Garmin Vivofit is a fitness band being sold by Flipkart for Rs 9990

The Garmin Vivofit which is claimed by its maker to keep track of its user’s pulse, steps and calorie intake throughout the day has made its way into India exclusively through Flipkart. And this smart device isn’t affordable by any means; it has been priced by its makers at nothing less than Rs 9990.



It’s actually a pretty small gadget with a curved display which is placed inside a wrist band that can be of many different colors. It bears an extremely basic display and does not feature a rechargeable battery. The product runs on user-replaceable batteries that need to be changed after around one year to keep it going.

Apart from showing you time and date, the Vivofit fitness band from Garmin provides you with useful information like steps taken, calories burnt, distance traveled and more. This device is capable of setting personal daily goals for you and reminding you about them as well.

This always-on wrist band can sync with your Android and iOS devices via Bluetooth to you you a better lowdown on its recorded data. The Vivofit is water resistant up to 50 meters and bears support for ANT+ heart rate monitors. When you put it on Sleep mode, it counts the number of hours it’s on that mode to analyze your sleep patterns.

The Garmin Vivofit is yet another product which Flipkart has managed to claim exclusivity on. You can head over to the retail website right now if you’re interested in purchasing it at Rs 9990.

Garmin launches Vívofit fitness band at Rs 9,990

Satellite navigation devices company, Garmin has launched Vivofit (veevo-fit) fitness band at Rs 9,990. The band will be exclusively available on e-commerce website Flipkart. It comes in black and slate colours, in both small and large sizes in the box. Customers can also purchase purple, teal and blue colour belts.

The band was initially unveiled during CES 2014, earlier this year.

Vivofit allows users to set a personalized daily goal, track their progress and reminds them to commence activity. The band features an always-on, curved display that shows steps, goal countdown, calories, distance, and time of day.

Vivofit comes with user replaceable batteries that last over one year. The band is water-resistant(50m), and can be connected with ANT+ heart rate monitors to track fitness activities.



Vivofit learns users' current activity level, and then assigns an attainable daily goal. As the users achieve milestones, it adjusts the goal for the next day.

The band follows the users' progress and can stay on for more than a year without a battery change. It can also monitor the quality of rest if the band's sleep mode is turned on before going to sleep.

Users can wirelessly sync Vivofit with Garmin Connect, a free online fitness community with over four billion miles uploaded by users. Users can analyse their progress through reports and graphical representations, including reports for total sleep hours, as well as periods of movement and restful sleep.

Users can also join online challenges with other vivofit users or start their own competitions with friends to compete for virtual badges and bragging rights. Users can access this community from their computer or on their compatible mobile device via the Garmin Connect app.

"Garmin has been providing fitness monitoring devices for over a decade, and with Vivofit we say hello to the fitness band that knows your potential," said Tony An, Sales and Marketing Director, Garmin Corporation. "Being able to monitor the quality of rest after retiring for the night, being challenged by personalized daily goals and doing so without having to charge it every few days, makes vivofit a fitness band that should be on everyone's wrist. 

Garmin swim watch review: a gadget to motivate and measure

'It’s taught me the meaning of a steady length’s swimming and consistent stroke rate.' Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer

THE GOAL

I wanted to improve on my front crawl in preparation for my first triathlon season. My aim was to get off to a speedy start with the swim portion in two sprint distance and one Olympic triathlon events.

A gadget to motivate, measure and remember my swim sessions, in all their glory, would be ideal, as well as somewhere to store them all, online, for analysis later so that I could be sure just how speedily – or how slowly – I was improving.

THE METHOD

No more calculating distance by squinting at the clock: Garmin Swim took the pressure off and put it on in equal measure by doing all this for me. It let me programme the length of the pool I was swimming in, as well as allowing me to pre-set, and time, intervals, and recording my average stroke rate.

It also measured something called "SWOLF" which, despite sounding a bit like an alarming water-borne predator, is an abbreviation for "swim golf", a metric referring to your combined strokes per length and time for that length.

All of that data can be uploaded online via a nifty antennae USB, where swimmers are free to chew and curse over it, as well as share, via the website and forum, Garmin Connect, with like-minded, Garmin-owning friends.

The downside, however, to Garmin Swim's accelerator technology (which essentially measures the movement of your hand), is that if you stop mid-length - which I often do – to splutter, fix goggles or avoid a full-on collision with another swimmer, the watch, understandably, thinks that you've reached the end of the length (just as you have to push off, hard, before it registers that you have started a new one, too).

Oh, and bear in mind, open-water junkies, that because it's more of a calculator than a cartographer, Garmin Swim will never – neither does it market itself as ever doing so – work well in a lake, river or sea (which, as it happens, are the ideal locations of a triathlete's summer swim training).

THE RESULT

It took a while to master and was at times frustrating to be bound to "regular" swimming rather than able to include technique drills in my total distance measured.

If I'd been a swim-medley kind of girl, I might also have worn my fingers down with button-pushing to change inputted stroke (but being an interval training type, I merely wore them down by pressing pause a lot instead). What's more, training "drills" (such as front crawl exercises where just one arm is used, or interval training where you might swim half a length fast, the pause, and slowly complete) will befuddle the watch beyond belief.

"It's designed for the more professional swimmer, so as you get better, so too does the watch," says Garmin spokesman, Simon Gilbert. "The closer to 'Olympic' level you are, the better."

For those like me on the beginner/intermediate cusp, that results in a rather epic Catch 22: you buy the watch to become a better swimmer, but have to become a better swimmer, before the watch really helps you become a better swimmer.

That said, it has taught me the meaning of a steady length's swimming and consistent stroke rate, and, because digits on the screen don't lie, it has motivated me to swim longer each time.