Garmin partners with Verizon for its first LTE fitness watch at CES 2019
The Vivoactive 3 Music gets stand-alone cellular, arriving early this year.
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The Vivoactive 3 Music with LTE is a Verizon exclusive.
There are a good handful of cellular-equipped smartwatches, but no really great LTE fitness trackers. Garmin has joined the cellular fold with a Verizon LTE-ready version of its Vivoactive 3 Music fitness watch, announced at CES 2019.
Garmin's "Vivoactive 3 Music - connected by Verizon" (as it's called) will use its LTE features largely for good: There are added safety features, including impact detection that can send an SOS much like the Apple Watch Series 4's fall detection. The LTE can also be used for downloading and playing music on Deezer and eventually Spotify. For those extras alone, provided the LTE extras aren't too expensive, it could be interesting. Fitbit doesn't make an LTE-equipped fitness watch yet.
The rest of the watch's features look to be similar to the Vivoactive 3 Music watch Garmin released last year. The LTE-connected model promises five days of battery life, or four hours when using the watch with GPS, music playback and LTE all turned on.
Price hasn't been announced yet, but the watch should be available in Q1 of this year. Expect a price north of the non-cellular Vivoactive 3 Music, which costs $300.
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