Review on Renewed Garmin vivosmart 3 - Black, L: Enhanced Fitness Tracker for Optimal Performance by Barbara Majdoch

The Vivosmart 3 is serviceable, has an attractive, minimalist design, and tracks basic stats as advertised. However, I'm rating them so low because, even at a relatively affordable price point (compared to other smartwatches; $40 at the time of purchase), they don't perform very well as a watch. The watchface isn't always included, which I knew and doubted when I bought it, but it's designed to illuminate the watchface by recognizing gestures. Or so it should be. It takes a few "lifts" or "clicks" of my wrist to illuminate the dial after it didn't do so in a natural gesture to check my watch. What's even more frustrating is that touching the watch face isn't responsive either. Even if I instead tap the screen to turn on the display, it takes a few times and often reverts to trying to wiggle my wrist to turn on the display. . It's uncomfortable when running or doing other activities when I want to quickly check my time or heart rate and get back to what I'm doing. I work in a first responder career so having to focus on non-functional times is a lot more frustrating. I bought this device primarily as a watch as it is positioned primarily as a watch but is not suitable here. The touch controls are awkward when I want to use any menu. Inevitably, I'll accidentally revert to previous screens, choose an option I don't want, or more often than not just choose not to use the screen to access features due to this constant inconvenience. Overall, I had high hopes for Garmin. . This is my first time buying a watch from Garmin but I'm familiar with the high quality avionics/GPS/equipment they offer and assume they probably have the same reputation for watches. I will admit that this is a much more affordable device than high end electronics, but I expect the device to work. I was hoping the technology would live up to Garmin's reputation, which I knew. Unfortunately I feel this product is marketing itself under the Garmin name and falls short of its own standards (except for watches; as I said I haven't tried other Garmin watches and still expect them to be great devices).