Garmin Venu, GPS Smartwatch with Bright Touchscreen Display, Features Music, Body Energy Monitoring, Animated Workouts, Pulse Ox Sensors and More, Light Sand with Rose Gold Hardware, Brilliant for fitness
Generally a good all round product. Only discovering half of what this watch can actually do. Everything apart from the sleep cycle is reasonably accurate. And works incredibly well under waterhowever my biggest gripe is the materials used to make the watch. Both the screen and watch surround are showing more scratches and general wear after several months than my old apple watch series 1 did after several years, which is unacceptable for a premium product.
Bought this for my other half as a present, has some great features especially the workouts with the digital trainer demonstrating each exercise. He hasnt used it to it’s full potential yet but i’m sure he will.
I’ve really enjoyed using my old garmin vivoactive 3 watch for the last couple of years. Magazine described as ‘100% accurate’ when they revealed how inaccurate a lot of other fitness watches were, and i’ve used mine a lot for cycling and walking, as well as telling the time. This new venu is pretty similar, but has extra functions, like music, and of course a new amoled display. The new display is crisp and bright and colourful. Before it was merely functional. It’s quite a big upgrade, is highly customisable, and in ‘always on’ mode it displays a simplified version of (some) watch faces all the time, except during your ‘do not disturb’ periods if you set those (like when you’re asleep), or when you’re not wearing it, which it detects. The display settings are a bit confusing – it’s taken me a few days to get it how i like it, but i really like the always on function. There’s an auto brightness feature too, but it seems a bit hit and miss. To wake the screen up fully you can press a button, or double tap on the screen, but you have to tap quite hard.
Bought this to help me regain some fitness after having surgery. It’s worse than the wife as it keeps reminding me to move and get started then rewards me when i meet targets. Lovely clear screen with plenty of exercise options with instruction video to guide you through.
I have recently upgraded from the garmin vívosmart hr as i was looking for a fitness tracker that looks more like a watch. I am very please with the all the features of the watch and the ability to change the watch face to suit your needs is a great feature. The big clear display makes it easy to read while exercising. The garmin app is also great and links to my fitness pal app so i can check my calorie intake etc. The battery life is ok but does depend on how you set the watch up based on the setting i have the watch will last around 3-4 days. I would recommend this watch.
Overviewi have long been a loyal user of running watches produced by garmin and my most recent (and previously much loved) watch is this garmin vivo active 3. I have also road tested the polar vantage m, the polar ignite recently and now this new garmin venu. I typically run 50km to 60km per week (combination of trails and on road) and also use the watches for multi-sports such as weight training, spinning etc. My review below contains the detail but in summary i absolutely love this watch, its functionality and its high quality screen are exactly what was needed in this now quite crowded sports/activity tracking watch area. When combined with the garmin app you really do have a 5* product which will help with monitoring health and performance. Set up:- you can set up the watch with or without the garmin app. It is recommended to use the app and therefore i did (i also love analyising my fitness data so a watch which isn’t syncing with an app is no fun for me). – the watch was easy to set up and both the watch and app were intuitive to use. Charging- the watch arrived with 52% battery power. It comes with a usb charger (note: no mains plug, you will either need to charge via a laptop or a mains to usb charger).
I upgraded from a vivoactive 3 to the venu and i must say i’m happy i did, the battery life for me has been excellent, i go to the gym 4-5 days a week and only have to charge it twice during the week which i do whilst in the shower, accuracy is. Accurate, heart rate etc is spot on what the gym equipment states has no issue with counting reps and so on. Gps is bang on the money with accuracy toogarmin pay works a treatscreen is really niceit’s comfy and don’t notice it on most times.
Key specs for Garmin Venu, GPS Smartwatch with Bright Touchscreen Display, Features Music, Body Energy Monitoring, Animated Workouts, Pulse Ox Sensors and More, Light Sand with Rose Gold Hardware:
- Make sure this fits
by entering your model number. - Beautiful bright AMOLED display and up to five-day battery life in smartwatch mode up to six hours in GPS and music mode
- The broadest range of all-day health monitoring features keeps track of your energy levels respiration menstrual cycle stress sleep estimated heart rate and more
- Easily download songs to your watch (may require premium subscription) including playlists from Spotify or Deezer and connect with wireless headphones (sold separately) for phone-free listening
- Record all the ways to move with more than 20 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps including yoga running pool swimming and more
- Get easy-to-follow animated cardio strength yoga and Pilates workouts right on your watch screen
Comments from buyers
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Garmin at its best plus a AMOLED screen = the perfect device for monitoring health and performance
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One fatal flaw.
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Solid watch, fantastic screen
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I can’t really fault this watch from garmin. The strap is really light weight and looks great. The display is stunning and you can immediately see the quality just turning it on, the battery life is good and will last all day. I use it mostly for tracking my runs and the gps tracking does a good job. If using oxygen saturation you do need to have it on firmly but if you do have it on it will significantly reduce your battery life. It also keeps track of your bmi, periods and sleep etc giving you a lot of information in one place. The app is easy to use, i wish there were more watch faces available but all in all i love it.
I wanted a sports watch with a good gps that could handle running swimming cycling and golf. It needed not to be too large on my wrist and look smart.
I think this is worth stating from the outset, because it does pretty much everything else. Most ‘smart’ watches tend to piggyback on your phone’s smartness, and are left floundering when out of range, but the venu is plenty smart without any mobile assistance. Straight out of the box you press the top right (a) button to boot it up (about 3-4 seconds) and then it displays the correct time and date immediately, with the default ink splash face moving languidly across the bright screen – impressive and beautiful. Next, you’ll want to connect it to your smartphone; this is an absolute breeze – turn on bluetooth and location on your mobile and follow the pairing instructions, this takes seconds and you’re ready to go. Once paired, you’ll receive text messages, calls, calendar notifications, emails and weather (hence the location permission). At this point you’ll want to download two apps: garmin connect (for advanced setup, data transfer and updates) and connect iq (for downloading watch faces, apps etc. )use the garmin connect app to finalise the setup of your watch by inputting your height, weight, gender and other miscellaneous bits and bobs so that your venu is able to terrify you with heart rate stats and the like. Holding the bottom right button (b) will bring up a plethora of settings screens with the first option enabling you to choose your watch face – there are digital and analogue options and all the installed faces are editable (change the colour and position of digits and hands, choose the data you wish displayed) and right at the end of the line there’s a green circle – here you can create your own custom face from the templates available, so there are literally hundreds of permutations without needing to download new ones. Your venu will light up when tilted towards your face, which is way cool but note: it will only do this if you have the do not disturb setting (dnd) turned off, this can be achieved by long-pressing the ‘a’ button for the main control menu and hit the green crescent moon icon.
Garmin has done a fantastic job this year of releasing new products. The new garmin venu does somthing i thought wasnt possible, it has me considering leaving the apple watch behind. The new garmin actually puhes the envilope with improvements whereas the apple watch series 5(my current go to ) kind of didnt. Yeah always on display, doesnt really add much though. Ive tested this thoroughly againt my wastch series 5, and its a tough call. Battery – athe apple watch (i refer to the s5 when i compare) aparently has around 18 hours of general use. In comparrison the garmin claims upto 5 days. And to be honesst thats not too far off the mark compared to the numbers i managed. Which when you are used to haveing to charge your watch every night, is huge. The use with gps enabled or music is similar, so only really a huge disparity when in general use.
Good features:screen – the standout feature and the main reason to go for this watch rather than any other garmin offeringsbattery life – surprisingly good (4-5 days continuous use without always on display) and in any case it charges up really quicklygps tracking – rock solid and finds signal very quickly. It probably gives you at least 10 hours without music. Appearance – looks very goodmobile app – excellent for data vultures like meconnectivity – no problem staying connected to my smartphoneweight – very light and comfortable to wearactivity tracking – all aspects work well, including plausible step and floor countingpulse ox tracking – not sure what the point is but it is a lot of funnot so good featuressleep tracking – doesn’t do a good job, as it thinks you are sleeping all the time you are in bed. However, this is common to all garmin devices. The fitbit does a much better job here. This means that the body battery reading which is based partly on sleep data is highly suspect toonotifications – ok but doesn’t display icons consistently and there’s not much possibility of interaction. The fitbit does a better job hereno microphone or speaker – personally i don’t care but it might be an issue for somescreen bezel a tad on the large side though not noticeable if watch face with dark background selectedprice – high but you are getting a very good watch for your moneyi’ve owned many smart and not so smart watches, including garmin, pebble, huawei, samsung, ticwatch and fitbit offerings. This is the best one i’ve owned. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, the good massively outweighs the not so good and therefore 5 stars is justified. Possible (cheaper) alternatives:fitbit versa 2 – also very good display and sleep tracking is excellent.
I’ve previously owned the vivoactive 3. When the vivoactive 4 came along i had no doubt whatsoever that i was going to get it. Then i discovered the venu which was marketed as a vivoactive 4 with a better screen. The one (tiny) gripe i always had with my v3 was that the screen colours were not very good and quite flat (even though it’s very good in bright light). Very deep colours on a 390 x 390 amoled display (vs the 240 x 240 on the v3). The watch has a great number of features and options, but most of them will be familiar to garmin users. The body battery is a neat feature, as is the pulse ox, even though i haven’t had the chance to test this thoroughly yet. I find the device quite responsive and the battery life (so far) seems very decent. The venu is very light but looks and feels like a premium product. One difference with the v3 (in the v3’s favour) is that the venu is doesn’t have an ‘always on’ feature, i. You have to double tap the screen or press the top button to view. Not an issue though and i can see why they’ve done that as it would be a huge drain on the battery. All in all i’m very happy with my purchase.
A month or 2 in and its become easier to use, intimidating at first but used all the on line help to make it easy to use. Battery life better than expected, connected to strava which give additional info.
Battery life is great, usually between 4-6 days depending on what features are activated. Garmin ecosystem is great, lots of apps but still can be better and i really hope more developers will make use of the great amoled display. Accuracy depends on whether you’re tracking 24-7 or activities, in which case it can vary a little. All in all, a great watch to have.
The post Garmin Venu, GPS Smartwatch with Bright Touchscreen Display, Features Music, Body Energy Monitoring, Animated Workouts, Pulse Ox Sensors and More, Light Sand with Rose Gold Hardware,
Brilliant for fitness
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