Fitness trackers are all the rage these days. Apart from the athletic market catering to those who want to track and measure their workouts and chart progress, there’s also a burgeoning market opening with seniors adopting the trackers for health reasons.
As usual, with more market share comes more competition. While Fitbit was one of the first out of the gate and able to dominate publicity and marketing circles, other companies jumped into the market with smartwatches and bands.
Today, we compare two popular fitness trackers: The Garmin Vívoactive and the Fitbit Sense. We’ll put them through the paces and see how they differ, where each one excels, and what they offer. You can also check out other options, like the best Garmin smartwatches, or learn which Fitbit is best for you.
The Garmin Vívoactive 4 has a circular face with a transflective memory-in-pixel display. It also features a touchscreen. There is a built-in alarm, timer, clock, and stopwatch. Garmin further gives you sunrise and sunset times, as well as auto-sync for when you travel. Garmin Pay can be used for contactless payments. You’ll also be able to control your smartphone music with the watch and accept or reject calls to your phone.
The Fitbit Sense has a square-shaped face with rounded corners and has an AMOLED full-color display, with a touch-screen for easy navigation. It’s possible to change the watch face through the Fitbit app instead of a secondary app like Garmin. There’s both a stopwatch and a timer at your fingertips, and you can stream music through the Fitbit Sense and use Fitbit’s own NFC tap pass, which allows you to pay directly with the watch.
Both watches have really similar features in this category, but Fitbit takes it due to their AMOLED screen and larger display.
The Garmin Vívoactive 4 tracks steps and distance and has a built-in sports app to track specific types of exercise. It also has an animated on-screen workout function to guide you through yoga, cardio, and Pilates workouts. It also has sleep monitoring, which tracks different stages of sleep, and Pulse Oxygen data.
The Fitbit Sense tracks steps, distance, floors climbed and calories burned as part of its basic metrics. It also tracks four stages of sleep (awake, light, deep, and REM). Active Zone tracking also lets you know when you’re entering an optimal heart rate zone, customized to your height, weight, and age. Its built-in GPS will also measure “non-workout,” tracking steps and heart rate while you’re moving around the house or office.
Both of these fitness trackers handle the basics equally well. There’s not a lot separating them.
The Vívoactive 4 is capable of measuring SPO2 (Pulse Oxygen) both while sleeping and on-demand. It also has a “body battery” level that tracks your overall energy level. The Vívoactive 4 stress levels are based on heart rate sensor data. It will track daily fluid levels if you enter them, and it will also track menstrual cycles, as well as your general respiration. Note that both the stress and respiration tracking are based on heart rate monitoring.
The Fitbit Sense measures SPO2 while sleeping and on-demand and records daily levels. It also has an EDA Scan that detects electrodermal activity as well as measures EGC (electrocardiogram). The Fitbit Sense also tracks VO2 to give you a cardio fitness score. This version also contains a skin temperature monitor to provide you with a running track of your temperature range during the day.
The Garmin Vívoactive 4 has onboard GPS so it can track both your speed and distance.
The Fitbit Sense also uses an onboard GPS, though that can also have some issues. Though some users have experienced delays with the GPS connection, the tracking is generally more accurate than with the Vivoactive 4.
Garmin claims the Vívoactive 4 lasts up to eight days in smartwatch mode (which means most tracking turned off), 18 hours in GPS mode without music, and 6 hours in GPS mode with music.
Fitbit claims the Sense can last six days with GPS disabled and 12 hours with continuous GPS.
It’s important to keep in mind that you’ll likely want to use the features on your fitness tracker, so the best gauge of battery life is with everything turned on.
It just edges out the Fitbit Sense, lasting a few more hours.
The Buy at Walmart.com sells from the Garmin website at $349 with free shipping (at time of writing.)
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Buy at Amazon
with free shipping (at time of writing.)
The price is substantially less than Vívoactive 4, though we will mention that sale prices frequently bring them much closer together in cost.
After comparing the two fitness trackers, it seems clear that while they have many features in common, the Fitbit Sense does a little more a little better. At half the cost of the Vívoactive 4, this one is a no-brainer. Be sure to read the full review of the Fitbit Sense here for our honest and detailed analysis.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.