About this deal
In terms of water resistance, that is something Garmin is always consistent with across its watches. If you’re after an excellent multisport watch that lasts days between charges, I’d personally stick to with Vivoactive range, and if you want a device that offers best-in-class smart features and solid sports tracking credentials, the Apple Watch is still the one to beat. Garmin Pay is also on board, but the supported banks across the UK, US and Australia certainly varies. From durable Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 to the sleek stainless-steel bezel and comfortable silicone band, this smartwatch is ready for anything. We often found ourselves accidentally starting an activity tracking session and it definitely pays to spend some time getting to know where everything lives on this watch.
Despite moving away from the very practical transflective displays of the most Garmin watches, though, I found the Venu’s screen easy to read in all conditions, which isn’t always the case with this type of smartwatch display. The Venu 2 lasts up to 11 days in smartwatch mode, which can be extended to 12 days in battery-saver mode. If you feel unsafe or if your watch senses that an incident has occurred, assistance and incident detection features can send your location to your emergency contacts.Beyond keeping count of your breaths during activities such as yoga, I’ve little idea what to do with this data, though. The Venu Sq promises to do a lot, which does cause some problems with the way you get around the watch and it takes some getting used to how things work and where things live. Things like Training Load and Status insights or a recovery advisor, which you’ll find on Garmin’s Forerunner watches don’t make the cut here. When it comes to fitness tracking, the newer Garmin Venu 2 is the more capable of the two, putting more information on your wrist. Both the Garmin Venu and Garmin Venu 2 have AMOLED displays, which are bright and vivid in all lighting conditions, but only the Venu 2 has an always-on function that makes it easier to view stats at a glance (at the expense of a little battery life).
Garmin does a pretty good job of getting the best of its smartwatch features into its smaller Venu watch. There’s no explanation either on the Venu or the Garmin Connect app of how to interpret this info, so I worry that it might be more confusing than useful for most users.Thoroughly rinse the device with fresh water after exposure to chlorine, salt water, sunscreen, cosmetics, alcohol, or other harsh chemicals.
as real users, posing a threat to a site’s security, so the site sometimes runs random security checks. day battery life in smartwatch mode, up to 19 hours in GPS mode and up to 7 hours in GPS mode with music. It lacks some of the Venu Sq's more advanced sports tracking features, but is well worth considering if you want something small and discreet. It says you can expect to get up to six days in smartwatch mode, six hours in GPS mode with music streaming and up to 14 hours using GPS only. Like the Venu, Garmin has employed a different way to navigate its colour touchscreen display-packing watches.
There are one or two notable omissions such as open-water swimming and a multisport mode; you’ll only find these on pricier Garmins like the Forerunner 945 and Fenix 6. If you already own a Garmin, it uses the same-style charging cable that’s pretty much present on most of its watches that have launched over the last few years, barring its fitness trackers and high-end and specialist watches. Michael is a freelance journalist who has covered consumer technology for over a decade and specializes in wearable and fitness tech. The Venu has GPS and optical heart-rate monitoring built-in, too, and if you’re a fitness newbie, you’ll benefit from its animated guided workouts and Garmin Coach. As such, the only real qualm I have with the screen is that it doesn’t add any functionality per se.