Finding the features you want in a fitness tracker or smartwatch is essential, but it's equally important that it checks a few other boxes, too: reliability, ruggedness, accuracy, and solid battery life. Rest assured the Garmin Vivoactive 3 delivers on all of those fronts.

Holds up to 500 songs locally; Measures steps, stairs, sleep, continuous heart rate; Includes advanced fitness metrics: VO2 max, fitness age, stress; Contactless payment and smartwatch features

Can only reply to messages from watch when paired with Android; No women's health tracking

Garmin's fitness bands have almost always been large, even massive, smartwatches. In fact, we nicknamed them BBWs - or big, burly, watches. With the new Vivoactive 3, Garmin left the big behind and delivered a GPS multisport smartwatch that's smaller, more refined, and a nice reminder that watches...

Connects to ANT+ sensors; Smart Notifications; Garmin Pay

Weak vibration alert; Easy to miss notifications

The Vivoactive 3 is one of the best fitness-focused smartwatches available, but the Fitbit Ionic has music storage and the Apple Watch Series 3 has more apps.

Always-on watch face; Round design; Advanced workout-tracking

Garmin Pay supports few cards at launch; Inaccurate sleep-tracking; No onboard music storage

It's hard not to think about our overall impressions of the Vivoactive 3 without comparing it to the other recently announced smartwatches. It directly competes with the Fitbit Ionic because of price, tracking functions, and features.

Overall, the Vivoactive 3 is a very solid and fitness-focused watch. It's likely the iteration that many folks have been waiting for in terms of a more stylish unit than the Vivoactive HR was in the last version, and more functional than the super-slim original Vivoactive was a few years back.

In the end, I think the Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music is the kind of device aimed primarily at athletes and then at smartwatch fans. This is exactly the opposite of the Apple Watch, no matter what Apple says.

The Garmin Vivoactive 3 is light, comfy and packed with features - what's not to like

I bought this a few months ago and to be honest I'm quite disappointed. There are some good features, but for me as a runner, it's unsuitable. I have had GPS accuracy issues from the start and the battery in GPS activity tracking mode will not last more than 4/5 hours.

I bought the watch on thanksgiving sale and so far it seems good value for money. I have used it for outdoor running and pool swim. The GPS does take time to "train" and provide better accuracy especially under tree cover but so far the difference is less than 2% compared to other devices - so I...

I bought 2 watches, one for me and one for my boyfriend. The watch has all the features we wanted but the heart rate monitor is so off when my boyfriend wears it. Both watches work fine on me but the HR is super high and inaccurate on him and I have read other review about this same problem