Garmin has officially joined the LTE smartwatch fray, this week introducing the vivoactive 3 Music – Connected by Verizon. Yeah, that’s technically its full name.
For all practical purposes, the watch is essentially the same as the existing Vivoactive 3 Music, but with a few new features baked into it. Chief among them, of course, is the LTE connectivity — powered by Verizon.
The connectivity means wearers can receive texts and download music from Spotify and Deezer without relying on a phone. Perhaps more interesting, and certainly more helpful, Garmin is tapping into the cellular network for safety features.
As many Garmin wearers can attest, the GPS capabilities are very accurate. With both assistance and incident detection, the Garmin provides peace of mind to runners. The assistance feature can send an alert to predetermined emergency contacts and provide real-time location. To trigger this feature one simply needs press and hold a button for five seconds.
Incident detection is similar as it can understand if there’s an impact (read as: fall). Should it detect one, it will automatically alert the emergency contacts with location. The LiveTrack option lets wearers share location with friends and family in an on-demand manner.
The Vivoactive 3 Music comes with a five day battery in smartwatch mode or up to four hours of LTE when “connected to GPS, playing music, and using LiveTrack”. It’s not clear what sort of life comes from just using one of those connected features.
Rounding out the features, the watch has Garmin Pay, the contactless payment solution that lets runners keep their credit cards and wallets at home. Also present is Elevate, a wrist-based heart rate sensor and 15 built-in sports apps.
Pricing and availability aren’t available yet, but Garmin says it will share more information later this quarter.
