The Garmin Vivofit 2 I give the # 1 rating for sleep tracking.
Be sure to check out my review where I put it through the test and you can see my images on the image tab above.
Are You Sleeping And Moving Enough? Reviewing The Improved Vivofit 2 From Garmin
Battery life longer than a year, waterproof up to 50 meters, and subtle reminders to get up and move. These are characters of your newest wearable tracker.
How would you like to own a gadget that allows you to wear it to the shower, swimming pool , the ocean (as long as you do not go deeper than 50 meters) and practically anywhere there is a water body? No, it is not the iPhone 7 because that would need charging after some 20 hours, give or take. This gadget has long battery life so that you do not have to charge it for over a year. It also tracks you sleep to let you know whether you have been getting enough hours of rest as recommended by The National Sleep Foundation . Sounds unbelievable? I thought so too, up until I ran into the new Vivofit 2.
What is this Gadget?
Vivofit 2 is a making of Garmin Limited. It is in the form of a wristband wearable that tracks your steps during the day, the calories burned, and levels of inactivity. It has a subtle reminder that goes off after each hour of inactivity and bars keep building on the screen until you take about 300 steps to clear them. It then resets to itself and repeats this cycle, alerting you of inactivity every 60 minutes. The tracker’s display is visible in daylight and has a backlight to let you see your data at night without the need for light. It shows time too, so it doubles up as a watch.
Incredible features
Easy Design
This tracker fits the same way as a wristband. It clasps well on the hand, and you can use the pegs to fit it as snugly as you wish for comfort. It is light, as it only weighs an ounce, so it is the same weight as your regular watch or lighter. If you want to add some color or coordinate it with your outfits, additional colorful bands are sold separately.
Water Proof For Adventure Lovers
This feature makes this product stand out and stay attractively on the top. It is a fitness tracker, right? It is therefore only fair that you take it wherever your fitness adventures take you. As long as you have no plans of plunging deeper than 50 meters, this tracker will make your miles count. I have been wearing mine to the pool for two months now, and I have not seen any sign of damage. I am yet to take it out to the ocean for test surf, but I am certain it will do fine if the reviews are anything to go by.
Subtle alerts
If you stay inactive for an hour, the tracker hums discreetly to let you know that it is time to move. The alarm is not too loud to distract a meeting. Actually, sometimes you can hardly hear it, especially if you are in a noisy place.
Battery Life Longer Than Some Relationships?
One plus year of battery life is perfect for anyone. You can take this tracker with you on long safaris and not care about charging.
Flaws of the Vivofit 2
Zero Vibration!
Great as the alert option is, it does not vibrate to get you moving. The alarm is quite discreet, so if you are too engrossed in your work, it could fail to rouse you. If the vibration option were added, this tracker would be incomparable.
The App Could Be Better
I like the idea that you can sync your tracker with the IOS or Android app on your phone to view your information from your mobile device. What I do not like is the simplicity of the app. Do not get me wrong; simplicity is great, but Garmin should be inspired by the competition to make their app more informative on fitness options. After all, this is a fitness app.
Step-Happy Counter
The step count from my Vivofit 2 is a tad ridiculous. I make gestures while driving and it counts that as an activity. I dance in my seat as I wait for traffic to ease on the intersection and it counts those moves as steps. Well, they could count for physical activities, but I wish it only focused on counting actual steps.
In Conclusion
Vivofit 2 automatically sets itself to sleep mode to capture the time that you went to bed and when you woke up. I find this to be very useful as I always forget to set it to sleep mode. With the original Vivofit, you had to set it manually from Garmin Connect so that you could capture the levels of activity during sleep. If you forgot, it would not read accurately. Now I don’t have to do that anymore, which I learned three days ago when (as usual) I did not turn sleep mode on, but my tracker still set my sleeping time to 9:48 Pm sleeping and 5:13 Am waking, This is fairly accurate. This feature really does it for me.
The overall performance of the new Vivofit 2 is incredible. I love the fact that its shows time and that I can set my default screen to act as a watch so that I do not have to look at my cell phone for the time anymore. It weighs an ounce, so how much of baggage could that be? The reminder after one hour of inactivity is probably the reason that everyone who sits at a desk all day should get this device. If I were to talk about the waterproof aspect and long battery life once again, there would be no enough space in this review.
If You Snooze….
My favorite part, which I will emphasize because we do not pay it as much attention as we should, is the sleep tracking property. Vivofit 2 tracks the movement you made when you slept to tell you the quality of your sleep. In some way, I have found that this information moves me to seek solutions for better sleep, which have worked. I endeavor to get at least 8 hours of sleep for good health, and my tracker lets me know whether I have achieved this goal. I, however, think that this feature could be improved to include the time it took to fall asleep (because what we have now shows the time you got in bed). That aside, I recommend Vivofit 2 tracker to anyone who wants to improve the quality of their lives.