profile/ACtivity

Even if your watch does not support Hike or HIIT activities, you can record them as Walk, resp. Cardio, and change the activity type, after saving, in Garmin Connect. There is no difference in the data you get - the activity type has no impact on the metrics like Calories, pace, duration, etc.

I cannot start HIIT trainins on my watch, and since it makes no difference in the data, why not let me choose in the first place. Maybe to make me buy a more expensive watch. I dont understand this policy, but still thanks for the answer

The Vivo line was designed intentionally simple, because not everyone likes or can handle complicated watches with hundreds of options, like the more advanced models. A lot of people prefer it simple and easy.

BTW, you can install a free Connect IQ app for starting any activity type you want - like for example the Any Activity | Garmin Connect IQ There are also app specifically for Hike and HIIT in the CIQ store, so the choice is wide.

The policy is simple. Marketing.

Why would any company put every single feature on every model (of anything) ? They are in business to sell and make money.

Same for car companies, if you buy a lower priced car do you expect the same features as their top-of-the line models?

thanks for your top of the notch answers. I will sell the garmin and get a polar again :( I didn´t buy it myself in the first place, it was a gift. This thread can be closed. 

Having HIIT and Hike sport profiles on Vivoactive (or any other watch) does not make it more complicated in any way. 

Garmin is pushing marketing for its watches as for active individuals and sportsmen, but still chooses to treat HIIT, Hike and similar sports as some kind of elite sports that only some of their watches can have. This is just dumb marketing decision which causes confusion because users find out that fact only after buying the watch.

Using CIQ apps drains battery so it is not good solution. 

In any case, there are more and more smartwatches of all kinds and all brands coming out that do not have limitations in sports that they can register, and that will push Garmin to reconsider its "sport limitation for its watches" strategy. The sooner they do it, the better their watches will sell.

I fully understand you and support your point of view that all Garmin watches should have such commonly used sports.

Garmin cannot give you answer because they have obsolete marketing strategy and they just try to push user to buy more expensive watch. If that was done elegantly, it may have been fruitful for them, but in this day and age, it is just causing negative user reviews. 

For Vivo 4, I suggest you use Walk and than change it to Hike in Garmin Connect after syncing the activity.

Vizi said:

Using CIQ apps drains battery so it is not good solution.

No, it does not. Only certain watch faces, and certain widgets sometimes trigger higher load, but the waste majority of CIQ apps has low or no impact  on the battery life. I have tested many, and did not find any decreased battery life.

An alternative solution is copying the hike and HIIT fit files from the folder //GARMIN/Sports on a watch of a friend having those sports, and placing them in the same folder on your Vivo.

Yes, it does drain battery. I tried several apps and have same experience - they drain battery significantly faster than when using native sport activity. 

The same goes for almost all watchfaces, not just "certain" ones.

Suggestion for copying Hike activity might be worth a try, but I wonder whether that would actually work - I would imagine Garmin put limitation of some kind on copying activities otherwise users could copy activities from Fenix to Vivo and have much more capable watch.  

I use several CIQ apps and they definitely have no impact on the battery. I do not use CIQ watch faces, so cannot speak for those.

Vizi said:

Suggestion for copying Hike activity might be worth a try, but I wonder whether that would actually work

Yes, it does work, though may not work for every sport definition, and for every watch, but I already tested the transfer of several sport files between non-identical models, and it always worked.