Hello, I wanted to make Garmin aware of the litany of issues I experienced with my brand new Vivoactive 4 and my reasons for returning it.
1. Music - Uploading music from Spotify to the watch just doesn't work. I get an error saying the watch can't connect to wifi. I'm not the only one with this problem, a quick look at these forums shows you its common.
2. Garmin Pay - If you live in Canada NONE of the big 5 banks have a credit card that works on Garmin Pay. It's not like these are small, obscure banks. They are all in the top 100 largest banks in the world with 3 of them in the top 50. Also, my credit card works with Google Pay and Apple Pay.
3. GPS Signal - I watched probably every youtube review there is for this watch and read many online reviews, some noted that occasionally the GPS was inaccurate. Mine straight up doesn't get a signal. I tried to start a run last night and it was waiting for a GPS signal for over 40 minutes.
4. Heart rate monitor - The watch is currently laying on my couch which is apparently putting out somewhere between 70-90 beats per minute. I guess I can see how the sensor would be confused when going up against a solid object that isn't my arm....but how is the heart rate of my couch fluctuating?
5. Training programs - I thought Garmin was supposed to be the world's premier fitness wearable company. The absolute highest level the plans are built for is someone who runs 40k(25 miles) a week at a max pace of 7mins/mile. I'm no super athlete, but I'm well beyond that level. You'd think that someone who is throwing down $400 for a running watch probably does more than 40k a week.
6. Watch Faces - These things are absolute garbage. Horribly pixelated with washed out colours. I don't say this as a joke, if you go for an analog watch face it looks like something you'd see on a Nokia flip phone circa 2005.
7. Sleep tracking - You can look at other posts on here about how poor it is. I got a solid 7 hours last night, the watch says I got about 4 with no REM sleep.
8. Incident detection/assistance - This doesn't work unless your phone is nearby and connected. I maybe should have realized this before purchasing as it's not connected to LTE, but one of the main selling points of the watch is that you wont need to bring your phone if you go out and exercise. Why did I shell out $50 bucks for the music version if I have to bring my phone anyway?
Before going to bed last night I was pretty down about the whole experience, now I'm just laughing at how horrible this product is. I can't believe this thing sells for close to $500.
