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vivoactive 3 Series I sold my Apple Watch Series 2 to buy a VA 3

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I sold my Apple Watch Series 2 to buy a VA 3

Former Member over 7 years ago

And I am REALLY liking the trade off, so far.
After 5 days with it, and upgrading the app to the Beta version of Connect, I love it.
I was really excited for the potential of the Apple Watch and tried to get into it but ended up hating the form factor of it, hating how you interact with the data, & hating that the screen isn't always on. Oh, and the battery is terrible on the AW.

What I'm NOT liking about the VA3 are:
- No onboard music. Not a dealbreaker, obviously, but it's a loss compared to the Apple watch.
- No manual laps - I still don't get this and really hope it gets added.
- The software/UI is certainly not as advanced as Watch OS.

As a pure smartwatch - yes, the Apple Watch is a league above the VA3. No doubt. You can make and receive calls, respond to texts via dictation - get directions... so much more. But if you are more concerned with having a good device to measure your activity levels & track runs, swims, bikes, crossfit, etc etc - the VA3 is much better. And the battery life has been fantastic. I charged it up once to full on Sunday night and as of Wed I still have 60% left, after doing a 30 min run w/ GPS and a hour long Crossfit workout (with no gps). All with real time monitoring of sleep, heart rate, and stress levels. Really cool.

Hopefully the manual lap thing gets resolved - aside from that I am really enjoying this watch so far.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I was debating on moving to the Apple Watch Series 3 after my VA-HR, and I agree that the VA3 is a way better device (for me). Screen is plenty decent, you get all the fitness features, still get notifications and an okay assortment of apps, better form factor, and battery life is literally 7x better than Apple lol.

Garmin will likely work on a solution to the lap reset question btw.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Yeah I'm really hoping they come up with a method for flagging manual laps. I read somewhere else someone essentially stumbled across the fact that when you're in a workout, pressing the stop/start button functions effectively like a manual lap but that only works while doing a "workout."

I'm really liking the battery life difference. The AW is basically not usable (to me, anyway) with the current battery life. Especially if you're planning on using it for workouts, runs, rides, sleep tracking, etc... Also, honestly, I just HATED how they gated the data. Even using the Strava app, which you basically HAVE to, you have so little control over what fields you can use.

I sold my Apple Watch on Craigslist - took me a couple weeks to find a buyer and he said he's buying it because he's training for a triathlon... It was really hard for me to not try and talk him out of it. I took his $250 and picked up a VA3 on the way home.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I'm not even sure how one would train for a tri with an Apple Watch lol. Oh well, at least you made out alright :D

0 R_Tellis over 7 years ago

His transitions are going to be really long.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Haha - yeah I was trying to pull in $300 for it but couldn't get any offers anywhere near it. Then the new one was announced - with the non-LTE version at $330, I knew I had no chance so dropped down to $250 and was lucky to stumble across this guy. I kind of feel guilty about it but oh well. Caveat emptor.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I used the Apple watch and had high expectations for it. Like with all Apple products. I don't know what's happening with Apple but in less than a year I'm from all Apple products to none (even switched to the note 8).

I changed my Apple watch for the activeHR and loved it. I did miss the display and some of the looks but in the.end it's about usability. With active 3 is a lot better and I think a huge competitor to the Apple watch.

Apple watch is for people that love a flashy always black watch with notifications and apps. The active series is for people that like an insight into their health and live.

It's still ridiculous Apple doesn't do sleep for example natively. Everything is magical and amazing but in the mean time they are overhault on all areas I'm afraid

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

^ Kind of comical as I decided against upgrading to the Apple Watch series 3 and dropped my iPhone 7 Plus in favor of the Note 8.

I'll tell you exactly what's happening with Apple, they're making odd decisions on the software and they aren't innovating at all. They have always been slow to adopt brand new tech that they havent developed in house, but after Jobs died that got 10x worse. Then, when we finally see some innovation (iPhone X), they make all these odd compromises and want to charge a crazy amount of money.

I used iPhones for 7.5 years and switched; that was not an easy decision and I was pretty deep into the Apple ecosystem.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Exactly my feelings. Apple is to much telling us we have to get used to their quircks. No more ports and card reader, a notch and low lightoutput, a image further that has no support yet and ridiculous pricing.

Oh and to boot an Apple TV that doesn't support YT 4k and forces you (again) to watch everything on 4k hdr which messes up color spaces and accuracy in grayscale and gamma.

I owned almost all Apple great and now nothing. And I'm not the only one.

Btw if you like go to youtube.com/FrankDoorhof. I recently did a video on android and the note. Plus if you dive back I also talked about the laptops etc.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I'll check it out right now. plus, gives me something to do on lunch haha.

0 ScottJohnson28 over 7 years ago

Funny I read this post because I'm currently doing the same thing. Selling my Series 2 Stainless Steel Apple Watch and just bought the Vivoactive 3. I'm a runner and have been using the Forerunner 235 for the past couple of years, but used the Apple watch for everyday wear. I never liked not having all of my running stats that you aren't given by only using the Apple watch and I really like the stats from Garmin Connect. So far, I really love the Vivoactive 3 so goodbye Apple watch series 2 and hello several hundred dollars! :-)