Garmin launches the Vivosmart 3 wearable tracker aimed at wellness

What you get for your money in 2017 when it comes to fitness trackers might just blow your mind. But don’t worry, if you are wearing one you’ll likely get a notification of that because they track your stress levels as well as basic fitness monitoring.

Garmin have introduced the vívosmart 3 which for $229 offers an outstanding range of features in something that you wear on your wrist.

The Vivofit range is about tracking and fitness.  The Vivosmart range takes that to the next level with smartphone link and notifications – these are essentially a smartwatch, though of course they don’t look at all like a watch.

Sure you’ll get step tracking, sleep tracking, floors climbed, even heart rate fluctuations – and when a text or email comes through, or someone likes your Instagram post you can get notifications of that too.

But Garmin have done some pretty cool stuff to ramp up their fitness tracking – into what should really be called “wellness” tracking.

This vívosmart 3 will also monitor V02 Max, Fitness age and stress tracking.

Adam Howarth, General Manager Garmin Australasia says “Health conscious customers are becoming more interested in the meaning behind their activity stats, As in, I like seeing the data, but how does it correlate to my overall wellbeing? With its new fitness and wellness monitoring tools that tell you things like fitness age and stress level, the vívosmart 3 is able to provide users with those answers, and that is a game changer for the activity tracker industry.”

VO2 max is an indication of aerobic performance, something Garmin has had for some time in their high-end sports watches.  This is then also used to calculate your fitness age – something that might shock some people if they’re a bit out of shape of course.

In addition to that there’s a new Strength Training activity which will count your reps for you when you’re on a workout.

When users are not on the move, the vívosmart 3 spends it’s resting hours tracking the variability in your heart rate – which is then used to graph your stress level right on the device.

All that, and it’s no bigger than the average fitness band.  And – it’s recommended retail price is just $229.