Garmin Small/Medium vivosmart 4 Smart Activity Tracker with Wrist-Based Heart Rate and Fitness Monitoring Tools - Black, 010-01995-00

This was my first smart band watch. I have a Garmin Forerunner 110 running watch, which I was very happy with so wanted to stay with Garmin.Having always worn dress watches for every day, I wanted to first get a small fitness band to see if it would just be a fad and if I would actually wear it, use it and find it comfortable enough to wear while sleeping to monitor sleep.I got the small Vivosmart 4 watch and loved it. I found it comfortable to wear both in the day and night.I like the Garmin Connect app and how it displays the information and find it useful for what I want to track: Steps, sleep, oxygen level (SPO2)As I then saw how useful and informative it was, for further health monitoring reasons (building up exercise after recovering from illness/surgery and monitoring sleep oxygen levels), I decided to progress to a Garmin Vivoactive 4s smart watch (found out these are the big round/square ones). I hadn't wanted to invest in one before knowing if I would wear/use/like it.But I still use the small Vivosmart 4 smart band for when I don't to wear the big smart watch, but still want to monitor steps, etc. e.g. going out for the evening, or if my big smart watch runs out of battery just as I want to go to exercise (have to remember to keep Vivosmart charged). So it still has its purpose and am still very happy with it.

Tracks steps well enough, but when counting flights of stairs it’s not very accurate. Sleep tracking isn’t great either as says I’m in a deep when in fact just trying to get to sleep and not moving. However as I primarily bought this for the step and heart monitor tracking it doesn’t worry me.The app is very good with lots of interesting features and after you have worn the tracker a few months gives you insights into your activities. You earn badges for different accomplishments so can be very motivating.The tracker is nice and slim which is great for me as I have small wrists. Very comfortable to wear both day and when sleeping.

Mum had a much older Garmin which was now on it way out, got this as a replacement as a birthday gift for her. She is very happy with the upgrade from her older version of this device. It's a lot smaller and sleeker compared to last version, and it much more comfortable for her to wear throughout the day.The screen is also brighter, making it easier for her to read the screen during the day. Overall, very good upgrade and perfect for her daily step count and heart rate readings.

When I first got this fitness watch I only had good things to say about it. It seemed to be a very reasonably priced fitness watch with features that you only see in higher end watches. I loved the O2 sats feature (especially in these crazy Covid19 times) and this continued to work. The steps tracking was fine at first but then it stopped recording steps, ie froze on 179 steps for 2 days. I reset watch and problem seemed to be fixed. Within a couple of weeks it did it again. Once again a reset seemed to work, however for the last couple of months (I've owned/used for 6 months in total) it required a reset every other day. When it did reset it often didn't want to reconnect to phone/app and I'd have to try numerous attempts - when it finally did connect it was frustrating as I would have completed the exact same process in same order but for some in unknown reason it would decide to work. I finally stopped bothering to reset and just observed the crazy step counting; despite being active all day, the watch would display random step counts throughout the day, including losing all the steps for the day up to 15 times a day.The sleep tracking seemed to work well but equally was intermittent towards the end.Manual exercise tracking seemed ok, particularly at first (when watch was losing all data several times a day or wouldn't be able to last a 45 minute workout). The automatic exercise detection feature was rubbish even in the first days of ownership. It would often record 10-15 "walks" a day of maybe 1-2 seconds long but it wouldn't recognise any actual walk of 3+ miles.The app and interface on phone was good.Finally, at night the narrow strap would roll as I moved around during sleep and cut off blood supply to my hand - this would account for some worryingly low oxygen saturation levels at night (I thought there was a genuine problem with me at first).On the plus side my husband got so sick of me taking about how annoying the fitness watch was that he bought me a Samsung Galaxy 3 watch which has (so far) been great.

Overall I found it a comfortable and useful little device for the price. The smooth inner surface and slim profile made in relatively unobtrusive even for someone who doesn't wear watches.But over 6 months of use it developed some bubbles/blisters in the strap near the battery that is apparently a very common problem which has been reported by customers for years (although according to the company it's not related to the battery, so not dangerous). But instead of fixing the problem through their production lines, they just keep replacing the devices that customers return...Mine was still within warranty, so I sent it back, great. But in the email they warn that it can take 8-12 weeks for the replacement to arrive, and unfortunately they didn't exaggerate... I'm now in week 7 of waiting and dearly missing my little Garmin :/An unrelated issue was that the little band holding the strap's loose end in place got quite loose itself over the months, so the end of the strap started to catch on things, and I had a feeling the band would have broken in a few more months of use.