Review: Garmin’s Vivoactive HR is more hardcore than Fitbit’s Surge

Garmin makes over 25 different fitness wearables that range from $99 to as high as $699. You can say this for Garmin—confusing as that lineup can be, the company has made a device for everyone.

The goal of its newly released $250 Vivoactive HR is to compete directly with the king of fitness trackers: Fitbit. With the same price and a nearly identical design, the Vivoactive HR and Fitbit's Surge go head-to-head in nearly every respect. By combining smartphone notifications with numerous fitness and sport tracking features, Garmin's new device is also stiff competition for other trackers like the Microsoft Band. The Vivoactive is neither the most expensive nor the cheapest product in Garmin's line, but for hardcore fitness enthusiasts, it could be the one that provides the best value for your money.

Design: Looks familiar

Until now, Garmin's closest match to Fitbit's Surge was the original, slim Vivoactive. The Vivoactive HR not only adds Garmin's Elevate heart rate monitor to the wristband, but it also mimics the design of the Fitbit Surge. A relatively large rectangle sits atop your wrist, featuring the 1.13 by 0.80-inch, 205 x 148-pixel touch display. While you can adjust the display's brightness, the Vivoactive Ars got for review is just too dim for me to read comfortably indoors. It's super clear and bright in the sunlight, making stats and time easy to glance at when you're jogging outside. At the base of the display are two physical buttons, one for bringing up the activity selection menu and one for navigating back on the display.

The silicone band is the same width as the display and closes like a wristwatch. Where the two parts of the band meet the display module, tiny hinges allow the sides of the band to fold down more than they would if they were simply stuck to the ends of the module. These hinges make the design slightly more flexible and comfortable since they allow better range of motion.

On the underside of the Vivoactive HR is the optical heart rate monitor. Garmin claims the device will get up to eight days of battery life even with all-day heart rate monitoring on (which it is by default). That's not bad considering most HR-equipped devices last between five and seven days on a single charge. Mine lost about 50 percent of its battery by the fourth day of use, so it would likely last the whole eight days. When using the onboard GPS, the Vivoactive HR should last 13 hours before needing more juice.

While the Fitbit Surge wasn't the most attractive device when it came out, it's definitely one of the more practical and comfortable fitness watches available. Similarly, Garmin favors function over fashion. You can wear the Vivoactive HR all day and track regular activity, but if you find it too bulky or unattractive, just take it off when you're not working out.

Features: A plethora of activities and sports to track

I was immediately impressed by how many activities the Vivoactive HR can track. Over the past year, Garmin has pushed out software updates that have added activities like stand-up paddle-boarding and rowing to the mix. By default, the activity list includes run, bike, swim, golf, walk, row, stand-up paddle-boarding, ski/board, cross-country ski, run indoor, bike indoor, walk indoor, and row indoor options. You can also add generic strength and cardio categories for other activities, and that helped me immensely when I hopped from machine to machine in the gym.

The Fitbit Surge, by default, automatically recognizes certain activities. The Vivoactive HR has Garmin Move IQ, which does the same thing for running, cycling, and elliptical training. Otherwise you'll have to manually start every workout you do (Move IQ is on by default, but you can turn it off in the Device Settings page). I originally thought you could not manually add workouts later in the app if you forget to record them at the time. However, a Garmin representative told me you can: you must tap the More icon at the bottom right corner of the homepage in the app, the Activity Stats, and then Create Manual Activity. As I'll explain later (below in the App section of the review), the Garmin Connect app can be super confusing to navigate, making it difficult to do simple things like add a workout, and this is just one example of that.

To record a workout, just press the right button below the screen before tapping the activity you want on the display. During the workout, the main display will have a duration timer as well as other stats like distance. Swiping up and down shows you even more details, including heart rate, pace, intervals, and more. You can customize many of these screens so you only see the stats that are most important to you. Also, you can choose to receive vibration alerts when you hit certain milestones, like a specific heart rate level.

Getting information out of the Vivoactive HR is quick. Its default, always-on home screen shows the time, and you can change the watchface whenever you want. You can swipe up and down to see separate pages that show your recorded activities for the day, the number of steps you've taken, miles traveled, and floors climbed, intensity minutes completed, the weather report for the day, a notification dump, and a heart rate graph.

The intensity minutes page shows how much time you've performed vigorous activity, as well as how many more minutes you need to complete to reach 150 minutes of intense activity per week. Because the heart rate monitor is always on, I found myself looking at the heart rate graph a lot. Just swipe to that page to see your current heart rate, as well as your resting heart rate and average low and high measurements. The HRM is pretty accurate, and it remained steady even at elevated beats per minute.

The Vivoactive HR's built-in GPS maps runs and bike rides without a smartphone present, and there's no lag time between starting an activity and starting the GPS. I started recording a walk one afternoon, and I didn't have to wait for the GPS to grab my location. Once I synced my device to Garmin's mobile app, the run with its mapped route appeared in my activities page. Like the Fitbit Surge, the Vivoactive HR doesn't have storage for onboard music, so if you enjoy tunes while you exercise, you still have to bring your phone along with you.

Alongside all those fitness features, the Vivoactive HR receives all of your smartphone's notifications. It's not limited to call and text alerts like the Surge is, but that also means your wrist might vibrate every few minutes with alerts. Unlike most Android Wear watches, there's a notification drawer on the watch so you can go back and reread some alerts if you missed them the first time.

Anyone who is a fitness jack-of-all-trades will appreciate the plethora of sports the Vivoactive HR tracks. I mostly stick to running, walking, and rowing, but because the Vivoactive is water-resistant up to 5ATM, it tracks swimming, too (its competitor, the Fitbit Surge isn't waterproof enough to track swimming). You can connect accessories via ANT+ to the Vivoactive HR to track cycling as well, and you can download golf course maps directly to the device. With skiing, snowboarding, and stand-up paddle-boarding included as well, the device pretty much tracks everything.