New update arrives for budget Garmin smartwatch with Morning Report and Incident Detection improvements

The Vivoactive 6 remains one of the cheapest smartwatches that Garmin sells (curr. $299 on Amazon). Only second to the Forerunner 70 (curr. $249 on Amazon), the Vivoactive 6 is now almost 18 months old, having been released in April 2025.

Nonetheless, the 42 mm smartwatch remains at the forefront of Garmin's Beta Program. For instance, the company has delivered Beta 18.12, Beta 18.14 and Beta 18.19. Now, it has brought the Vivoactive 6 onto Beta 18.23. However, the new firmware contains a truncated changelog compared to the equivalent offered to the Venu X1.

Specifically, Beta 18.23 brings 10 changes to the Vivoactive 6. Even then, two of these concern updates, including v4.30 for Garmin Connect Mobile (GCM) translations. Additionally, Garmin claims to have refined Morning Report and Incident Detection functionality by eliminating device crashes and resets. The same applies to Evening Report too, which would not always time out on older builds.

Beta 18.23 is available to download now as a free update. Seemingly, one must trigger its download manually by navigating through the Vivoactive 6's main menu to Settings, System and Software Update before selecting 'Check for Updates'. The full changelog for Beta 18.23 is as follows:

• Fixes an issue that causes the device to crash during an incident detection.
• Fixes an issue that causes the morning and evening report to not time out.
• Fixes an issue that could cause the device to reset when saving an activity.
• Fixes an issue that could cause the device to reset when viewing the morning report.
• Fixes an issue that could result in pace/speed dropouts, especially during interval training.
• Fixes an issue where silent mode could fail to be honoured during the activity focus mode.
• Fixes an issue where the device will reboot sporadically.
• Fixes other minor issues.
• GCM Translations - 4.30
• Updates translations.