Garmin has announced the new iteration of their vivofit series the vivofit 4. The new iteration is not a significant change from the previous version but new inclusions for smartphone features, timers and alarms, colour display while keeping the 1-year battery life and the price low at $159 RRP makes it a great addition to Garmin's fitness band lineup.

What’s Changed from vivofit 3 to vivofit 4

• 8 colour memory-in-pixel (MIP) display type (Colour display)
• Display resolution increased from 64 x 64 to 88 x 88
• New clock features including a timer and a stopwatch (Nothing major here but it was a minor inconvenience on the vivofit 3)
• Daily smart features for weather, smartphone compatibility and my new favourite watch feature ‘Find my Phone’. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this feature on my vivoactive 3.
• Toe-to-Toe Challenge (Links with both vivofit 4 users and vivofit jr. 2 users)

I’ll state it right here this iteration does not warrant the need to upgrade, while these new features are welcome they do not represent a major game changer. Garmin is not bringing in anything revolutionary with iteration instead they have refined their product offering making it very attractive to audiences who have never owned a fitness band before or a looking to update from a vivofit 2 or earlier generation fitness tracker.

What does it actually do?

At its core, the new vivofit 4 is an activity tracker that is perfect to keep you active and moving throughout the day. It comes with an auto goal system that measures itself against your activity level and assigns a daily step goal. I have a love-hate relationship with this feature as I love that it will raise your goal depending on your performance which is excellent to keep you striding for more, but I hate seeing my target drop if I miss a daily goal.

Another interesting feature that I always like to check out is the Sleep monitoring. It tracks how much total sleep you get and period of movement or restful sleep (This data is not super accurate as it’s just based off the accelerometer which is tied to your movement during the night, but it gives you a good general idea). The watch will also measure your calories burned for the day, distance travelled and intensity minutes (minutes of high activity – this is calculated automatically based on how much you’re moving).

You also have access to Garmin’s TrueUp and Move IQ software which has become a stock standard feature for most Garmin units these days. True Up software just means that no matter what Garmin device you're using if you have an account, all your stats and data will transfer seamlessly between them. The Move IQ software will automatically track and tag 'events' that are longer than 10 minutes as certain types of exercise based on your movement patterns, these profiles include walking, running and cycling.

Vivofit 4 vs Fitbit Alta

I’ll go into depth in this section as to why I'm making this judgement, but from a purely spec-to-spec point of view, the vivofit 4 is better. Regarding features, battery life and price it either matches or outperforms the Fitbit and at a lower price point. Garmin is clearly planning to take the market on entry-level fitness bands.