Garmin Vivoactive 4S GPS Smartwatch, Silver

I have been a Fitbit user for a few years and it just suddenly died on me so I was in the market for a new fitness watch. I like to take gym fitness classes, I teach yoga, and also do martial arts. After looking at 7 different watches I narrowed it down to the Polar Ignite and the Garmin Vivoactive 4s. I bought both and this is my own review. Polar has a $190 price tag, 4-5 day battery life, GPS, VERY accurate heart rate monitoring (that’s what they are known for), in my experience the sleep monitoring was more accurate than the Garmin, but not as user friendly as the Fitbit. The polar has a very bright and clear screen, but like the Fitbit you have to flip the wrist to see it light up. In contrast, the screen is actually harder to see than the Garmin when out in the sun, (say on a run). Polar will give you suggestions for recovery that go with what you did to workout and I thought that was neat. It also has a nightly recharge score (like Garmin’s “body battery”). Cons: it is slow to wake, like the Fitbit. It would occasionally disconnect from my phone, it does not have music downloadable to the watch so you have to have your phone nearby, and the texts that come through are too big so you only see a portion of it. It also does not have menstrual tracking which I found handy on the Fitbit. I ended up returning the Polar and keeping the Garmin vivoactive 4s and here’s why. Garmin may have a higher price tag ($230), and a duller screen. See picture. But many good qualities that after a few weeks of trial made me choose it. It says the battery life is 7 days, but I got 4-5 days. Has GPS (on par with Polar). Has music you can download to the watch so you don’t have to take your phone with you! I did not have any music when using the Fitbit so I didn’t know this was something I would like so much, but it’s awesome. The watch face is 40mm as compared to the Polar’s 43mm. I like a smaller watch. The heart rate was pretty much the same as polar, or within 5bpm. If you look at the picture I have of a run I did you can see how Fitbit did NOT accurately detect when I went from walking to running and the other 2 watches did. Another plus is that the screen is always on. Also not something I had with Fitbit so I didn’t know what I was missing. When doing an activity and you want to quickly know what your heart rate is, Garmin is hands down the best option. The screen will light up more if you touch it, but you can always see the time and anything else you want on your display (I have time, heart rate, date, weather, messages, battery, and steps all on my watch face). Garmin will track your sleep, but it isn’t as detailed or accurate as the Fitbit or polar, but it does have something cool called Pulse Ox that measures your blood oxygen levels (like those clips with a red light they put on your finger at the doctor’s office). This is good to detect any problems you may have while sleeping or even during the day. Garmin does have menstrual tracking and also Garmin Pay. A con would be that Garmin does not add naps into your sleep for the day. It will only track one sleep for the day, not multiple. The display is by far the best over the 3 watches when outside. It’s almost like a kindle screen when you are in the sun. You can change settings so when you are in a workout you won’t get any messages or notifications so they won’t interrupt you (I am someone that will immediately look at my watch when it buzzes so I turned those off when in the middle of a workout). Now if you have been a Fitbit user like I had and switched to one of these watches, the apps are very confusing. Fitbit has by far the most user friendly app. But with a little time, either app will become familiar to you as well. I am not a runner, never have been, but I have turned into a runner because of the Garmin watch. It has a coach setting where you can plug in a goal and it will coach you to get to that goal. I am very competitive so I make sure I am going to get to that goal (a 5k run). It is very satisfying to see your runs displayed on the app and to rate them on how you felt that day. In conclusion, depending on what you are looking for you might choose a different watch than me, but I love my Garmin Vivoactive 4s now.