Monday, January 16, 2017

Garmin Vivoactive HR

Have had the device for 3 weeks (as of 16 Jan 2016) .  Use it for tracking steps, sleep, cycling, swimming, and golf so far.

About me - play golf once a week (sometimes more), swim laps couple times a week, go for casual bike rides on occasion.

In general does what i need it to do.  However if I was serious about keeping track of all my data for analysis then not so good so far as mt data files got corrupted.

Good.
-  Does what I need it to do.


Could be better
-  Takes some getting used to on swiping or pushing a button to get to the screen that you want.
- Does not automatically change time zones (t does after sync).
- Golf tracking

Awful
- Syncing data.    Data on watch, connect mobile app, and connect mobile via web from PC got out of sync.  No way to recover.

Specifics

Data out of sync

Loaded mobile connect app on my iphone, created an account on garmin connect, and paired my device.  was able to see my activities on my app on iphone.  then after a week  accessed & synced my device using garmin express on my PC (usb connection).  Somehow the data got out of sync so what I saw via the garmin connect account via web from PC did not match what was on the garmin connect app on my phone.  no overlapping data.  For example steps for some days on the phone and other days via web access from PC.

What I noticed for golf was when you sync with garmin express the golf data file (xml format) stays on the device.  however when you sync via the connect mobile app on the iphone, the data file gets removed.  As there is limited space on the device (10MB), it makes sense to remove files after sync.  However if it does with one app (iphone) but not with the other (garmin express) then that appears to be the cause oif my issue.

Golf

While you can download all the courses you want from the mobile app, the device only stores 4 courses at a time.  When you get to the golf course, if the course you are playing is not one of the 4 loaded on your device, you need to you need sync.

Does not keep track of which tees you played from and only records score (not putts, FIR, /GIR, etc)

Once you sync with app the xml data file for the round is deleted from the device.  Therefore you need to copy the file before you sync if you want to be able to analyze or edit the data on your own.