Garmin Announces Vivoactive 3 Music Smartwatch with 4G LTE and GPS

• Garmin announced its first ever 4G LTE smartwatch today in partnership with Verizon Wireless.
• The smartwatch comes with unique safety features like incident detection and location sharing.
• The Vivoactive 3 starts at $299.99 and will be available within five to eight weeks.

Garmin has been one of the biggest players in the smartwatch and fitness band market, but the brand had failed to keep up with its competitors in the 4G LTE segment. That is set to change with the company releasing its first ever 4G LTE smartwatch – the Vivoactive 3 LTE.

Garmin’s Vivoactive 3 is capable of cellular connectivity, music playback and more. Thanks to its 4G LTE connectivity, users can perform a lot of functions without needing a smartphone to be paired with it. Garmin promises up to five days of usage when using the Vivoactive in smartwatch mode and up to four hours of usage with LTE, GPS and music playback active.

There are a number of security features available on Garmin’s new offering as well with an incident detection feature that notifies emergency contacts whenever an impact or fall is detected. Users can manually trigger the feature by holding the smartwatch button for five seconds as well. Even though the company is known for its health-focused features, a cardiograph similar to the Apple Watch is not available. Garmin revealed that any collected user data will not be shared with third-parties, but the data may be used by the company to improve existing and new features.

Garmin Livetrack is available on the smartwatch to share location data with family and friends at all times. The Vivoactive 3 is by no means a new product. The original Vivoactive 3 was released last year without any 4G LTE capabilities. The addition of 4G LTE allows the installation of standalone apps as well as wireless headphone compatibility without needing a smartphone. Some of the new features will be exclusive to Verizon users only, and the product will be available by the end of February or early March.

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