My 5-year old Garmin Forerunner 305 was on its last leg: its battery couldn't even last a 1.5 hr ride last time I tried. So I need a replacement. And I found the Garmin Vivoactive released in 2015 quite interesting: Garmin marketed it as a smart-watch (think Apple Watch) as well as an activity-tracking device (think FitBit) And the battery is supposed to last for 10 hours with GPS on (Yes, I did 3 10+ hour rides in the last 5 years) I just got it tonight and immediately paired it with the phone (installation of the Garmin Connect mobile app was required and I created a new Garmin account) and my old heart rate monitor from the 305. I also linked my MapMyRide account to Garmin Connect. Then I did a quick indoor ride just to test its HR tracking ability. That ride was sync-ed to Garmin Connect right after (via my phone) and also to MapMyRide as a workout. So the activity tracking part of the watch seems not bad (wish it doesn't require a chest-strap HRM though) Next task was to prepare for my weekend ride. Forerunner 305 allowed me to load a route to it and display as a map on screen to provide some "rough" navigation utilizing the GPS. (I would manually create the route on MapMyRide, export the route and convert to GPX, import to the PC software and then finally sync to watch. Yes, I know those are a lot of steps) I was hoping Vivoactive would support the same (if not better) out of the box but it doesn't. Fortunately, the smart-watch side of Vivoactive allows third-party developers to create app for it. And one such app seems to fit the bill: dwMap. First, open your Garmin Connect mobile app and enter the Connect IQ store. Search for dwMap and download it. It will sync the app to your watch eventually. Second, go to dwMap's website dynamic.watch. Click 'Link to watch' and open the app on your watch to see the code to be entered to the website. Then log on using your MapMyRide (UnderArmour) account. The website will show 20 of the routes you bookmarked in MapMyRide. You could "star" one of those route and next time you open the app on your watch. This will be the route to be displayed. Hopefully my Vivoactive experience will get better and better and I could share more here.
(BTW, found a pretty good page that compare all watches for running.)
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