When Garmin first launched the vivoactive 3 Music, an updated version of its vivoactive 3 GPS smartwatch, music lovers were excited and then a bit disappointed that the only supported service at launch was iHeartRadio and later on, Deezer. Yes, you could side load actual music tracks, but most of us listen to music streaming services anyway. Finally, half a year later, you can now listen to Spotify as the stand-alone app finally arrives on the music-friendly smartwatch.
The only catch to this news is that you have to be a Spotify Premium subscriber. That’s because the smartwatch relies on the app’s offline storage. When you create a playlist on your Spotify Android app, you will then have to synchronize it with the local storage in the smartwatch. They will be transferred over WiFi so that it is supposedly faster.
What makes the vivoactive 3 Music better than its predecessor is that it has enough storage to save 500 songs. This means you can leave your smartphone at home when doing your run or workout and just rely on the internal storage on your smartwatch to play music throughout your activity.
Aside from creating a manual playlist, you can also rely on automatically generate playlists based on Spotify’s algorithm. They will get music from the workouts playlist as well as your Discover Weekly and the latest releases. You can also save podcasts on it. And if you like seeing album art, they will also show up on your smartwatch.
The newer vivoactive 3 Music LTE, which has an integrated Verizon 4G LTE modem, can be used for Spotify but not for streaming over LTE. If you don’t have the smartwatch yet, you’ll have to shell out $299.99. That’s still more affordable than the other Garmin devices of course.
VIA: SlashGear
