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VA3M - First Impressions

Overall, very happy with the new watch. The jury is still out on a couple of items.

the good.
* I love the look and style of the watch and the build quality seems very good
* Battery life is outstanding, especially given the Always On Display.
* There are some excellent watch faces available.
* Interface is intuitive and easy to navigate.
* Android app is top notch.
* phone alert interaction is very good. e.g. from the watch, you can approve microsoft authenticator requests or modify upcoming AMDroid alarms.

questions/suggestions/minor issues.
* navigating the gmail notifications is very laggy when there are more than one or two
* no facility (that I can see) to swipe notifications to dismiss them a la Samsung Fit2. I'd really like to see this added.
* whenever I am more than 2-3 metres away from my phone, I get continual "Phone Connected/Disconnected" messages.
This doesn't seem to affect functionality, but I haven't found a way to disable the annoying alerts.
* I have been unable to pair either of my Philips bluetooth units (shb6100, shb7102).
They are fairly old though, so it probably isn't an issue with newer items.

I'm not using it much yet for activity tracking, so can't really comment on that yet.

Happy to hear of others' experiences or any suggestions if I've overlooked something obvious.

0 Happytoon over 6 years ago

For the annoying Bluetooth phone disconnect alert, this can be easily disabled from the watch:
Long press on the clock to open the menu, then:

Settings -> Phone -> Connected Alert (turn off but tapping on the toggle on the right).

As many, I disabled the alert and have a watchface which display the connection status with an icon instead..

I also really enjoy my VA3M. Good choice!

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I also got mine today and it's certainly a very nice watch. It's my first garmin watch :) One thing I noticed today while getting familiar with garmin's software and ecosystem was that the GPS version only gets updated when the watch gets synced with garmin express from a computer. It actually "downgrades" the GPS version from 4.40 to 2.30, but it's an update that enables galileo! Read more here: https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into...e-version-3-30

cheers

0 Cruiser over 6 years ago

For the annoying Bluetooth phone disconnect alert, this can be easily disabled from the watch:
Long press on the clock to open the menu, then:
Settings -> Phone -> Connected Alert (turn off but tapping on the toggle on the right).
As many, I disabled the alert and have a watchface which display the connection status with an icon instead..
I also really enjoy my VA3M. Good choice!

thanks for the tip, that makes a lot of difference.
a couple of follow up observations.
* that always on display is ridiculously good. coming from a samsung unit where i found myself continually cocking my wrist to try to get it to illuminate, it's a breath of fresh air.
* an easy 5 days normal use (no GPS) is fantastic.
* i'm showing my age, but i engage a lot better with analog displays - Time Flies is the best i've come across. the transparent hands on gesture to see what is underneath them is a master stroke.

0 godolphins over 6 years ago

For the annoying Bluetooth phone disconnect alert, this can be easily disabled from the watch:
Long press on the clock to open the menu, then:

Settings -> Phone -> Connected Alert (turn off but tapping on the toggle on the right).

As many, I disabled the alert and have a watchface which display the connection status with an icon instead..

I did not know about this, but now that I do I will enable because I see serious battery drain when I'm out of phone range.
The alert will be good reminder to turn off BT phone connection and save battery.

Like you guys, I'm happy with the VA3M.
However, I rarely use music feature since I'm rarely without the phone