and there are still several problems. I'm sure this post will start getting the "my VA3 works great" replies, but for a lot of people it's been too much for too long. I gave up on mine after 3 1/2 months and I was one who didn't have as many problems that you'll find in this forum. My wife's VA3 works fine for her. Kind of hit or miss. Going elsewhere may be what's best for you .

0 bigdwazda over 7 years ago

To address some of your points.

Indoor elevation via generally flakey and shouldn't be relied on. Outdoor generally works well. Have never had a watch that does good indoors.

The music widget is working fine, it's playing the last thing you were looking at on your phone. It also does this with YouTube as well.

7 minute workout you should be able to. Make a new activity and ensure GPS is off. There was an issue a while back of GPS coming on but I have never experienced it.

The HR thing is odd, I have never had an issue. If it happens again this would be best taken up with Garmin for an exchange.

Updates are not always firmware, they can be all sorts of things. Don't worry about them, you will know when the firmware has updated.

The rep counting is a feature to detect the exercise and will therefore not be programmable. This is in its infancy and detection of exercises is difficult. You could change it after or just use a more friendly phone app to record sets and exercises.

If you set sleep time for the watch and set to do not disturb I'm pretty sure the backlight doesn't come on. But I could be wrong on that one.

As you note these are little things and we all are guilty of building them up to be more than they are. The watch is an approximation of your activity level, it will never be perfect. If it occasionally miss counts stairs does it really matter. Mileage may vary but I doubt most people lose sleep over it ( your Garmin wouldn't tell you as sleep tracking is a joke)

I would be far more concerned with HR issues and time standing still. These may be quirks or a hardware issue.

I'm not intending to be blasé to any of your issues but you confirm they are little gripes. I have little gripes with my wife but I wouldn't leave her over them because the package is great. This watch has issues but overall it does work very well for my usage case. You could say people expect the world of these devices but realistically they have issues.

The decision is yours at the end of the day but I don't think a watch without issue exists. If you move up the Garmin line you may get better battery life or training features but the underlying workings remain the same.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I appreciate the reply, but I am not complaining about things not working so much as i am complaining about inconsistency.

Things should not work well one day and break a few days later, and then get fixed via reboot or not at all.

The media player showing an amazon URL? That makes no sense. I have had the watch for a week, and looked at many things on my phone and the music controls were always blank. Why now does it show it is playing an amazon home page with no media? Not looking for an answer, just pointing out overall strangeness.

I am not looking for exact count of anything. But one day it recorded the 20 times i climbed stairs in my house, the next it doesn't no matter what i do. Again, lack of consistency makes it worse then overall inaccuracy. Same with HR after charging and watch face (i have seen other reports of both).

I am on many other forums, and I am usually the one that says "it works fine for me", but those people are usually complaining after installing all kinds of software and changing things. I have 3 more weeks to evaluate before my return period is up, so I will see if things get better. I may try a hard reset, but I really shouldn't have to do that after a only week.

0 bigdwazda over 7 years ago

No worries, I think most are explainable is what I was trying to get at. The Amazon URL is definitely due to the last media player used. Could have been a web page video. For some reason they took away the ability to choose the media player. The amount of times I get in the car and it shows a YouTube video title.

As advised indoor stair counts are pointless in my opinion, they should drop it from the spec as it never works well. Do a quick Google search and you will see.

I would see how it goes and send it back if it's not doing what you want. No point in keeping something that should make you happy but annoys you instead.

I hope it all goes well

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

The decision is yours at the end of the day but I don't think a watch without issue exists. If you move up the Garmin line you may get better battery life or training features but the underlying workings remain the same.

This is not necessarily true. As I said, I believe it's hit or miss. Mine and my wife's VA3 were purchased at the same store a month apart. She hasn't had problems with hers, yet I did and they weren't user related such as HR readings due to the way we wear our devices. Mine was with external sensors, the altimeter and randomly restarting before it finally "bricked". I decided to try the FR935 right after the new year and I haven't had a single problem.

0 bigdwazda over 7 years ago

Again I was referring generally to the comments of the poster as opposed to individual use. I'm in the same boat as your wife with no issues but don't doubt others do.
looking at the 935 forums there are GPS, battery, altimeter, HR issues a plenty.

So I guess in wrap up I'm agreeing and disagreeing at the same time.

0 Thevoid over 7 years ago

I'm on the whole happy with my VA3 but the HR issues not getting remedied are niggling at me to return mine, also I'd have thought the gesture backlight disabled during sleep a no brainer, maybe something to suggest to the support dept.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I'm agreeing and disagreeing at the same time.

I may have misunderstood you. I thought you were implying that the problems would follow the OP across all devices regardless of what Garmin device they decided to go with. I was saying that all the different devices have problems, but not every device in that model will have them.