Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

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I have owned a Garmin Vivoactive 3 for almost 10 years now. A short review. (slrpnk.net)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by fennesz12@feddit.dk to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Pros: Still does everything I want it to. Has great battery life still. Pretty accurate for a wrist measure, when measuring heart rate. Also has built in GPS, and even Garmin Pay although I never got it to work. Screen is perfectly visible in sunlight

Cons: Proprietary charger. I've had to switch the watch band 2 times.

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[–] leftascenter@jlai.lu 2 points 5 days ago

Switching the wristband twice in ten years is normal wear if you don't have a metallic band.

Even then, the pins need changing every now and then if you use them in salt water.

[–] jagermo@feddit.org 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I am about fan of Garmin and its products, I only wished that they had a program to replace batteries.

[–] It_is_gaslighting@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 5 days ago

I bought a used fenix 5 for 60€ and replaced the battery (14€) myself. 35-40 days per recharge now with bluetooth and heart-rate logging. IMHO extreme value.

[–] CTDummy@aussie.zone 3 points 6 days ago

This is probably why I won’t go back to them. The fact that, from what I’ve seen, you just get an offer on a discounted refurb in lieu of a battery change. Either that or told to purchase a new one if the battery fails just outside of warranty, which didn’t seem rare for my watch. Given how many iterations there have been of these watches seems by design.

[–] danekrae@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

I wish Garmin would stop advertising their paid services and products several places in the GarminConnect app.

[–] sartalon@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

I have a forerunner 255 for a couple of years and it has been great.

I wish they had wireless charging, but I also appreciate that it is slimmer because they don't have it.

I would have gotten a nicer one, but holy cow they get expensive.

It does everything I need and even stores music for my runs. (Who am I lying to, it stores music for my walks.)

I have a Garmin BP cuff and I like that I can track my health stats, including sleeping

[–] Soapbox@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 days ago

I've had my vivoactive 3 for 6 years and the only problem is the battery. When new it would last a week as a normal watch a solid 12 hours when GPS tracking.

Now its at best 36hrs between charges. About 1hr if i tried to GPS track with it.

When I look up replacement batteries not a single one has a good review.