Garmin today announced a new portfolio of wearable and navigation accessories. On the watch side, the company unveiled two new smartwatches and a rugged GPS mapping watch.
The first, the Garmin vivoactive is billed as a “lightweight and ultra-thin GPS smartwatch.” It sports the usual activity tracking and notifications features found on most smartwatches. It can be customized with different watch faces, widgets, additional apps as well as interchangeable straps.
Helping users develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle, vívoactive captures more activities with GPS-enabled running, cycling, golfing, swimming and activity tracking apps. Vívoactive is comfortable for all day wear and smart notifications keep users connected with pressing work matters, family and friends.
The Garmin fenix 3 is a multisport GPS watch. It supports a wide range of sport activities from advanced fitness training, to cross-country and alpine skiing, snowboarding, as well as hiking, climbing and trail running. It sports a round face and a range of sensors such as a compass, barometer and altimeter. It will come in three variations: Silver, Gray and Sapphire which comes with a scratch-resistant sapphire lens. Like the Garmin vivoactive, it can be customized in a number of ways.
The Garmin epix is a slightly different take on the concept of the smartwatch. Billed as a rugged GPS mapping watch, its 1.4-inch colour touchscreen display can display shaded relief basemap. Maps are delivered via a subscription service and are supported with 8GB of onboard storage for additional maps. An omni-directional EXO steel antenna with GPS and GLONASS support provides the location services.
It also comes with an array of sensors including altimeter, barometer and compass. It also supports additional sensors such as ANT+ heart rate sensors and Tempe temperature sensors.
With a full menu of outdoor and navigation features, epix allows users to not only track where they’ve been, but plan for what’s ahead, right from their wrist.
All three watches run on Garmin’s Connect IQ app platform. With it, users can download new apps and additional features to further customize their watch much as can be done with other operating systems such as Android Wear.
The Garmin vivoactive will sell for US$249.99 or US$299.99 with bundled heart monitor. The The silver and gray Garmin Fenix 3 models will sell for US$499.99 or US$549.99 with bundled wireless heart rate strap. The premium Sapphire model will sell for US$599.99. The Garmin epix will sell for US$549.99 or US$599.99 with detailed topographic maps pre-installed. All three watches will be available later this quarter.
Source : Garmin