Garmin vivoactive 4 or polar ignite?

[Boopear]

Am driving myself mad with looking at YouTube tech videos so thought I'd ask you guys.

As in the title - should I get a Garmin vivoactive 4 or a polar ignite? I'm a big Les Mills fan (mostly comcast, pump and attack) twice a week runner (a slow 5k!) and occasional cyclist\swimmer\HIiT person. So am really keen on multi sports monitoring, good sleep stats and, critically, widgets that tell me when I've done too much/ yell at me when I'm not doing enough. The vivoactive has body battery but the polar has recharge/fitspark (and also has the les mills workouts as standard). However I just can't decide! Please help..

Combat not comcast

Following as I have a birthday in August and dh has said he'll get me a watch. Line you I do a lot of Les Mills and run twice a week between 5 and 12k.

Vivoactive doesn't really do much shouting at you - I don't find the sleep tracking that accurate but weirdly the body battery thing is quite accurate, it somehow seems to know when you don't have a good night's sleep and are not well recovered even if this isn't always reflected in the actual sleep stats!

I like mine, I use it mainly for running though. I don't find Garmin's UI very intuitive but you do get used to it.

Thanks! That's good to know on the body battery functionality It's always hard to know if these things are just exciting sounding gadgets or if they actually work. Would be great to hear from any polar ignite users on how good the recharge thing is, which is sort of the equivalent.. and also if the lack of 'always on' functionality is as annoying as I think it might be..

I have the vivoactive 4s and like the body battery thing, it does seem to gauge how much I've done and considers how much energy I have left considering my level of sleep. The main thing I love is the way you can plan workouts, and follow prompts during a run/yoga / weights session so you don't have to look at anything else to remember what you should do next. I have never seen the polar one so I don't know how it works but I love my vivoactive.

I absolutely love my polar ignite. The polar flow app is fantastic. I chose it specifically because I do multi sports including a sport that I think the polar ignite handles well (rowing). I’ve seen the Les Mills stuff on it but have no experience of that. The sleep part is impressive, I nerdily like to Look at all the graphs. But I mainly use it for the feature FitSpark so I can see if I’m rested and ready for exercise. I like the look of it, although the strap is a bit of a pain.

What I will say... there’s lots of initial calibrating where sleep and for spark are concerned... you need to wear it for at least 5 days to get the baselines. And you’ll need to play with it a lot to master the features. The automatic switch on of the clock when you turn your hand is not great, not that responsive. But what I love about fitspark is it’s suggestions, e.g. now is a good time for some cardio. And also it plans little workouts for you, although if I’m honest I don’t really use that feature.

Thanks both for all your help! I'm going for the Ignite Now just need to find a small black and copper one in stock..

Super... let us know how you get on. There really are lots of features, they’re not all obvious initially, play with it a lot. Get to know the app and also your profile on the polar website and you’ll find more.

Mine is entirely black, but the copper one looks lovely.