Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music brings the tunes to your wrist

After debuting music support with the Forerunner 645 Music earlier this year, the Vivoactive 3 Music is Garmin's latest sports watch to get some audio playing love.

Essentially an upgraded version of the standard Vivoactive 3 released at the back of last year, the 3 Music will now let you store music on another of its watches as well as enjoy some offline syncing support from select music streaming services.

Wareable verdict: Garmin Vivoactive 3 review

Garmin says that the on-device music storage allows for up to 500 songs, while users can download offline playlists from their computer, iHeartRadio and, coming soon, Deezer. Once music is loaded onto the wrist and a pair of Bluetooth headphones are connected, everything is ready to go.

There is some tweaking the design department with a glossier, chemically strengthened glass finish, which sees a departure change from the metallic look featured on the Vivoactive 3. You do still get those interchangeable straps, with additional bands setting you back $29.99.

The inclusion of music helps Garmin compete more seriously with the space's bigger guns, such as Apple, Fitbit and Samsung, but it's not the only feature that's packed inside. As was the case with the standard Vivoactive 3, Garmin Pay, GPS, heart rate monitoring and multiple sports tracking modes are all involved here, while the ever-growing Garmin Connect IQ store give you the ability to download additional widgets, watch faces, data fields and apps.

There's advanced sleep tracking on the way too, which takes into account factors like heart rate variability to improve accuracy, and this will be available for older watches too. But this won't be ready in time for the Vivoactive 3 Music's launch.

Interestingly, Garmin claims that the Vivoactive 3 Music will also retain the week-long battery life we experienced through the original model, though we suspect this will reduce slightly the more you hammer the tunes. The same is true of the life when using GPS with music, which Garmin places around five hours - the same as with the Forerunner 645 Music, which we found to be on the money.

The Vivoactive 3 Music will set you back , making it an extra for the luxury of music support over the Vivoactive 3. It also comes in at cheaper than the Forerunner 645 Music, so if you can live without the more advanced metrics and want that music, it may well have some appeal.