Garmin's Vivofit 2: A modest update to an entry-level fitness tracker

How committed is Garmin to the wearable space? The company is currently selling more than 24 different devices that run the trackable gamut from hiking to flying to golfing.

For its part, the Vivofit 2 is that most populist of wearable technology, the activity tracker. More specifically, it’s a low-end activity tracker designed to compete with the likes of Fitbit andJawbone.

Unveiled alongside a slew of other products at CES back in January, the device is far from the flashiest of the bunch, lacking a number of key amenities like a touchscreen and notifications that many have come to expect from the space.

The budget $130 tracker does, however, bring some key improvements to its predecessor, making for a better rounded — and more competitive — wearable.

Battle of the bands

As with its predecessor, one of the Vivofit 2’s most unsung features is, without question, its modularity. Press your thumb on the display and the whole thing pops right out of the band. Garmin has, naturally, capitalized on this fact by offering up a number of different bands. Lots of them in different colors, sizes, patterns and materials.

The removable face means you can swap bands to your heart’s content.

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It’s a simple, but smart idea that really ought to be the industry standard. When designing a tracker meant to be be worn all day, every day, it’s silly to assume that everyone’s going to want to wear the same band with everything.

Making the bands swappable is a win-win — users get more choice and Garmin cleans up on accessory sales.

Making the bands swappable is a win-win — users get more choice and Garmin cleans up on accessory sales. And speaking of cleaning up — as a regular gym goer with vaguely obsessive compulsive tendencies, I also can’t say enough for a device that can be easily cleaned on the regular.

The default band is black rubber. It’s not the thinnest fitness band we’ve seen, owing mostly to the presence of a screen, but it’s plenty comfortable and sits snugly on the wrist. In fact, it’s actually not at all distracting during sleep — a real issue as anyone who’s ever attempted to wear a smartwatch to bed can confirm. Garmin also added a locking mechanism to the back of of the band, pretty much knocking down the chance that the band accidentally falls off.

The two prongs push through holes in the band and the whole thing locks with a twist. The process was a little tough to master one-handed, and as someone who frequently takes off wrist-worn devices to type, I found myself leaving it unlocked when not exercising. Even then the band is pretty difficult to accidentally knock off.

The small screen

The mere presence of a display gives the Vivofit 2 something of a leg up over some of the similarly priced competition. It’s not a huge one, however. As far as screens go, this one is extremely barebones. It’s a monochrome (save for a single red band) white on black — uninteresting, but extremely readable.

The red bar lets you know when it's time to move.

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It also has no touch functionality. Instead, all interactions with the device are executed with a single button — a nubby little module directly to the right of the screen. Short presses cycle through key information like the time, steps, calories, miles, etc. Holding down the button for a second turns on the backlighting —  a feature the first Vivofit didn't have.

Keep holding the sucker down and it'll cycle through a new set of options to perform tasks like pairing and syncing the device, along with a handy stopwatch timer feature, which, like the backlight, is new.

Motivating factors

By default, the Vivofit 2’s screen shows off the time. If Garmin attempted to fit any more onto a single screen, it almost certainly would prove indecipherable. Tap your way through and you’ll also see the date, mileage, calories burned, steps taken and, my favorite, steps left before hitting your goal (mine was a low 7,354 by default, but this is easily changeable in the app).

The Vivofit 2 is really all about motivation. For those who aren’t compelled to move by the mere act of wearing a fitness tracker, there’s a red bar that grows along the top of the display for every 15 minutes of inactivity per hour — a not so subtle reminder that sitting is the new smoking and will surely be the death of us all.

If you still refuse to get off your butt, the band will send you an audible reminder

If you still refuse to get off your butt, the band will send you an audible reminder, a digital watch-like beep alerting you to your sedentary lifestyle. There’s no haptic feedback here, so that beep is used for a number of different purposes, like alerting you to a successful device pairing. Like many of my heart disease-prone desk dwellers, however, I tend to wear my headphones while working on my computer, so the high register beeps are often lost on me.

It also likely won’t come as a surprise to most that, in spite of the Vivofit 2’s Bluetooth tethering, the device doesn’t actually receive notifications from smart devices. So for email, Twitter, Facebook, etc., you’ll have to keep pulling your phone out of your pocket like a sucker. Granted, the Vivofit 2’s screen makes the Apple Watch look like a 4K TV's, but notifications are a pretty handy feature, letting you check information while still working out.

Long battery life

I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical about the Vivofit 2’s battery situation. (Full disclosure: I took the product out of the box before reading the manual and spent more time than I’d care to admit searching for the charging port.) Turns out the thing runs on two watch batteries. Not only that, but you need a screwdriver to get at them.

Battery life is really long on the Vivofit 2.

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Thing is, there’s a bit of a conundrum with most fitness trackers: If they’re meant to track activity during the day and sleep at night, when, precisely, are you supposed to take the damn things off to charge? What if we had the technology to make a battery last for a year? What’s that you say? The technology has been around forever? Only having to replace the battery once a year or so also makes it that much easier to forgive the device’s limited functionality.

Sensors

The Vivofit 2’s built-in pedometer is quite sensitive. It did a solid job picking up steps not measured by similar devices. This being an entry-level device, it’s probably no surprise that there’s no heart rate monitor — though I give fitness trackers one more generation before the things are standard. The company does have a workaround for the latter — the $170 bundle, which includes a separate heart rate monitor for an additional $40.

The band’s locking mechanism ensures this thing is never falling off.

IMAGE: BRIAN HEATER/MASHABLE

The standalone monitor, which wraps around the wearer’s chest will give you a more accurate read than many wrist-based devices, but the additional price and the general discomfort of wearing a band around your chest during exercise make the whole thing a bit of a hassle.

The device’s sleep tracking is fairly limited, as well, owing, no doubt, to the lack of built-in heart rate and skin temperature monitors. Instead, users have to let the device know when they’re about to hit the hay. In return, it tells you how much you move during the night, rather than attempting to measure REM and deep sleep.

One app to rule them all

Garmin's Connect app

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Sure, Garmin’s got about a zillion different wearables, but all are, fittingly, held together with the Connect app. That means that the company didn’t have to start from scratch here. It already has a fairly robust platform in place, both in terms of a mobile and browser-based software and its existing user community. The company has been able to build a decent-sized proprietary social network by tying all of its devices to Garmin Connect.

The app does a good job cramming in a lot of information

The app does a good job cramming in a lot of information, tracking use over time and serving as a sort of health notebook where users can manually input things like their weight over time. The community element also lets users compete with fellow Garmin owners, both person-to-person and over larger leaderboards. Again, it’s all about the motivation.

Stuck at the starting line

The Vivofit 2 is an entry-level fitness tracker. No more, no less. And at $130, it’s priced on-par with comparable devices with built-in displays — albeit one that is, in this case, fairly lacking.

Garmin seems to make no bones about this fact. After all, the company has wearable devices coming out of its ears. Another $20 will get you the Vivosmart, which features a better looking touchscreen, notifications, vibrating alerts and a slimmer design — and things go up from there.

If, however, you’re looking for a starter device with a robust software offering, you could could do worse. The ability to swap bands and the year-long battery life will prove compelling features for many users, while certain additions like a backlit screen, automatic syncing and an activity time are solid improvements over the last generation.

Garmin Vivofit 2

The Good

Swappable bands in a variety of styles • Good step-tracking • Long battery life

The Bad

Cheap, non-touchscreen display • Limited data-tracking • Minimal sleep-tracking

The Bottom Line

The Garmin Vivofit 2 offers some key improvements over its predecessor, but its entry-level status means a notably limited feature set.

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