I was perhaps a little unfair when I ‘berated’ the vivosmart HR a while back. Mostly I focussed on my personal aversion towards its looks and also a lack of GPS.
Well Garmin are about to announce a GPS version (kudos; circe, ty for the leaked info!) and also several people did write to say that they actually quite liked the looks of it.
So what do I know?
Anyway I do know that the image on the right has been removed from the offending site’s shop and I can only guess that the description is NOT a typo as the Vivosmart HR (with no GPS) is on sale there for £119. So it’s unlikely that the £169 (with GPS) is a typo as well as the description being a type.
You can also see in the Product Summary that the word GPS is used a couple of times.
Actually this device is useful in one respect. You can use it as a wrist based optical HRM to send your HR to an ANT+ device on your other wrist or to a bike computer. Of course you’d have to wear a long sleeved shirt as it is still pretty ugly and the hot weather has arrived so that will be a sweaty option. Alternatively, for the purpose of wrist based heart rate, you could buy the pretty, functional, accurate, best-selling and cheaper MIO Link.
On reflection this is now a bit like the Microsoft Band 1 from 2 years ago.
Normally I’d put a link here so you could buy the Vivosmart but I wouldn’t want to encourage that activity too much 🙂
source: circe – thank you
If you’ve just bought the non-GPS version then click on the links below to return it while you still can!
Last Updated on 14 January 2026 by the5krunner
tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors.
