Garmin’s Vivomove Trend blends high-tech smartwatch essentials, plus all of the brand’s excellent health and fitness tracking capabilities, with a desirable hybrid smartwatch style. It does this by incorporating a cleverly disguised pair of screens on a face with a traditional watch handset, so at a glance, it looks exactly like a regular, non-smart watch. Tap the glass, and that all changes.
We were impressed with Garmin’s hidden screen technology on the Vivomove Sport, but the Vivomove Trend takes it a step further by doubling the amount of visible screen, rather than just having a single screen on the lower half of the face. The Garmin branding has been moved to the 9 o’clock mark, and screens now occupy the top and bottom half of the face. It’ll mean more information can be seen at one time.
Don’t worry, those physical hands automatically move out of the way when the screens are active, and because there aren’t any buttons on the case, you interact with the watch by tapping and swiping the glass. The 40mm watch has a stainless steel bezel, domed glass, and a silicone band, plus it comes in several different colors (including black, gold and ivory, cream and grey, and silver and grey).
The battery inside is expected to last for five days before needing a recharge, which interestingly can be performed using a standard Qi wireless charging pad. This is a very helpful new feature, as it stops you from being entirely reliant on a proprietary wired charging cable.
The Vivomove Trend is compatible with both Android and iOS. It will show notifications from your phone, plus it works with Garmin Pay, the company’s mobile payment system. A heart rate sensor on the back of the watch provides both heart rate and blood oxygen data, plus it can track sleep, menstrual and pregnancy cycles, and stress too. This is in addition to Garmin’s excellent Body Battery metric, and all the usual activity-tracking features. It relies on your phone for GPS tracking, though.
You can order the Garmin Vivomove Trend hybrid smartwatch now. Choose the black or silver models, and it’ll cost $270, while the gold versions cost $300. This makes it more expensive than the Vivomove Sport and puts it in competition with the Apple Watch SE 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5. Unlike Fitbit and some other competing products, Garmin does not charge a subscription fee to use all its health tracking features.
