Garmin has announced the Vivoactive 6, the latest model in one of its most approachable ranges.
The Vivoactive series provides smartwatch-style design but costs less than the popular Venu watches. And it also has two features completely new to Garmin wearables.
It’s the first Garmin watch to have a “smart wake alarm” feature. A similar term is used by other wearables makers to describe alarms that monitor your sleep cycle and attempt to wake you up within a time window, at the point at which you’ll feel most refreshed.
In the Vivoactive 6’s case, the smart wake alarm will wake you up to 30 minutes before the specified time using the watch’s vibration motor. And if you’re still in a deep sleep stage after that window, the watch will wake you up anyway.
This latest model also brings some substantial fitness improvements over the last generation too. My personal favourite, the Garmin Vivoactive 6 offers suggested workouts each day, for runners and cyclists.
I’ve spent months at a time semi-religiously following Garmin’s Suggested Workouts before. They offer a solid route to improvement, while automatically tailoring the suggestions should you get a horrible night (or week) of sleep.
In another neat first, these workouts also extend to walking in the Vivoactive 6. It fits well with the watch’s image as a more easygoing and low-key fitness tracker — a Garmin Fenix 8 it is not.
Still, the Garmin Vivoactive 6 will also spit out running dynamics data following a tracked run, which includes ground contact time, stride length and cadence. These aren’t necessarily figures the average runner needs to spend too much time worrying about. But it shows the Vivoactive 6 is a more serious workout tool than its predecessor.
Garmin has also added “step-by-step” workouts for more gym-like activities including HIIT, yoga, pilates and weight lifting or strength sessions. In these you can set your Vivoactive 6 to guide you through a structured workout, with instructions on how to actually perform each move.
These added features represent a fairly substantial leap forwards for the Vivoactive range.
You won’t be able to appreciate that from a quick glance at the Vivoactive 6 next to its predecessor, though.
The Vivoactive 5 and 6 look pretty similar, and have a Gorilla Glass screen lens, aluminium bezel and Garmin’s classic “polymer” body shell. The Vivoactive 6 is available in four colours: gold, green black and a subtle pink.
It costs $299.99, and will be available to order from April 4.
Vivoactive 6 Features
There are still some important limitations and specs to cover. The Garmin Vivoactive 6 is still less useful for runners than, for example, the Forerunner 165. You can’t send routes to the watch for navigation and, like all Garmins this affordable, downloadable maps aren’t supported despite the reasonable 8GB storage.
This is instead used for music storage. The watch can send tunes to wireless headphones, letting at least some folks leave their phone at home.
Just like the Vivoactive 5, the new watch also lacks a barometric altimeter. This is useful for hiking, and counts the number of flights of stairs (or equivalent climbing) you do each day.
The Vivoactive 6 has a 1.2-inch 390 x 390 pixel OLED screen, and its battery is rated for up to 11 days of use between charges. Or five days if you use the “always on” screen mode.
One other limitation is the Vivoactive 6 has Garmin’s last-generation heart rate array. It lacks additional LEDs to improve results during exercise. And while these are arguably not necessary in a watch that weighs just 36g with strap, this older style also rules out the watch ever getting Garmin’s ECG feature.
This is used to look for signs of atrial fibrillation, although the watch can still inform you of abnormally high or low recorded heart rates.
