Latest news with #Vivoactive6
Android Authority
25-05-2025
- Android Authority
I tested Garmin's newest Smart Wake feature, and I'm just as tired as ever
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority I've been wearing Garmin's Vivoactive 6 for nearly a month, and I love the device's bright display, all-day health and fitness tracking, and improved recovery tools. However, one of its most intriguing new features hasn't quite delivered. In theory, Smart Wake should have me starting each day feeling a little more human, with promises to wake me at the optimal moment in my sleep cycle. In practice, I might as well be using a regular alarm. Would you use a Smart Wake alarm on your wearable? 0 votes Yes, definitely! NaN % No, I am not interested. NaN % Testing Smart Wake on the Vivoactive 6 Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority A perpetual night owl, I was eager to see if Garmin could revamp my morning routine. When I found out how simple setting a Smart Wake alarm was, I thought I was off to a good start. The Vivoactive 6 features a refreshed UI so navigation will be a little different if you're already a Garmin user, but the gist is that you set an alarm as usual and then enable the special treatment. Once I found the main activities page with a press of the top button, I tapped Clocks, Alarms, set up an alarm, and toggled on Smart Wake. This establishes a 30-minute window ahead of the set time during which the watch will trigger an alarm if it senses you're in a light sleep stage. The idea is that you will wake up more refreshed. With Smart Wake, the watch should trigger your alarm at the most ideal time, during your light sleep stage. But that didn't make a difference for me. To give the feature a fair shot, I kept everything else consistent, including my general bedtime. My wake time was identical every morning, and I made no changes to my sleep environment. I ran the test over a few weeks, hoping to notice a difference in how I felt each morning. What I got was a very punctual alarm that went off exactly at the end of the Smart Wake window every single time. Not once did it trigger early, suggesting that I was either never in light sleep or was simply too sleep-deprived to rouse. As for how I felt, groggy as ever. Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority To be fair, that might have less to do with Garmin and more to do with me consistently skimping on sleep. It's worth noting though that sleep stage tracking on wearables, even on devices as data-driven as Garmin's, isn't perfectly accurate. The Vivoactive 6 bases sleep stages on heart rate variability and movement data. While these can project a general sense of a user's sleep stages, it's still an estimation, not a medical-grade readout. They don't perfectly align with my Oura Ring 4, which is typically considered quite accurate. In other words, the watch might think I'm in deep sleep when I'm not, or vice versa, potentially missing opportunities for the Smart Wake to trigger. Rise and shine? More like rise and whine. Sleep stage tracking on wearables is an imperfect science, which limits these smart alarms. Smart Wake should be especially helpful for people constantly running on limited sleep. We need help dragging ourselves back to consciousness. But it seems that short, compressed sleep windows might not give Garmin enough time or variability to work its magic. This highlights a core tension in sleep tech: features designed for ideal conditions often fall flat in real-world use. Anyone trying to squeeze in six hours before a 5 a.m. workout may not see the benefit. Garmin's Smart Wake feature is promising on paper, but the Vivoactive 6 didn't deliver the transformative wake-up experience I was hoping for. I love the silent wrist-based alarm that helps me rise without waking my partner. I love the ability to set my alarm in bed when I'm already comfortably under the sheets and snooze it from the same spot in the morning if I'm not ready to face the day. My hope is that the smart aspect of Smart Wake continues to improve. For now, if your sleep is already on the edge, your watch might not save your day.
WIRED
19-04-2025
- WIRED
Garmin Still Makes the Best Entry-Level Fitness Tracker
Garmin, the maker of our favorite fitness trackers, has several series of entry-level hybrid trackers. Sorting through them can be confusing. The Venu series is the most expensive, the premium tracker with more smartwatch features (full-screen AMOLED, microphone, etc.). The Vivomove series has a hidden display and no onboard GPS. Right in the middle sits the Vivoactive series. The latest Vivoactive 6 has an AMOLED display, about a week of battery life, and of course, access to Garmin's top-of-the-line fitness software. I wrote previously that the $100 Amazfit Active 2 (6/10, WIRED Recommends) made me rethink what a fitness tracker's value proposition should be, and $300 now seems very expensive for an entry-level tracker. However, unlike Amazfit's, Garmin's trackers and software actually work. In an unsurprising turn of events, I tried Garmin's new AI-powered Active Intelligence, and it's the first AI-powered fitness service that provided me with useful insights. So far, Garmin's supremacy remains unvanquished. Photograph: Adrienne So Old Faithful Like all of Garmin's lifestyle lines, the Vivoactive 6 is easy to wear, with a silicone strap, an aluminum bezel, and a light, 42-mm polymer case. It's not actually lighter than my Apple Watch Series 10, but it feels lighter, because it's plastic. The display is a touchscreen AMOLED that I found readable in daylight and responsive to my touch, although it was easy to print the screen with my sunscreen-y fingers. There are two buttons on the side of the case, an activity button and a back button. You can also scroll up and down and tap to get stats and notifications. Garmin touts 11 days of battery life, but with multiple tracked activities per day I got about a week. It uses the Garmin proprietary plug charger, which is more annoying than it should be, given that Garmin introduced wireless charging years ago with the Vivomove Trend (although the company is far from the only one that still relies on its own proprietary chargers instead of wireless charging or USB-C). Screenshots Source: Adrienne So It has onboard satellite connectivity (GPS, Glonass, Galileo, QZSS, and Beidou) to make it incredibly accurate when tracking your outdoor activities, and the usual suite of onboard sensors—heart rate monitor, blood oxygen monitoring (an important consideration if you want to switch from an Apple Watch)—a compass, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a thermometer, and an ambient light sensor. It's also rated for water resistance at 5 ATM, you can track swimming.
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Forbes
Garmin Vivoactive 6 Adds 2 Features Never Seen Before In A Garmin
Garmin Vivoactive 6 Garmin 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. Garmin Vivoactive 6 colors Garmin 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. Garmin Vivoactive 6 heart rate array Garmin 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.
