Garmin Vivoactive HR - £209
The Vivoactive HR (VAHR from now on) is part of Garmin’s ever increasing range of activity trackers and, straight from the box, it promises to help track your SUP adventures and training.
There are any number of in depth reviews available on various websites (check DCRainmaker for a very detailed review here) but, to date none have looked at how the VAHR can be used to monitor SUP. |
| The Garmin Vivoactive HR comes ready for SUP |
The
Vivo active is described by Garmin as a GPS smartwatch with built in optical heart rate monitor. Garmin say it will run for up to 8 days when used
purely as a watch and for up to 13 hours when used as a GPS device. Here's the Garmin promo video;
In
use I’ve had 4 – 5 days per charge with a mix of watch and GPS enabled activity,
usually SUP. Charged one evening it went through 4 days with 4, 2 hour
long 10 km+ paddles and was still at 25% charge. Charging is done via USB and a
cradle that can also be used to synch with desktop PC and charging time is
impressively short.
It
is a very easy gadget to use, the user interface is well thought out which is
good as there’s minimal documentation in the box. To get the most from it you’ll
need to get the Garmin app running on your smartphone and pair them using Bluetooth,
in this case an iPhone 6. As a paired smartwatch it performs as expected with
notifications and messages are clearly displayed on screen, handy if that’s a
requirement. There is no functionality to respond to notifications but it is
handy if you’re on the water and someone needs to get hold of you and your
phone is in a drybag.
The
unit has a minimalist look and feel with a rectangular touch screen and two
buttons, on the left is a back button and the right a menu button which is how
activities are accessed. A short press brings up a list of activities and a
long press the setting menus. There are a host of other clever features that are
covered in other reviews so for brevity we’ll get straight to SUP.
SUP Tracking and Data
One
short press and a list of activities is displayed, as I’m not a runner then
I’ve customized the default list so that SUP is first, with the default list
scroll down a little and there it is. Touch the SUP icon and the first data
screen will be displayed, at the top of this the GPS icon will pop up in red,
once that turns green you’re good to go by pressing the right button again. GPS
lock is fast enough, a lot quicker than the elderly Foreruner 310XT (FR310XT) that I have
used alongside it but apparently slower than some other similar devices. When
an activity is started the heart rate sensor will lock on in order to get
better data, more on that later.
By
default all activities can have up to three screens of data displayed, each of
these can have three data fields and is fully customizable. There are 9
categories available including Time, Distance, Pace, Speed, Heart Rate,
Cadence, Temperature, Elevation and one more for things that didn’t fit
elsewhere, for example calories. Each
category has up to 11 data items to chose from, enough to keep any data geek
happy. I’ve set it up with all three screens active on a medium scroll so that
all three are shown automatically in turn, the options I went with are;
Screen 1 – Timer, Distance and
Time of Day
Screen 2 – Strokes, Distance Per
Stroke and Pace
Screen 3 – Heart Rate, HR Zone and
Average HR
I
am likely to change those over time to show different stroke data but initially
these are the ones I’m most interested in.
I’ve also set it up to record a lap every 1km and to give me an alert
every 5km. Changing settings is so intuitive that it’s easy to change on the
water, the touch screen reacts even with a wet hand although it will not work
in the water.
To
record a paddle simply press the right button, touch the SUP icon and once
you’ve got a GPS lock press the right button again then when you’re done press
the right button again and chose to save the activity. On the water you can use
the left button to manually record laps, this works well for recording
intervals.
The
display is very clear and a simple flick of the wrist when paddling is enough
to see data on screen.
Data.
When
you’ve paddled fire up the Garmin app on your phone and the two will quickly
synch, a process that so far has been incident free and much more convenient
than using an ANT+ stick with the older, not Bluetooth enabled, FR301XT. The app
itself is free, easy to use and presents you with more data than you could
shake a data stick at. Again that’s reviewed in depth elsewhere so lets get
straight to SUP performance.
I’ve
split the data collected into three categories, GPS, Heart Rate and Stroke Data. All the graphs below are screen grabs from Garmin Connect and are clickable, use the back button to get back to the text.
GPS Data
Pretty much any modern GPS enabled device will track an activity well enough for most people and the VAHR is no exception, when used alongside other devices the data collected was so close to them that differences were statistically insignificant, in many cases the VAHR was exactly the same as the FR310XT.
Heart Rate Data
The
Elevate sensor works well for the all day activity tracking side of things, the
watch should be snug on your wrist for it to work when used simply as an
activity tracker. In my experience when paddling the HR data from the Elevate sensor is not as reliable as that obtained from a HR chest strap regardless of how tight the wrist strap is, maybe the wrist moves too much when paddling? Luckily Garmin have made it a very simple task to pair a HR strap with the VAHR, sadly it will
not yet pair with the waterproof straps available.
Below
are two sets of data from the same paddle; the first the VAHR, the second from the FR310XT mounted on my board
paired with a Garmin HR Strap. You can
see that the pace data for both units is very similar but the HR data is way
off.
Garmin
Vivoactive HR Pace with optical HR.
Garmin
FR310XT Pace with HR chest strap
When the VAHR is paired with a chest strap the quality of data improves considerably but still not as good as the older FR310XT.
 |
| Garmin Vivoactive HR with HR chest strap |
The
data provided by the optical sensor is not good enough for any analysis, best to pair the VAHR with a HR chest
strap and get better data for workouts.
Stroke Data.
Garmin
and others have done a lot of work with their algorithms to work out ‘rate’
data for activities where a watch on one wrist will miss half of the action.
And the VAHR does a pretty good job of indicating your stroke data. It is
unlikely to stand up to scientific analysis but for an average paddler wanting
to improve their stroke it will be useful.
The
data shown below is from the same paddle as the two graphs above, Pace (grey
solid trace) with stroke rate (orange line) and distance per stroke (blue
dots).
Garmin
Vivoactive HR Pace, Stroke Rate and Distance Per Stroke.
You
can see that the stroke rate closely follows the pace (phew) and that distance
per stroke follows a similar path, using Garmin Connect those data points can
be analysed and used for trending, a good indicator of any improvement in form
when comparable paddle sessions are compared.
To get a better idea of how accurate the VAHR is I set up a little, unscientific test, start a new paddle activity, do 120 strokes and stop the paddle activity. Then start a new activity, 40 strokes and stop. The results were pretty good, the unit was sensitive enough to pick up that I did 129 strokes for test 1, I hadn't counted kneeling as I cleared the slipway.
The 40 stroke test in open water and already standing was spot on;
The graph charts pace against strokes and distance per stroke and I feel is an accurate reflection of what I was doing, certainly good enough for an average paddler.
To get a better idea of how accurate the VAHR is I set up a little, unscientific test, start a new paddle activity, do 120 strokes and stop the paddle activity. Then start a new activity, 40 strokes and stop. The results were pretty good, the unit was sensitive enough to pick up that I did 129 strokes for test 1, I hadn't counted kneeling as I cleared the slipway.
The 40 stroke test in open water and already standing was spot on;
 |
| Garmin Vivoactive HR 40 stroke test |
Summary
The
VAHR is a good looking, simple to use activity tracker with decent battery life
considering the functions it has. For daily step counting, calorie counting etc
it’s very good. For SUP it is a useful training tool for a paddler that is looking for a way
to measure their effort and collect meaningful data when paired a HR chest strap. It will not be as good as a more expensive and more
complicate dedicated stroke counter but for most paddlers it will give data
that can be used to improve their efficiency on the water. The most important
thing about the data collected is that it is consistent paddle to paddle,
consistent data leads to better data analysis and ultimately improvement.