Garmin introduces its first dedicated fitness tracker with a built-in heart-rate sensor

Garmin is continuing its yearly product refresh. A week after announcing three new GPS running watches, the company on Tuesday debuted a new fitness tracker and its first smart scale.

The Vivosmart HR is a smart fitness tracker with a built-in heart-rate sensor. It tracks the number of steps you take, distance traveled, calories burned, floors climbed, activity intensity and your sleep at night. The always-on touchscreen will also display notifications for things calls, text messages, emails and social-media alerts from your Android or iOS device.

New this year is the built-in optical heart-rate sensor, which will measure your heart rate continuously throughout the day, similar to the Fitbit Charge HR . This helps to more accurately determine calories burned and measure sleep data. Garmin previously used a sensor from Mio, which proved to be quite accurate. With the Vivosmart HR, however, the company instead opted for a heart-rate sensor that was developed in-house.

Garmin has said that the tracker will last up to five days on a single charge. It's also water-resistant up to 50 meters, so you can wear it in the shower and pool.

Also announced was the Index Smart Scale. The connected scale supports up to 16 user profiles and measures weight, body mass index, body fat percentage, water percentage, muscle mass and bone mass. All of this information can then be uploaded to Garmin's Connect platform over Wi-Fi, where it can be viewed on your computer, or Android or iOS device.

Availability

Preorders are set to begin for the Vivosmart HR today. The tracker will be available online and in stores on November 1 for $150 in the US. International release and pricing information wasn't available at the time of writing, but the US price converts to about £100 in the UK and AU$205 in Australia.

Meanwhile, the Index Smart Scale will be available sometime November in both black and white models for $150 (about £100,AU$205).