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2 annoying things on Vivoactive 4s

We bought my wife a VA4s. (I am the techy husband so I am setting stuff up and testing things out)

I have already found 2 things that annoy me: (even though we've had the watch for like 24 hours only)

1. When you pause an activity, you can save or discard it. So far OK. But if you do not react, it will be autosaved after about 5 minutes. This sucks. What if you do a bike daytrip, stop to eat? Recording will be stopped. Boom. (Maybe autopause will help this but sometimes that can be annoying too)
Also related to this, other watches have the Save for later option - not happy to see the VA4 does not have it

2. No HIKE by default. Furthermore, if you create a new sport (let's say by copying one of the existing ones) you can call it RUN(2) or Trail run BUT you cannot rename it to whatever you want. 
How crazy is this? If I copy walk it offers to call the copy Dog Walk LOL. How come they could not fit Hike as one of the default sports?

Other than that (and some battery drain I read about) this is a great watch right between the hardcore sport watch and daily wear. 


  • If you want an actual activity for hiking and one you can pause for as long as you like, try Hike2+ : https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/116a5b59-29ae-4397-a70e-907d7e5f8e44

    And there is an option (default is 5 minutes) where the watch will vibrate if you've paused that long, just in case you forget to resume recording when you start moving again.

    Vivoactives, and the lower end forerunners don't have a hike activity.  It's not until you get to a higher end forerunners or a fenix until it's a native activity.

    Even with the limited choice of names, when you clone say the "walk" activity, when uploaded to garmin connect, it will be labeled as a walk.  With Hike2, it will be labeled as a hike.

  • When I pause an activity and know it will be a while before I start again, I turn off the watch without saving or discarding the activity. When I restart my watch, it takes me back to where I was before I turned it off.

    Of course, I can't see the time while the watch is off so, in my case, I rely on my phone for that under those circumstances.

  • Thanks. Yes, I have seen Hike2+ and we'll give it a try. I just see no point having no hike by default. It is like a walk, nothing special. By the way, I found out the VA4 does not have a pause it is rather a STOP with the possibility to continue. Having this auto save really really sucks. 
    You'd expect small or big stops from a regular user rather than a professional one using the Fenix line, so not having pause in Vivo line makes NO SENSE at all. 

  • Thanks for that. This seems to be a radical workaround :) As below, this watch should simply have a pause function for as long as you wish. Did you have experience with auto pause? If that is too long, would the watch act the same saving the activity? (from autopause I'd expect some resume/pause that would avoid auto save)

  • Yes, I do have experience with autopause. I've used it with a number of Garmin devices.

    This is what I found:

    There's a delay of maybe 2 or 3 seconds before my device goes into autopause and a similar number of seconds when I autoresume. Think of it this way: When I cross a typical boulevard, I get just short of halfway across - maybe 4 or 5 steps and it autoresumes. 

    The other thing I have found over the years is autopause and autoresume configured as "when stopped" are often unreliable. There are times when my watch simply would not autoresume when it should have so pressing the stop/start button was the only way to get the counter going again.

    What I find works very well for me is setting autopause to a pace of 30 minutes per mile. Once I go slower than 30 minutes a mile (like when I'm stopped), it autopauses. I've never had autopause / autoresume issues when configured that way. The delay before it autopauses and autoresumes seems be the same as "when stopped" but the difference is it works reliably for me.

  • Fair enough. But would auto pause (configured either way) end up in auto save as it happens with manual pause? Or in auto pause it would not save the activity after x amount of minutes?
    I myself use Polar Vantage M where autopause always annoyingly vibrates on my wrist when we stop, even if we really are not moving so I turned it off. Similar to what you mention about being unreliable. Now, manual pause carries the risk of forgetting to resume :) 

  • It seems to me that when you use autopause, you are not likely to stay in one place. For example, if I ride my bike to my daughter's house, I'll stop the activity but still walk up her sidewalk.

    Actually, i can't really answer your question as I tend to turn off my watch when I'm in a longer pause situation if for no other reason to turn off the battery drain of the gps. 

  • This is why I thought about it as a possible workaround. Autopause/resume toggling back and forth would probably keep the watch alive. (I don't care about the time and tracke being slightly off) We do a lot of hikes often with stops and my wife would explode to see the watch saving the activity before it actually ends. 

  • Ugh I agree with both of those things as a big hiker- so annoying!! 

  • Can you explain how to enable the pause setting on the VA4? When I try to pause an activity with Hike+ it saves a waypoint. Also Auto-Pause seems not to be integrated?