Garmin's Vivoactive 6 Is the New Version of Their Most Underrated Fitness Watch
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The Good
- Seven-day battery life in our testing (up to 11 under ideal conditions, according to Garmin)
- Sleek look
- New coaching options and better navigation
The Bad- Only available in one (42 mm) size
- Few changes from the Vivoactive 5
Table of Contents
The Vivoactive 6 is the newest model in Garmin’s line of lower-priced lifestyle watches. I called its predecessor, the Vivoactive 5, one of Garmin’s most underrated watches, and when I pitted it against the Pixel Watch 3, the Vivoactive 5 handily beat its more expensive competitor.
Now there’s a new model, the Vivoactive 6, and I wore it for several weeks to put it through its paces. This watch, like the version before it, is a great watch for somebody who wants to track their steps and activity without getting too deep into the running-nerd territory of the Forerunner watches. (I say this as a diehard Forerunner fan: Not everybody wants or needs all those features.)
As I tested the Vivoactive 6, I was looking for good heart rate and GPS accuracy, convenience of use, and handy features for fitness and life. I was also sure to check out two features that are new to the Vivoactive line and to Garmins in general: a smart alarm, and suggested walking workouts.
Changes from the Vivoactive 5
The internals and main features of the Vivoactive 6 are similar to the 5, so most of the things I’ll be describing here are subtle differences. Honestly, if you want a great fitness watch on a budget, the Vivoactive 5 will still do most of what you want. But here are the main differences I noticed moving to the 6:
More coaching options for running and strength—you can now get adaptive coaching instead of just the expert plans. (More about the difference here.)
Daily suggested workouts for walking
Smart wake alarm that says it can wake you up during light sleep (although I had trouble with that)
Improved navigation with QZSS and Beidou in addition to the usual GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo
Different color options: Black and white are still available, but now the two other colors are green and pink.
The start button is now round and has a little collar around it, making the button press feel softer and shallower. I hate this, but most people will probably not care at all.
Glances have a new appearance, appearing as rounded tabs rather than rectangles.
Different watch faces. Most have a similar style but they aren’t quite the same faces. (You can still install your favorite Connect IQ faces, of course.)
8 GB of storage instead of 4 GB
A gyroscope for more accurate movement detection
Comfort and appearance
The size, shape, and overall appearance are basically identical to the Vivoactive 5. This is a thin, lightweight watch, but the overall look and feel is a bit plasticky. (Depending on your point of view, that either makes it look cute and sleek, or a little too casual—those looking for a more elegant watch may prefer the Venu 3 or 3S with its metal bezel.) It takes standard 20 mm watch bands, if you’d like to switch up the appearance.
The Vivoactive 6 is a smallish watch, 42 millimeters wide, without a larger option. This makes it approximately the same size as the Forerunner 265S or the Venu 3S. This size looks and fits great for me, but it may not be for everyone. The included strap fits wrists sized 4.9 to 7.5 inches.
Part of how the Vivoactive 6 gets its sleek appearance is by only having two buttons, both on the right side. (Forerunners also have another three on the left.) This leaves the touchscreen responsible for many of the watch’s functions, including saving a workout after you’ve finished it. You do still use the physical buttons to stop and start workouts, and to mark laps, which is essential for getting accurate times.
The digital displays on the watch are a bit nicer-looking than what’s on a typical Forerunner, with elegant little rounded edges. There are also tons of new color options for the stock watch faces, to an almost dizzying degree. Pro tip for those who get the Jasper Green model like I did: the digital color “Silver Sage” is a perfect match to the watch’s exterior. Somehow I didn’t find it until my very last day of testing, as I was taking photos to go with this review. You’re welcome.
Battery life and charging
Garmin’s estimate for battery life for this watch is 11 days. That’s in regular “smartwatch mode,” not counting any activity tracking, so in practice you should expect a bit less. (With always-on display, Garmin says to expect five days; in battery-saver mode, 21.)
I had previously gotten a nine-day life when I tested the Vivoactive 5, so I expected something similar here—but my testing seemed to show the battery coming up a bit short, trending toward around seven days with what I believe are similar settings. Power usage specs are identical between the two watches, according to Garmin, so it’s possible I was doing something different that I haven’t quite figured out.
The Vivoactive 6 charges the same way as other Garmin watches, with the company’s four-pin connector clicking into a slot on the back of the watch. The watch ships with a short cable (USB-C on the other end) but personally I prefer to use an adapter like this on the end of a regular USB-C cable.
Heart rate and GPS accuracy
Accuracy on this watch is quite good, as I’ve come to expect from Garmin. It doesn’t have multi-band GPS like my favorite Forerunner, but its distance and pace readouts were always very close to the truth.
Heart rate is also not perfect but definitely more than good enough. Here’s a graph of wrist-based heart rate on the Vivoactive 6 versus a chest strap, my gold standard. You wouldn’t go astray using it for heart-rate-based workouts. If you want even better accuracy, the Vivoactive 6 can connect to an external chest strap—which you should always do with any watch if heart rate accuracy is important to you.
Suggested workouts for walking
Garmin has long offered daily suggested workouts (DSW) for running and cycling. The Vivoactive 6 doesn’t have those, but it does have DSW for walking. Huh? Yes, for walking.
The suggested workouts don’t show up in your Garmin Connect app, but you can view them from the watch itself. When you start a Walk activity, the suggested workout may pop up and ask you if you’d like to start that workout. If you don’t see it, scroll down to Workout Library and tap Daily Suggestions. You can see a week’s worth of workouts, with the option to do today’s or any of the future workouts.
For example, if you’re not in the mood for today’s 45-minute Brisk Interval Walk, which asks you to walk five minutes at a “brisk” pace, recover for one minute, and repeat that a total of six times in between a brief warmup and cooldown, you could instead tap on tomorrow’s Steady Pace Walk.
I’ve heard other people say that they just got a lot of Steady Pace Walk suggestions, but I got plenty of variety. For context, I don’t track many walks, but I do go for a lot of runs. Perhaps it thought I was ready for something spicier. Here’s one week of training that it gave me:
Brisk Interval Walk (45:00) - Warm up 5:00 easy; 6x [Go 5:00 brisk; recover 1:00 easy]; cool down 5:00 easy.
Steady Pace Walk (55:00) (brisk pace the whole time)
Brisk Interval Walk, as above
Steady Speed Walk (25:00) - Warm up 5:00 brisk; 15:00 speed; cool down 5:00 brisk
Steady Pace Walk (30:00) (brisk pace the whole time)
Speed Interval Walk (30:00) - Warm up 5:00 brisk, 3x [go 4:00 speed; recover 4:00 brisk]; cool down 5:00 brisk
Brisk Interval Walk (45:00), as above
Rather than giving you a specific pace or heart rate for each step of the workout, the walking workouts use a perceived effort system of “easy,” “brisk,” and “speed” paces. These aren’t described in the user manual, but I think of them as slow, medium, and fast.
The smart wake alarm sounds promising, but I’m not sure if it works
The Vivoactive 6 is Garmin’s first device with a smart wake alarm, which aims to wake you up with gentle vibration during a light sleep stage. I love the idea, but during the time I tested the watch I didn’t get any alarms during my “smart” wake-up window. I’m not sure if that’s my fault or the watch’s.
To use a smart alarm, you have to identify a 30-minute window within which the device can look for light sleep stages. Let’s say you need to wake up no later than 7:30 a.m. You’ll set a smart alarm where 7:30 is the last possible time it can decide to wake you up—which means your wake-up window will start at 7:00 a.m. (This is perhaps why smart alarms aren’t as popular as you’d expect: Do you really want to wake up at 7:03, or 7:12, or whatever moment is judged to be the right one if you don’t need to be up until 7:30?)
I had a daily smart alarm set for nearly every night I tested the watch, which was a little over two weeks. I set it for 7:00 to 7:30, as in the example above, and every single time it went off, it didn’t wake me up until 7:30 on the dot.
I asked a Garmin rep about how the alarm works. I learned three things that may explain why I didn’t get woken up:
You need to have gotten a certain minimum amount of sleep, usually at least six hours.
There needs to be a light sleep stage (not deep or REM) during your 30-minute wake-up window.
The watch buzzes you gently, and if you don’t wake up, it will try again later.
So maybe I wasn’t getting the alarm because I didn’t get enough total sleep, because I didn’t have a conveniently timed sleep cycle, or because I was just missing the watch’s gentle nudges.
I checked my sleep stages and total sleep length, as reported by the Vivoactive. Most mornings, I had gotten more than seven hours of sleep, and spent most or all of the time between 7 and 7:30 in a light-sleep stage. So the first two requirements were met.
Maybe I’m just so conditioned to wake up at 7:30 that I’m not able to detect the Vivoactive’s gentle buzzing? For comparison, I wore a Fitbit Charge 6 to bed for a few nights and also set it to a smart wake alarm in the 7:00 to 7:30 window. I got early alarms from the Fitbit each of those mornings, but not the Vivoactive. Either the Vivoactive was being so gentle I didn’t notice it, or it didn’t work. I truly cannot tell the difference.
Vivoactive or Forerunner?
There’s a significant overlap between the features of the Vivoactive 6 and those of some of Garmin’s Forerunner watches, especially the similarly priced Forerunner 165 Music. Since people often wonder which watch is the better pick, I’ll give a few distinctions here that should help you choose.
The Vivoactive 6 and Forerunner 165 are both a similar size, price, and battery life, with the Vivoactive coming in a bit lighter in weight. Note that you have to choose the Music version of the 165 if you want to be able to play music without having your phone with you. (The Music version retails for $299 like the Vivoactive; the non-music is $249).
The 165 has an altimeter, the better to track how many “floors” you climb in a day, while the Vivoactive 6 has more location networks for potentially better GPS accuracy.
The Vivoactive 6 has a wheelchair mode and workouts for wheelchair users; the 165 does not. The 165 has daily suggested workouts for running, even if you don’t set up a training plan in the app; the Vivoactive 6 does not. The Vivoactive 6 has golfing features. The 165 has more navigation features (but neither has onboard maps).
The 165 has five buttons and nothing relies solely on the touchscreen. That means you can set the touchscreen to lock during activities, and do everything you need with buttons (thus avoiding accidental button presses or missed presses due to rain or sweat). Both watches can use their physical buttons for starting and stopping activities and for marking laps.
If you want a little more than what these two watches feature, your next step up would be the Forerunner 265, which can pair with a power meter and do cycling workouts. It also has dual-band GPS and some other little touches that are more useful for runners, like training status and more data fields during your run. On the other hand, an upgrade on the lifestyle watch side would be the Venu 3, which can do voice calls and texts.
The Vivoactive 6 is a lightweight, richly featured fitness watch with the accuracy I’ve come to expect from Garmin watches. It’s more useful than minimalist trackers like the Fitbit Charge 6, and more streamlined and fitness-focused than smartwatches like the Pixel Watch 3 or Apple Watch Series 10. I’d argue that it’s the perfect pick for most people who want “a fitness watch” but aren’t sure exactly what they want.
That said, it hasn’t changed much from the Vivoactive 5, which is now available at a steep discount. (Both had the same starting price of $299.) The differences are mostly subtle ones; I wouldn’t upgrade for the smart alarm or the walking workouts, myself. The improved coaching options are a nice plus, but if you’re choosing Garmin watches based on how well they can guide you through running workouts, something tells me you’ll probably end up buying a Forerunner instead.
All told, this is a solid fitness watch that is a great pick for people who want a touchscreen, a casual rather than sport-nerdy look, and a battery that only needs to be charged once a week or so.
