I spent a lot of time deciding between the Fitbit Ionic and this Vivoactive 3. I've had a vivofit 2 for just counting steps and sleep, and I had a forerunner I swapped out for runs. As I'm training for a triathlon now, I felt it time to upgrade to something that does it all. After comparing this watch vs the Ionic online, it seemed like most people agreed that Fitbits are for app lovers, and Garmin are better sport trackers.....so, my decision was made! && I LOVE THIS WATCH SOOOO MUCH! I had to get used to the larger watch face compared to the vivofit 2 I've worn for 3 years, but now that it has been a few months, I'm completely attached to it. Here are the sports I use it for with some pros/cons I have found to be true:

Running: I LOVE THIS WATCH FOR RUNNING. It is seriously a step up from the forerunner. I can customize my activity screen to all my favorites with laps, heartrate, and target zones. I can sent alerts for distances, drinking water, and much more. The GPS is spot on. I love the break down of each mile with speed and elevation. My only con: When I run in the rain, the screens change on their own. After a 10K race last month in an absolute downpour, my screens and watchface had been completely changed. It took me a while to reset everything back to my preferences. My fix: if it's raining, I lock the screen after starting the activing.

Biking: I already have a WAHOO Cadence reader attached to my biking shoe. The activity for biking on this watch also syncs to this 3rd party cadence tracker. Though, it is not the most relable. While riding indoors on a tripod, cadence tracks well however once outdoors and on a windy day, it looses connection for brief periods of time.... this may honestly be WAHOO's problem but I thought I'd mention it in case others have experienced the same. Still love the GPS plus heartrate while on long, tough workout bike rides! (See pic of cadence attached)

Swimming: I'm not sure why other reviews say their watch does not track laps, because mine does beautifully! It tracks, times, and gives me a good reading/evaluation of how hard I pushed myself after 2500 meters in a 25m long pool. :-) my only complaint is that I DO wish heartrate was available in swim mode....Maybe in the future?? I also wish outdoor/open water swimming could be tracked via GPS....Maybe also in the future. :-) I still use it while swimming open water but don't have the benefit of distance.

Also, as for sleep, it seems to be a lot more accurate than the vivofit 2....probably because of the heartrate. My only complainthere is the back light that turns on whenever I move in my sleep. I want to still see what time it is when needed, so I change the lighting to 10%, however sometimes when I move the watch seems to light up the room. I'm just about used to it now, but still a bit of a bother. This is even while I've set it to DND or do not disturb mode.

Overall, if you want a watch that does it all, choose the Vivoactive 3! I have had this watch for 2 months now and am still VERY happy I chose it! :-)

***************3 YEAR UPDATE*********************************

My vivoactive 3 is still one of the best purchases I've ever made. When I wrote the review above, I had yet to complete a triathlon. Since this review, I've completed 15 Olympic triathlons and 3 half Ironmans; qualifying for both National Championships in the Olympic and for Worlds in the half Iron. I attribute some of this success to having such a great watch to track my progress. This watch with the Garmin Connect app has really helped me sculpt my training plans and continuously seek improvement.

I have even more workarounds for my complaints above:

Open water swimming: Yes this app has a 3rd party OWS download possible through Garmin IQ, however it's still pretty terrible for accurate tracking. I found in a forum to set the watch activity to ROW and then place the watch under my swim cap. BOOM! Almost perfectly it tracked my route through the lake. I *only* do this during workouts and NOT during a race. During a race, the route is already an exact distance so I normally will just set the generic stop watch timer then lock the screen after starting. This way I have an understanding at what my swim time was while I'm running to the first transition.

Bike cadence tracker: My issue above was DEFINITELY with WAHOO. After a few months I bought the Garmin pair of cadence/speed sensors for my bike. The Vivoactive 3 catches the stats perfectly. It never drops, not even outdoors, and gives me more accurate readings than WAHOO ever did.

Running: There are still SO many ways to customize your run. It's not all about pace anymore when you're working on your form. ;) This watch has allowed me to reach strengths I didn't know I had.

Battery life: My watch is over 3 years old now (older than my cell phone...). The battery life has gone down slightly from when I first purchased it. At the beginning I could get 2-3 days of life while using GPS/activities daily. Now that's about every other day. If I don't use activities, it can go 3-4 days before the battery life gets low.

I love my garmin. I always use it.

UPDATE July 14, 2020 - I have been wearing this watch almost every day for almost 2 years and I like it very much. (I had forgotten that I hadn't liked this watch, so am updating this review. See my previous reviews below for what my problems were at the time.) In the end, I was able to convince Garmin Support to send me a new watch instead of a refurb. I think I had to pay for shipping or something. The new watch has not had any of the step tracking issues the prior watch had. Nor any of the synching issues. I think the O/S update did in fact solve the synching problems. (I'm an Android user, for reference.)

I use the Strava synch all the time and it works great. Every now and then there's a delay for the watch to synch its data to the Garmin app on the phone, but as soon as it's on the phone it posts to Strava. I primarily use this watch to track cycling activities, but have also used it for running, hiking, swimming, skiing stand-up paddle, and some others.

It's been quite durable as well. I did buy a tempered glass screen protector, which now has a chip in it, but the watch itself has taken something of a beating.

The waterproofing works as well. I basically never take it off. Always shower with it. Swim with it, etc.

Sleep tracking has been good.

HR has seemed accurate to me.

Battery life has been excellent. I go about a week between charges when I'm not using the activity tracking feature. This is great. I really don't worry about the battery. When I am going to go cycling, I charge it up fully and then I can get about 8-9 hours of tracking. If you want to use it mainly for tracking runs and you run for less than an hour every other day, you could probably charge it only once every five days. When I do charge it, it will go from 20% to full in about half an hour or forty-five minutes, so even when I wake up to go cycling and realize I forgot to charge it I can just do it then while I'm getting the gear ready.

Two years have passed since I bought it and I had expected that there'd be a better watch out now that was a Wear O/S watch with LTE capabilities (which is the only thing this watch lacks, IMO, b/c I"d love to be able to leave the phone at home), but there isn't. If this watch broke today, I'd just buy another one. For the current price, it's a steal.

------------------
UPDATE Nov 15, 2018 - I can't recommend this watch. More and more problems are occurring. The first problem is that it stopped tracking any floors on the stair counter. This happened after I took a trip on an airplane and other posters had mentioned that maybe their altimeter (barometer) broke in conjunction with a plane trip. I called Garmin Support and they discussed this and they said that maybe and update to the O/S from 5.4 to 5.5 (which was due any day) would help, and/or they'd be happy to send me a new watch and if i wanted even faster they would send it immediately if I'd pay a deposit which they would refund when I got the new watch. I said, okay, well, I'll wait til 5.5 comes out and see and the maybe return it and they said that was all fine.

So, I waited, it didn't fix it, and I contacted them to do the exchange, and they sent me a form for payment and I see that the watch they intend to give me is refurbished. They did not specify this earlier. I'm annoyed b/c at the time I was still in my 30 day return window and could have just returned it and bought another new one.

Additionally, since that time, other problems have occurred:
--synching has become a real problem. The watch just sometimes will go days without synching to the phone app. Also, the app seems to be built in some stupid way where it needs Internet connectivity in order to sync the watch. So, forget synching if you're traveling to some country where you only receive 2g, or are otherwise in an are with poor signal.
--Relatedly, I discovered while in the middle of the Costa Rican rainforest, is that even the GPX maps that I had loaded to the Garmin Connect app cannot be displayed without an Internet connection. Seriously, Garmin?!?!? You are making fitness devices for people to use out in the wild, and yet they can't even access their loaded routes in your app without an Internet connection?
--the heart rate monitor seems to have gotten much less reliable. Often it sits at 90 when I'm clearly in aerobic or anaerobic range (130+)
--I have noticed... why is there no Timer app on this watch? So simple. Why didn't they include it. Or an Alarm feature.

---my original review from Oct 2018-----
I have had this watch for a couple of weeks and have been very happy with it. I had tried the Amazfit Bip and Ticwatch E and both failed to accurately track my heart rate when going over about 130bpm. No watch is as good as a band yet for that, but those were so obviously wrong doing things like showing 80 when I was huffing and puffing. The Garmin Vivoactive 3 seems accurate enough for my purposes.

The battery life is acceptable/good. You can get multiple days unless you are tracking long activities. If you are running GPS and doing long cycling rides (4-8 hours) like I am, you will not get more than one ride per charge. I suppose this is asking a lot of the battery.

The problem I am having is that already the stair step counter has stopped working. It worked for awhile but now has just stopped. Not sure if that is a common problem. Have tried to contact the seller but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that here. May have to return it for a replacement if I don't hear something back from them based on this post.

First off, I had a Vivoactive HR for several years and loved it and wanted something similar. This watch has not disappointed and the added features have made it even better than expected. It allowed me to move my data from my Vivoactive HR to the new watch which meant I didn't to redo all my settings.

Charging cord: The reason I had to replace my Vivoactive HR was because the plastic part that holds the pin for the bank broke. I think this was due to the way you had to put pressure on that part to remove the charger. I am glad to see that the charger for the Vivoactive 3 Music plugs directly in and will not have the same effect. Time will tell.

Watch faces: very customizable. The only disappointment is when you have a digital face (which I prefer over the analog) you can only have two other features. Because I want the date and seconds, I can't show the battery life. One quick click on the face lets me see the charge level, so not so bad.

Music: since getting a giant phone that I don't want to carry around while I run, I liked the idea of a watch that could load some music. You can't even buy the small nano iPods anymore if you don't want to carry around a phone while running, so this was very appealing. I connected to my Bluetooth headphones with no problem. I haven't tried it with any music subscriptions but it was easy to load music from Garmin Express on my laptop. It is also easy to switch to control the music on my phone. I like the ability to advance the song from my watch so I don't have to pick up and open my phone.

Screen: Size seems to give a bit more area for data on the screen but the watch doesn't seem huge on my wrist. My Vivoactive HR always seemed a little bulky on my wrist (female) and yet this watch does not even though you get more screen. The band is narrower and thinner and is very comfortable. Hopefully it holds up as I had to replace my Vivoactive HR band. I read reviews that the screen is delicate so I purchased a screen protector. It went on no problem and is invisible, even on the curved surfaces. Hopefully that will prevent scratches/cracks as I like to wear the watch for everything.

Battery Life: as expected. It drains more quickly the more you use the GPS.

New features compared to the Vivoactive HR that I didn't realize I was getting:

Settings for runs:
"¢ You can change what shows up on the data screens that you can scroll through. Nice to be able to see the time, heart rate on the main screen if you want to.
"¢ You can have the watch alert you for intervals based on time and distance as well as pace alerts (fast and slow). I haven't tried it yet, but you can also set based on heart rate, cadence, calories, when to turn around, eat, etc.

Settings for other activities: they also have alerts you can set up.
"¢ Cardio has tabata workouts presets. The exercise is preset but you can change the rest time.
"¢ Strength training has a few built in workouts as well.
"¢ I was able to add Martial Arts and Class as separate activities which makes it easier to track from other cardio workouts.

Navigate Activity:
"¢ You can save a location and then tell the watch to navigate to it and it will give you an arrow for a direction. I haven't used this yet but think it would be a good feature when parking at a large venue or trail running and wanting mark the parking lot, etc.

Floors climbed: This seems to pick up ascent/descent not just stair steps more than my Vivoactive HR. My runs with hills show me hitting the goal where my old watch didn't.

There is a stress widget that supposedly measures stress. I've haven't used it much but it is a new feature.

Notifications: Work great but I had to turn off some notifications on my phone to make sure my watch wasn't buzzing all the time.

Weather seems to work better and have more details that the Vivoactive HR.

Clocks: Stopwatch, alarms, timer, all work great and easy to access. The method of entering the time is a little cumbersome. Timer can set to repeat.

I had a Vivoactive HR which I really liked, until it died on me. I bought this as the next iteration but "improved". On the whole I really like it. I had issues with the button placement on the HR which had me inadvertently turning off or pausing recording without realizing it. No such issues here - so far. I love the ability to personalize the screens for my tastes and needs (plain analog looking watch face for daily use - dense data screens for activities). Notifications are good and plentiful - so many in fact that I had to go back into connect and turn off a good number of app notifications, otherwise in a meeting or theater every few minutes it seems the screen lights up with another notification. I vaguely recall seeing something about turning off/do not disturb for set hours but I believe that is in your individual phone's software - not the Garmin connect, but I could be wrong - I haven't explored every Garmin settings option yet. But there are lots of settings you can play with within Connect.

But the temperature sensor usefulness? In a practical sense - none at all. It is affected by your body heat so I get readings 15 to 25 degrees higher than my cycling buddies' Garmin bike mounts. To get any realistic reading it is "advised" by Garmin that you take it off for twenty minutes or so - kinda kills the use as a "wearable". The elevation sensor - well, okay... but you are supposed to wait an additional 30 seconds after you get your gps locked in before you start your activity. Not a big thing, but my elevation readings vary greatly from all my buddies' bike mount readings. I haven't ever taken the readings as gospel, more as relative accountings, so as long as you're on that same page - its fine.

The raised screen on this Music version needs a screen protector and I got one so I haven't dinged it yet - but my protector is scuffed. If you don't care about the music - you would do better to get the non-music 3 for practicality purposes. This is comfortable enough that I don't think of it and start all sorts of tasks not thinking "oops... you got a raised glass lens that is going to get scratched if you don't take this off."

I can go multiple days without charging, even when I get in a couple 35-50 miles rides, so I'm good with the battery life.

Music - I haven't used the blue tooth music connection yet so I can't say what hit it would take on a long gps ride. I bought the music version because the difference in price wasn't so big. I didn't really think of usability. But since I can't find a decent battery life bluetooth earpiece - the music capability on this may well be a waste of time - for me... your mileage may vary. Which brings back the raised screen vulnerability as a real minus if you don't care about the music.

So, overall I really like it as a replacement for the VR. The new additions don't add much in a practical sense considering most folk including me use about 25% of the bells and whistles - if that much. But if you want them, it has them.
edit: 02/14/2019 - still love the device; wouldn't change the above review except for... I did get a decent life bluetooth earpiece and I love it with this Garmin. What I do note - and cannot pinpoint the source - is that I do get periodic "blips" in the music playback - not a skip to another section of the file/song being played, but a tiny "blip" noise. It may be the moment a notification comes to my phone and gets recognized on my garmin, it could be a bluetooth connection "blip" issue with the earpiece - but it happens so little that I really don't consider it a major issue at all. I still can't say what kind of hit it puts on the battery life while using gps - because I don't use it on rides for fear of losing the earpiece - not fear of killing battery.