Garmin - vívosmart® 4

I'm a subscriber to the endurance training platform intervals.icu. Every morning, I use a Shortcut to run a questionnaire in which I enter my Vitals heart rate and then a survey of subjective recovery metrics: sleep quality, mood, stress, soreness, motivation, injury, and notes. The only numerical value is my Vitals HR, which represents the early morning, just-before-waking heart rate. This is by far a better predictor of my training readiness and health than any numerical value spat out by any algorithm I've ever tried. It's a much better way to track my long-term health context. I still have a Garmin but I ignore everything except Body Battery, which I actually do think does a great job of capturing my sleep quality and training status. If you listen to top endurance coaches, they don't use any of the numerical, algorithmic values from any devices, other than maybe resting heart rate. What they use is conversations with athletes, questionnaires, and whether the athletes have been adhering to their training schedule.

I'm in the same boat as you. I wish Garmin had a ring or band or something like that. Vivosmart or vivofit are as close as it gets. I actually just ordered a vivosmart yesterday that I'm going to change the band on to something that won't grab the cuff of my dress shirts like silicone. I'm tired of my Fenix ruining the cuffs of my dress shirts and also having a nice watch sitting at home unworn.

I actually ended up getting a vivosmart to wear on R wrist that’s a little more discreet. On non workout days or when the epix is charging I’ll wear it with my mechanicals.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s not perfect, you do have to sync to the Connect app. But if you do it right, your step tracking, health metrics, and sleep metrics should be OK! I would just not recommend the vivosmart for running without your phone since it lacks its own GPS.

I was a big fan but the more training I do the more I realize that it mostly confirms what I already know. If it says I slept poorly and HRV is low, it's probably because I slept poorly and don't feel up for a big workout. At this point I probably don't need it, but I keep it on my wrist anyways. The biggest benefit I've found is that it can help alert you when things are going pear shaped. If you're usually at like a 42 HRV, and it starts dipping consistently, then it may be time to change something or you may be getting sick or something like that. I noticed my spO2 was dropping and my breath rate was up and it turned out that I was in the early stages of pneumonia. Anyways, I use an apple watch and the metrics are fed into coachcat, but I may dabble in athlytic soon. The apple sensors are the best but apple health doesn't really give you actionable info with their home app. Garmin has usually been mediocre for me (735xt and vivosmart bands) while fitbit was actually really good (luxe was a nice compact band).

This is what I do. I have a Garmin Fenix as my sports watch and switch to the Vivosmart when I am wearing my Speedy.

Moonwatch SS and a Garmin vivosmart daily. The vivosmart is small and discrete. It gives me simple notifications, battery life is multi day, and does basic health tracking. Doesn’t feel like I am dual watching. Garmin Fenix 6 when I am exercising or doing something manual. Large readable, light to wear and hardy. No risk of damage for the nice watch.

I have the vivosmart, its sleep tracking is crap. Doesn't the Fenix do sleep tracking as well?

I use the garmin vivosmart to track my resting HR. I can't imagine paying a subscription for that data.

Just to set expectations; I have owned Garmin and Apple Watch as a fitness swimmer who does not do tumble turns. Both are Ok at counting lengths but are often 5% out ( eg measure 19 lengths after 20). Garmin is better than Apple.  If you are swimming at home in a small pool check the minimum pool length the watch can use (eg 10m for an Garmin, no lower limit for Apple). 

I have a Vivosmart 4 too and you can customise what shows on your watch! So you can set it to be steps and make that the first thing you see on it! :) In the top right corner of the app on your phone, click on the picture of your watch, then click it again on the next screen. Next, select Appearance. Change “Home Widet” to Steps. You can also go to just “Widgets” there to choose what other things you want to see on your watch screen, and what order you want to see them in :) Hope this might be helpful!

I wouldn’t feel silly about it - I use the app often and it took me ages to find how to do this even knowing it was there. I think the app is really not designed well, not intuitive at all. But so glad it was helpful! I think it’s such a good tracker and love how small and comfortable it is.

Outside the floors counting, my Vivosmart does it all. It has a screen but you can turn it off unless you press the button, so it stays off