When you think of Garmin wearables, you probably picture the company’s smartwatches for runners: They’re bulky, but they have a long-lasting build and solid GPS to boot. In recent years, however, the company has made an effort to diversify from its fitness niche with a range of hybrid watches, some of which debuted at CES 2022.
Garmin’s latest wearable offering, announced Wednesday, is the $270 Vivomove Trend. The hybrid timepiece is part smartwatch and part stylish wristwatch. It has ticking watch hands, but there’s also a hidden full-dial display for notification alerts and activity tracking. Garmin says those watch hands “dynamically move away” making for easy viewing of smart notifications and health monitoring information including heart rate, sleep, stress tracking, and blood oxygen levels.
You can mix and match bands and bezels.
Garmin
The slender Vivomove Trend is crafted with domed glass, a stainless steel bezel and a silicon wristband. Both the band and the bezels can be swapped out to mix and match, according to Garmin. The watch is available in black, silver, ivory, gold and grey. The Trend also counts Garmin Pay, its contactless payment solutions, as part of its list of features.
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Unlike smartwatches, hybrid watches are designed to be more discreet with their digital elements. Thanks in part to their smaller screens, hybrid watches tend to have significantly longer battery life than smartwatches — one of their biggest advantages. Garmin promises five days of battery life for the Vivomove Trend as well as wireless charging, which is Qi-compatible in a first for the company. However, the tradeoff is that a hybrid watch sacrifices some of the smart features you may find on devices like the Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch.
Garmin has long been a household name in the world of fitness and running watches. In recent years, the US company has endeavoured to branch out to hybrid watches as it faces increased competition from the likes of Apple and Samsung in the fitness segment. In September 2022, Apple launched the Apple Watch Ultra, its biggest competitor yet to performance watches like those made by Garmin.
