does this device serve a purpose for any triathletes out there? if so, what?
i currently own the 510 and 220 but was just curious if the vivosmart has a place for the active triathletes.
does this device serve a purpose for any triathletes out there? if so, what?
i currently own the 510 and 220 but was just curious if the vivosmart has a place for the active triathletes.I find it very limited. I’ve used the Garmin Vivofit, the Basis Peak, the Fitbit One, the Jawbone Up, the BodyMedia Core & Fit, the Nike Fuelband, the Polar loop and with in general they provide information of which the degree of usefulness depends on your own habits.
The main point here to understand is that these devices are intended to give you an idea of your free living habbits, as that’s really the only area where they are somewhat accurate. They see how active you are (how much your wrist, arm or hips move, and search for patterns to detect which type of movement it is, and then give you a calorie burn estimate based on duration and magnitude of that movement). Once you go beyond free living into medium or high intensity exercise they will all start go get off (some more than others), also once you do something that’s non-ambulatory (like riding a bike) they will have difficulty to detect movement and you are likely to get highly underreported calorie estimates.
Some have the ability to detect sleep, that could be the most important function for a triathlete. Understand how much sleep you are getting; it’s essentially an easy way to get an overview of your sleeping habbits.
The basis peak also shows heart rate, which is pretty meaningless during the day. The number is highly variable and changes continuously based on your (lack of) movements, coffee, your boss yelling at you, etc. I find it useful as an easy way to get your resting heart rate. You’ll not only see your heart rate throughout the night, so you can determine your resting heart rate, but you can also learn how long you need to be sleeping for before your heart rate reaches its resting heart rate. That’s an indicator of chronic fatigue and therefor can be quite interesting.
Functions such as steps are totally useless for a triathlete.
It did nothing for me. I already train so much that I didn’t really need the data it fed me.
From a triathlon perspective, not really. However, I do really like mine because:
- It is a watch, yet small as a bracelet. I dislike big watches.
- It has an alarm, which wakes you silently by vibrating. I can sleep thru a watch alarm.
- It does remind me to move around every so often, which is a nice reminder at work to walk away from my desk.
- I can see emails and text messages on it. Admittedly, only a few words at a time, so it’s not great for reading. But it is nice to see who a message is from without reaching for the phone.
Point 4 is the most interesting I think.
I presented my wife one for Christmas.
Don’t know how it measures sometimes steps, don’t think it’s very accurate cause of drastic differences bout same distance. And I’m not talking bout flying there from time to time.
Distance is useless unless you count your steps per distance, set that and don’t change. We had a difference from almost 4 mls(910 vs vivosmart) walking
If your riding or running with the phone packed it’s good to see if there is an emergency call/text or your boss wanting you doin extra shift.
From a triathlon perspective, not really. However, I do really like mine because:
- It is a watch, yet small as a bracelet. I dislike big watches.
- It has an alarm, which wakes you silently by vibrating. I can sleep thru a watch alarm.
- It does remind me to move around every so often, which is a nice reminder at work to walk away from my desk.
- I can see emails and text messages on it. Admittedly, only a few words at a time, so it’s not great for reading. But it is nice to see who a message is from without reaching for the phone.
Exactly the same for me on points 2, 3 and 4.However, I wear mine on my right arm and a normal watch on the left, I like my watches 
As an extra, one thing I did was to use my 910xt and foot pod to get a more accurate average stride length for walking and running and added them into garmin connect.
It should be handy for running on the treadmill and on those turbo sessions when I cant be bothered to mess with the 910xt and its ant+ syncing
Ideally, I should replace them both with a 920xt, but this for me is a nice compromise until my 910xt dies
Very helpful, Thx for the replies
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