Garmin Venu Review: The perfect smartwatch for an active lifestyle

The Garmin Venu released last October 2019 has been winning the hearts of many with its stunning new AMOLED display. If you’re passionate about pursuing an active lifestyle, you would be delighted to see how the latest additions can teach you a lot of new things in a size that can fit your wrist. The Venu has a GPS and the broadest available range of 24/7 health monitoring features with a battery life of 5 days. It’s the first smartwatch that differs from the common LCD screens that have embellished its previous watches. It has the best display that Garmin has offered on fitness watches to date.

Design and display

The Venu has a unisex sized 43mm case made of fiber polymer making it lighter (it weighs only 46.3g). It also has thinner bezels made of stainless steel giving it a more refined and premium feel compared to the Vivoactive 4. It’s available in black with hardware, light sand with rose gold hardware, granite blue with silver hardware, and black with slate hardware. Its touchscreen display with a size of 1.2” (30.44mm) and resolution of 390×390 pixels, offers vibrant colors and deep blacks thanks to the AMOLED technology. This has made texts more visible and easier to read in between workouts.

Navigating through the interface wasn’t as user-friendly as I expected but I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to it. You swipe up or down to see your data, a tap to expand menus, then use the physical button on the bottom right to exit. However, there is also a shortcut to one screen when you swipe left to right. That is why it’s important to arrange the features in order, otherwise you’d be going through a lot of swiping! You can also adjust the touchscreen sensitivity, although low might feel a bit too slow. It’s a steep learning curve if you’ve used other Garmin products.

Performance

As a Garmin watch, it’s always been known for its GPS features that’s now been paired with 24/7 health and wellness monitors. For sports and activity tracking, the top button on the right brings you to a list of pre-set activities you can customize. These activities include indoor and outdoor walking/running/biking/row, treadmill, elliptical, strength, floor climb, stair-stepper, swimming, cardio, golf, ski, snowboard, XC ski, SUP, breath work, gymnastics, martial arts, and yard work.

The tracking features of Venu for these sports overtake Apple in terms of the metrics. When used Venu at the same time as my Fenix 6, I observed an identical measure of my heart rate as I worked out in the gym and did a fartlek on a manual treadmill. There was however a slight discrepancy with the calories burned. On top of that, there’s also an automatic rep tracker for strength training which is very useful for me when I tend to lose count sometimes. However, it can also be a hit or miss because of some inconsistencies which may be connected to other motion sensors but you can still edit it through the Connect app. 

Animated Workouts for Yoga, Pilates, and Strength Training.

With Venu’s AMOLED screen, it brought workouts to life with 40+ on-device animated workouts. There are easy to follow workout programs that demonstrate each proper form and technique right on your wrist. For yoga, you can choose between three workouts namely Improve Flexibility Now, Sun Salutations, and Wake Up, Energize! You can also “create your own” and customize workouts to make your own program. 

Daily monitors

On top of tracking workouts, Venu also continuously track steps, calories burned, heart rate that abnormal heart rate alerts, stress level with relax reminders, body battery that monitors energy levels to help schedule workouts, rest, and sleep, respiration, pulse ox, VO2 Max, breath work and hydration. However, with these monitors, Venu still is behind Apple when it comes to health metrics.

The newest breathwork app which is considered as an activity is very useful for me or for someone who constantly lives their life on the fast lane. There are options with varying lengths— coherence, relax and focus, and tranquility. (Show photos)

Smart Features when on the go

It has been a standard expectation for many to have a smartwatch that provides all-day convenience and connection. You can receive notifications for incoming calls, text messages, social media updates, calendar reminders, and more. Only difference is, only Android users can reply to messages. Aside from notifications, you can also play music by downloading songs which supports Spotify and play it on your earphones. There is also a safety and tracking incident detection and assistance that can send real-time location to emergency contacts.

Garmin pay with Transit makes everything a lot more convenient with contactless payment solutions

Battery Life

With all these features such as the 24/7 health monitors and the new AMOLED technology, you would expect a shorter life span like Apple watch which is limited to 24 hours. However, the Venu still powers up to last 5 days in smartwatch mode, but shortens to 6 hours with GPS and music.

The Garmin Venu priced at P23,595, makes it cheaper than the Apple Watch Series 5 only by a few hundreds (P23,990)