Garmin vívomove 3S, Hybrid Smartwatch with Real Watch Hands and Hidden Touchscreen Display, Silver with Granite Blue Case and Band, Grey

The heart monitoring has stopped within a week. Despite trying everything it does not work Feels bad to see product going bad within a week.

I missed some of the functions of my Pebble smartwatch, such as counting my steps and logging certain other types of activities. This Garmin model, the Vivomove 3s, is a hybrid; i.e., has mechanical hands that indicate the time, and a hidden dial display to show other types of data, such as scrolling SMS messages

First, let me preface this with I’m not a high tech person. I work with ridiculously high tech stuff on a daily basis, but away from work I want basics. And my primary objective of wearing a watch is to see the time. Not when I tap the screen, shake my wrist, do a dance, or say the right magic word (ie, swear). I want to look at my wrist and see the time, then I can deal with waking it up for the extra features like step count, and maybe important notifications.

I also have tiny child wrists, so most smart watches are not only a pain because they are overkill for what I need, but a literal pain because they rub wrong on my wrist bones and don’t fit right.

My first introduction to the world of smart watches was a Pebble Time Round, and it was love at first wear. Then Pebble went away, my obsolete watch finally died after years of the Rebble apps keeping life going, and I went to a Fitbit Inspire 2. I quickly tired of waking up the screen to see the time, so decided to try the 3s after much research.

I knew the fancy features destroyed the battery life out of the box, so I played around for a few days with the extras, then locked it down to only the bare basics. With just the notifications for texts and calls on and the step counter, I consistently get a week or so of wear between charges, which is great. And, even better, even after the battery dies, the watch still functions as a watch for several more days. Great for business trips when you forget the charger at home. Seriously, what fruit or other company can deliver 7+ days of smart function, and then another 4 or more of telling time?? I’m in love.

I only see two real problems with this watch, which are both very minor. The first is that the hands do not light up, so at night the only way to see the time is to wake up the watch to see the digital readout. The second one is that I was spoiled by the Pebble with that lovely e-ink face. Even in direct sunlight, you could easily read the display. With the silver face of the 3s, sometimes the screen is washed out and it’s tough to see the text. No issues with seeing the hands for time in the sun, just a hiccup in seeing whatever smart thing the watch is telling me. I usually keep the screen brightness set midway to prolong the battery, but it’s still a probem on auto. Not a killer for me, but a slight disappointment for something twice the price of the Pebble.

Garmin tech support is also top notch. I wore my watch continuously for several months, then after one charge the display started dimming as the battery discharged. Called the support number to see if they could help troubleshoot more than the basics online, and found out it was not a known problem. Not only was there no hassle to speak with tech support, rather than even try to troubleshoot the problem, the tech skipped the regular steps of turn it off and turn it back on and went straight to getting it replaced for me when he heard the issue. Printed out the prepaid label they sent me, dropped it at UPS, and about 10 days later I received a brand new watch that was still in the box. I was quite impressed! No refurbished items for Garmin.

Tl;dr if you want a dumb watch with some smart features, buy this watch.

I loved this watch when I first received it. It’s small and lightweight enough that it feels and looks like a normal watch. I feel good wearing it all the time and it doesn’t look like a smartwatch. The way the watch hands move out of the way to show the screen is nifty. And it’s nothing too fancy but had all the functions that I wanted. I don’t need something to communicate with my phone or receive text messages or calendar items; I just wanted something to track my daily activity, heart rate, and sleep.

After having it for a while, though, it’s not living up to expectations. The sleep tracking does not seem very accurate. It regularly records “light sleep” when I am laying awake trying to fall asleep. And it records REM sleep from the time I wake up in the morning until I get out of bed, and sometimes even for 10-20 minutes after I have gotten up and started my day. These quirks make me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the sleep info. I’m not sure what the “body battery” number is based on, but it actually seems like a better indicator of how well I slept the previous night and how I feel that day.

It also bothers me that I can’t see my heart rate when I’m in the middle of an activity, which is the most important piece of information to me. I want to know what heart rate zone I’m in, not how many calories I’ve burned.

Since there are other things I like about the watch and the app is nice, I hope that Garmin addresses these issues in later models.