I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I’ve yet to find a wearable that I enjoy wearing both during my work day and whilst exercising. I find that the majority of wrist based wearables are clunky, ugly and uncomfortable. I’m happily working my way through the offerings from various companies, with the goal of finding the ideal one for me.

I feel I should state that I am not a sporty person. I go running a few times a week. This is to get away from screens (I know, I know) more so than training for a 10k or a marathon. This is why I’m slightly fussy about the wearable that I commit to. I want something that’s comfortable and not too clunky on my wrist, but that also presents information in a digestible way.

I’m basically a pain in the arse.

Now that this has been established and agreed upon, we can move on to the review. This is the Garmin Vivomove Classic. 

Straight away, you see that this looks more like a traditional watch rather than a sporty wearable. I was intrigued to see how this sits on the wrist and if it'd be comfortable enough to wear at night, as it does have sleep monitoring technology built in. 

 

As you can see, it sits neatly on the wrist and doesn't feel heavy or awkward at all. The design is very simplistic and I like it a lot. There's two curved lines either side of the face. The one on the right identifies steps taken and the line on the right lets you know when you need to move; called the 'move bar'. 

The watch pairs to the Garmin Connect app and illustrates the various pieces of information in a clear and digestible fashion. 

So far, so good. 

The first time I wore it running was interesting. As it's very light, it didn't get in my way at all, but I was worried about the white material getting dirty and found the material to be a bit gross (the technical term) after sweating. 

The material didn't get dirty at all and I just wiped it down with an anti-bac wipe, which made me feel much better about the 'gross' element. Next up was the sleep test. 

In the interests of research I wore the Vivomove to bed every night for a week and really didn't like it. It is very light, but it's still a large watch face sitting on your wrist in the middle of the night. I stopped wearing it to bed after that week. 

The bottom line with this one is that it's one of the nicer looking wearables on the market at the moment. It's incredibly easy to use and understand. It ticks most of the boxes for me, aside from the sleep issue. It's the closest thing I've found to my ideal wearable, but the search continues. 

The Garmin Vivomove Classic is available from €174.