Defective Garmin Vivoactive - Welcome To The Wall Of Shame

If you travel as much as I do and are active (walking, hiking, golfing, swimming, etc.), a good activity monitor or smart watch is indispensable. I bought one from Amazon.com a little over a year ago and am I sorry I did.

The Garmin Vivoactive ($179) worked fine for about six months, monitoring sleep and the golf function worked OK. When walking (golf) or during travel (we walk a lot), it kept track of steps and was quite useful, but I use an elliptical trainer for much of my cardio and the Vivoactive was/is totally useless unless your arms are swinging.

After 5-6 months, it quit syncing sleep on a regular basis and a month or two later the golf function stopped working altogether. For golf, it give you basic yardages (front/center/back of green) and keeps score, but that's it. It has difficulty recognizing the golf course you have just arrived at, even with GPS, so you have to remember to sync it via Bluetooth with the Garmin Connect app on your phone, a real pain in the butt.

For the past several months the golf function, one of the primary reasons I bought it, quit working altogether. It can find the course, but when you click on the course you want to play, it starts "downloading data" and "transferring data", but then goes back to the main menu. Once on the course, it sometimes would start working, but FOR THE WRONG COURSE. The course I play has a short Par 4 2nd hole, but the Vivoactive lists the 2nd hole as a Par 5 and the yardage does not work at all.

This "smart" watch is a piece of junk. I wasted $179 for a digital watch when I could have paid $30 and gotten a better Casio with more functions than this thing has now. Garmin came out with the Vivoactive HR just weeks after I bought this garbage, but did not bother telling me that I could have bought an upgraded watch with a heart rate monitor for a little more if I waited a few days. I do not know if the Vivoactive HR is any better than the Vivoactive, but it could not be any worse.

The watch stopped working altogether in July 2017, dead as a doorknob. I will never buy a Garmin product again because of their lack of customer service and the junk they sell. DO NOT BUY A GARMIN VIVOACTIVE!

CombatCritic Gives Garmin and Their Vivoactive 1 Bomb Out Of 10 And A Spot On My "WALL OF SHAME" ... More Bombs Are Better!

One Bomb Equates To:

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Title: Travel Tech: Defective Garmin Vivoactive - Welcome To The Wall Of Shame

Key Words: Garmin, Vivoactive, watch, GPS, smart watch, golf, steps, activity, monitor, active, Portland, Oregon, CombatCritic, TravelValue, travel, value, product, business, review, Yelp

Translation for Civilians: FUBAR = "Fucked Up Beyond Any/All Repair"

Copyright 2018 - 3rd Wave Media Group, LLC and CombatCritic - All Rights Reserved

Even DETECTIVE Moto Could Not Solve The Case Of The DEFECTIVE Moto G4

Moto G (4th Gen.) Unlocked - White - 32GB

by Motorola

If you like to travel as much as I do, you know that when you travel internationally, you need an unlocked GSM (system used in most countries beside the U.S.) phone. With an unlocked GSM phone, you can buy a local SIM card and make calls, send texts, and surf the web at much lower prices than your carrier would charge while roaming abroad.

Well, I needed a new phone and had read good reviews about this phone on Amazon and well known tech websites, so being sick and tired of Apple’s products and their lack of customer focus, I decided to sell my iPhone (and soon my Mac) while I could still get $10-$20 for it and bought the Moto G4. Big mistake!

No because I regretted giving up my iPhone, which actually works most of the time, but because the Moto G4 is a piece of garbage. I wasted the first two days loading all of my apps, email accounts, and setting up the phone and it seemed to work ok. You have to swipe up across the screen to get to the password screen, but an easy swipe was not enough and I had to swipe and swipe and swipe even harder for the damn thing to open. If that were not irritating enough, the phone would randomly chime, turn itself on and show me what time it was. The screen is also far too big for my taste and once protected by the clunky case, it reminded me of the "bricks" (a walkie-talkie the size and weight of a brick) we used in the military.

Then, on the third day, the phone decided to turn itself off while I waiting for an important phone call. Then it turned itself back on, but would never boot with the screen turning itself on, then off, then on, then off, etc., etc., etc. I pushed and held the off button for nearly a minute and still nothing happened. After 5-15 minutes, it would finally boot, only to turn itself off again and so on and so forth. Having all of these major problems after just three days, I decided enough was enough.

I was not going to bother with tech support because the phone was obviously seriously flawed, so I went home and hit the "return" button on Amazon. Because I will not buy this model again, I had to also return the clunky case which actually was not that bad.

DO NOT BUY A MOTOROLA MOTO G4!

CombatCritic Gives The Motorola Moto G4 1 Bomb Out Of 10 And A Spot, Along With Apple, On My “WALL OF SHAME” … More Bombs Are Better!

One Bomb Equates To:

Read Reviews By CombatCritic:

Yelp - Elite '14/'15/'16/'17

Tabelog - Official Judge (Silver)

Zomato - #1 Ranked "Verified" Foodie





... And Don't Forget To Subscribe To TravelValue TV on YouTube

Title: Travel Tech: Even DETECTIVE Moto Could Not Solve The Case Of The DEFECTIVE Moto G4

Key Words: Travel Tech, Moto, defective Moto G4, G4, G, 4, Motorola, phone, android, smart, smartphone, CombatCritic, TravelValue, travel, value, product, review, Yelp, Amazon, amazon.com

Translation for Civilians: FUBAR = "Fucked Up Beyond All Repair"