GARMIN Vivofit: For a fitter lifestyle

I was in a dilemma. Here I was all set to review the GARMIN Vivofit fitness band (available for Rs 9,990, exclusively on Flipkart), yet had to make a momentous choice: Fitness band on one wrist and watch on opposite wrist; fitness band and watch on same wrist; or just the fitness band.

After certain curious glances with two devices strapped to my wrists on a recent visit to a local mall, I quietly slipped the Vivofit into a pocket. After I walked home that evening (a distance of two km), I found the fitness band had counted my steps short, at 1.6 km. Thus, Vivofit left me with just one option: Junk the watch and wear the fitness band on the wrist.

The grey-on-black LCD screen stays on always and shows the time, while a single button next to it toggles through the time, date, steps walked, steps left to complete the goal for the day, distance covered and calories burnt. Press and hold the button and one gets to the three modes - sync, sleep and pair. I downloaded the GARMIN Connect Mobile app from the Android store on to a Moto E and then switched on the Vivofit. It switched on in pairing mode and paired smoothly over Bluetooth (but within the app). One can either connect to an existing GARMIN account or set up a new one after keying in one's weight, height, gender and other details. When we tried syncing a week later, it took a few attempts to sync the large amount of data. Moral of the story: Sync your data regularly. One can also sync with a computer with the supplied USB ANT stick.

The best thing about the band is it can be worn always: It's light and comfortable to not affect your lifestyle, it can be worn in the shower (the Vivofit is water resistant to a depth of 50 m) and it doesn't need to be charged. Plus, it doubles up as a watch, if you can live with the fact there's no alarm or backlight.

To motivate you to exercise more, you can add your workout buddies in the app. Vivofit has an auto goal feature, meaning, say, one starts with the default goal of 5,000 steps and completes the task, this feature will marginally increase the goal the next day and vice versa.

The display also shows the calories burnt while a 'Move Bar', a red warning bar, pops up if one is stationary for more than an hour, increasing at 15-minute intervals, till it shames you into walking to reset it. A caveat: The Vivofit doesn't come with an altimeter or GPS, so if by climbing stairs you'll burn a lot of calories, this device won't register it. One can also pair it with an optional accessory to monitor your heartbeat.

This device tracks sleep patterns, that is, periods of deep and light sleep, that's all. For that, one can set it to sleep mode before going to bed (and of course set the time when one goes to sleep and wake up as well).

At Rs 9,990, the Vivofit, but for certain syncing issues, mostly delivers for casual fitness enthusiasts, without being tied down to a particular brand of smartphone or a particular ecosystem. It would help if it had vibrating/audible alerts to snap you out of your reverie. And, if you're serious about fitness, one should go the whole hog and go in for a heart rate monitor as well.