It’s been a bit over three months since the Garmin Venu came out, and since even before the announcement day it’s been on my left wrist – day in and day out. It’s definitely been one heck of a long review cycle, largely elongated due to it being in the middle of indoor trainer review season. So these last few weeks I’ve been circling back to getting some of these leftover wearables reviews knocked out, as seen with the Apple Watch Series 5 last week.
The watch is notable because it’s Garmin’s first wearable with an AMOLED display, aka: A pretty screen. Beyond that it mirrors all the same new features as the Vivoactive 4, with music capabilities coming standard now (including both Spotify and Amazon Music offline access), as well as a pile of new features related to other workout types like yoga & Pilates with animated step by step workout move instructions, 24×7 respiration rate tracking, estimated sweat loss, and finally hydration tracking.
Within this review I’ll cover all the good, the bad, and the little bits of ugly (spoiler: there’s really not much ugly). Just as I always do. Also, this media loaner unit will finally get shipped back to Garmin, as I’ve already got my own unit I ordered. Just the way I roll. If you find this review useful go forth and hit up some of the links at the end of the post. With that, let’s get cookin’.
What’s New:
The Venu is a progression of the Vivoactive lineup. It and the Vivoactive 4 share virtually every feature, with the only differentiating aspects of the Venu being those that are specifically display driven. So such things like higher quality animations and better quality watch faces. In discussing the features with Garmin, there are no non-display associated features that are in Venu that aren’t in Vivoactive 4, or vice versa.
The other thing to note is that previously there were separate editions of the Vivoactive lineup – one for music (e.g. Vivoactive 3 Music), and one for non-music (Vivoactive 3); now that’s all under a single umbrella with music – whether you have Venu or Vivoactive 4. On the flip-side, you now have two different sized units, and things cost more. The pricing is as follows:
US Pricing:
Venu: $399
Vivoactive 4/4S US Pricing: $349
EU Pricing:
Venu: €349 & €379 depending on bezels/buttons
Vivoactive 4S: €279 & €299 depending on bezels/buttons
Vivoactive 4: €299 & €329 depending on bezels/buttons
With that, let’s talk all the new offerings in relation to the past model – the Vivoactive 3:
– Music now standard: Including Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and iHeartRadio
– Venu features 1.2” AMOLED display: Super vibrant, lots of colors
– Venu also adds ‘always-on’ mode despite AMOLED display
– Added ambient light sensor tied to new display
– Added new ‘Live’ Watch faces with small animations
– Added secondary button to side: Used for lap, back, menu access
– Added hydration tracking to manually track liquid intake with widget and app
– Added Estimated Sweat Loss post-workout
– Added Respiration Rate for all-day and sleep metrics (and certain workout types)
– Added Breathwork Exercises (way different than simple breathing stress features)
– Added Workout Animation functionality: For Strength, Cardio, Yoga, Pilates
– Added new Yoga and Pilates Built-in workouts: Includes step by step animations
– Added ability to design Yoga workouts in Garmin Connect: Complete with step by step pose animations
– Added ability to design Pilates workouts in Garmin Connect: Complete with step by step animations
– Added PulseOx for 24×7 blood oxygen tracking
– Revamped health stat widget akin to latest Fenix/Forerunner models
– Switched to Sony GPS chipset like remainder of Garmin 2019 unit lineup
– Switched to Garmin Elevate V3 optical HR sensor
– Connect IQ Developers will have access to create live watch faces
– Battery life at 5 days standby, and 6 hours of GPS+Music
As you can see, the vast majority of new features on the watch are far less focused on the swim/bike/run athlete that’s more common in Garmin’s Forerunner and Fenix lineup, and instead focused on a bit more of the lifestyle athlete that may be more varied in their day to day activity – which to be fair, was always the strength/target of the Vivoactive lineup, as this is within that family.
For those not familiar with the Vivoactive lineup, here’s all the baseline features found on both the Venu & Vivoactive 4:
– GPS tracking of activities (no reliance on phone)
– Workout tracking of range of sports including running, cycling, pool swimming, skiing, golf, gym and many more (full list down below)
– Structured workout support via downloadable workouts
– Quick on the fly intervals
– Training calendar support
– Optical heart rate sensor in watch
– 24×7 tracking of steps, stairs, calories, and distance
– Smartphone notifications from iOS/Android
– Garmin Pay for contactless payments
Since release, many of these new features have also worked their way into the Fenix 6 lineup, and some also the FR945 and FR245 (as recently as an update today in fact – for respiration rate). As is common with the Garmin ecosystem, I would not expect any of these new features to make their way back to the Vivoactive 3. Of course, bits like the screen are hardware driven. I would, however, expect that the Venu and Vivoactive 4 will stay largely lock-step in their firmware updates/features.
The Basics:
If you’re looking for a complete user interface overview, simply hit the Play button below. I go through everything from the basics of activity tracking to guided yoga workouts to music and payments. Plus much more.
There’s no better place to start than the display. After all, it’s why you’re paying $50 more than the Garmin Vivoactive 4. The Venu’s AMOLED display means that it now at least looks the part of a higher-end smartwatch. Sure, Garmin has had color displays of varying levels for years, but this is similar to what you’d see with a Fitbit Versa or Samsung watch. The Apple Watch displays appear a bit higher quality (and certainly a higher refresh rate), but without detailed specs of all of them that may be more perception than reality.
The key change we’ve seen in 2019 though from almost all watchmakers is shifting to always-on AMOLED displays. Previously, most AMOLED displays were on-demand, which means they turned off when not looking at them. But this year we saw Fitbit, Apple, and Garmin – join Samsung in that department.
Still, atop paying more cash for this display you’re also paying a battery life price. Garmin claims 2-3 days in always-on mode, and upwards of 5-7 days without the always-on display. In three months of usage I’d agree with those numbers – they nail it. I’d routinely make it about 2.5-2.8 days (inclusive of usually 1-2 workouts) before Venu would die, when in always-on mode. While with the always-on option turned off I’d be pretty close to covering a week.
As part of the higher-end display they have new ‘live watch faces’, which are mostly shortly animations that iterate each time you raise your wrist, just like below:
And then, after the animation is complete, when in always-on mode it’ll continue to show the time atop blackness:
However, where Garmin is way behind here is the number of live/active watch faces they have: A whopping four in total. Of course, unlike Apple, Garmin allows 3rd party developers to create watch faces. And there are hundreds – if not thousands, available all for free within Garmin’s Connect IQ App store:
Still, I’d really like to see Garmin make more live watch faces. The NYC short time-lapses watch face I’ve been using is nice, but there’s zero reason Garmin can’t go to some stock libraries and get time-lapses for any of the major cities around the world and release a new one each month.
Now while Garmin leverages the term ‘Always-on’, they do cheat a little bit if you use the default settings. When you hit your evening ‘Do not disturb’ settings (such as midnight to 7AM), it’ll actually turn off the display entirely. Note, this is optional – but it is the default. That’s fine though, as it saves a bit of battery life at a time I don’t really need it. I can simply tap a button to see the time at 4AM when the baby wakes up again (as was the case this morning).
Now – another change here compared to the Vivoactive 3 is that the Venu has two buttons. Previously it just had one. This is of course in addition to the touchscreen. I find the two button shifts a huge upgrade. I was never a fan of the singular button design. But the two buttons are spot-on for their purpose, especially in sports (to have a dedicated lap vs start/stop button).
Moving along, like most other Garmin wearables you’ve got various widgets for displaying various stats (and these can be extended too with 3rd party apps). For example here’s the Garmin Health Stats one, which allows you to see things like heart rate, stress, body battery, and breathing rate in one quick glance:
Or the ‘My Day’ widget, which summaries most of your basic fitness metrics:
You can dive into a pile of these down below in my little mini gallery of them:
Anyway, back to the basics and new features. There’s the new hydration tracker widget. The way this works is that you define three ‘vessels’ (or cups, as you see them), and each of these are basically custom containers. So Cup #1 could be an 18oz bottle, cup #2 could be an 8oz cup, and cup #3 could be whatever else you want. Anytime you tap on that cup it automatically adds the appropriate amount of tracked liquid. Presumably it’s water, but perhaps you’re going for an extensive bar hopping adventure in Ireland and really want to know how many pints you’ve drunk.
All of this can be customized to metric instead of cups, by the way. And you can add water within Garmin Connect Mobile and it should merge together (right now that’s not working for me). The whole point of this is largely water tracking. For those trying to lose weight, one of the best ways to support that is drinking lots of water (for a variety of reasons that Google can help on). You’ll see your goal progress (as defined in settings on the app) around the outside, and a little animation when you achieve it.
If configured, the Venu will remind you every 2 hours (10AM, 12PM, 2PM, etc…) to log how much you’ve drank. For me, I’ve become an expert dismisser of this notification. I could just disable it, but I’m lazy.
Garmin is approaching this feature much like the female menstrual tracking functionality they added this past spring in that it’s technically a Connect IQ widget that’s pre-loaded onto the Venu/Vivoactive 4 watches, but expect to see it expanded quickly.
Next, there’s the new breathwork features. Now, unlike typical “slowly breath in and out” features we’ve seen on various watches, this is at an entirely different level of breathwork, often called mindful breathing. For you endurance athletes, think of this like the mother of all structured workouts. And in fact, you’ll find it under the workouts section:
It’s here you can choose a specific breathing technique:
Once you’ve done that, it has all the steps listed. Seriously, some of these have repeats that list ‘35x’. Imagine if you had a track workout that said ‘Repeat 35 times’. Yikes. And then it’ll guide you through those steps, with the count-down timer around the edge.
Now in certain activities you’ll also get the new respiration rate data. The new respiration rate feature does not require a heart rate strap, and is working constantly behind the scenes within the optical HR sensor to measure respiration rate (basically, breathing rate). You can see it on a dedicated widget on the watch – inclusive of trending over the last 7 days:
And here’s the data from within Garmin Connect Mobile:
The Venu and Vivoactive 4 also have PulseOx measurement as well, joining the growing list of Garmin watches that have the capability. You can toggle it to automatically measure 24×7, just at sleep, or only on demand:
As with my past experiences with this, I’d take this with a grain of salt. However, if you do take measurements you should roughly follow exactly as would be done in a medical setting: Keeping it snug, while seated, and not moving.
Beyond these features, you’ve got smart notifications just like on past Garmin watches. You can see some emoji displayed here:
But not all; for example on this next text message, both the plate and pot of food emoji failed to show up, leaving me with just a box of blocks:
Note that the watch isn’t just limited to text messages. You’ll get anything you’ve configured on your smartphone for notifications. You can see a Strava notification here as well as some YouTube ones:
Finally, there’s also calendar sync too – which automatically syncs to the watch from whatever calendars you’ve got setup. As does weather too. All of which are up in the widgets gallery a bit earlier.
With that – let’s get onto the sports bits.
Sports Usage:
While many of the new features are within the general aspects of the watch (like hydration), a huge pile of them are technically under sports (including some of the breathing features I talked about in the previous section). We’ll first look at these new features, and then from there dive into more traditional sports like running and data field configurations.
But first we’ve gotta talk animations. No, not like Dory and Nemo, but rather workout animations. Other watches, most notably Fitbit, have been doing this for years in the strength and core workout realm. But there have been plenty of others including Adidas and Polar that have tackled this as well. In Garmin’s case there are four workout types (Strength, Cardio, Yoga, Pilates) with some 41 different structured workouts between them. Within that, there are small little animated peoples that you can see the exact steps of the workout.
Here, let me show you. Let’s pick a yoga workout, first by going to the sport menu and choosing Yoga:
And then by swiping up to ‘Workouts’. It’s here that you’ve got a handful to choose from:
Pick one of them, Sun Salutations in our case because it’s early morning right now and the sun is rising, and then press to view the 53 steps of the workout:
You’ll see each step listed with the number of seconds next to it:
If you tap on a given item, it’ll go ahead and show you a short animation of that action:
But let’s go ahead and actually start the workout. When you do that it’ll walk you through each step, with a timer around the outer edge of the step, and the inside for the pose itself:
You can swipe down for a timer that’ll show you a count-down, or just wait for it to buzz for the next step instruction, with it giving the name of the pose, and a pie-chart style countdown clock:
You can see your heart rate on that clock page above, but also within a regular data field you can set up on a data page:
In fact, you’ll notice both the stress and respiration rate data fields are actually available there – something new on Garmin wearables and is specific to Yoga. After you’ve finished the workout the summary screen will even list the poses, as well as your breathing rates. Now the overall poses/animations concepts are essentially the same whether you’re in yoga, Pilates, cardio, or strength. Obviously the specifics for each workout are different, but the way the Garmin unit works is the same. With strength training, you’re also getting rep-specific information too.
However, where it really starts to get interesting is that you can create your own workout from Garmin Connect/Garmin Connect Mobile:
Though, at present you don’t see the animations on the device – hopefully things get there.
Let’s switch gears now back to more traditional sport features. The Venu has piles of sports you can choose from. Many of these are customized to the specifics of the sport. For example, running is pretty straightforward, but something like downhill skiing/snowboarding will actually automatically count your runs and vertical, pausing correctly each time you take the lift back up.
To start any sport you’ll simply tap the upper right button once and select your sport, such as Run, from the list:
The GPS status and heart rate lock will also show up top; if you’ve got any sensors paired, it’ll show that too.
Oh, and sensor-wise it supports: heart rate, headphones, cycling speed/cadence, running footpod, Tempe (temperature sensor), ANT+ cycling lights, ANT+ cycling radar, as well as golfing club sensors. Note for most of those above it’ll support both the Bluetooth Smart & ANT+ variants of them.
Back on the starting screen if you wanted to execute a custom workout you’d just swipe from the bottom to access the workouts section:
And if you want to customize any of your sport screens you can do so within the settings on the watch itself (still not on phone app). You get three customizable screens, each with up to 4 data fields on them. You’ll also get a heart rate gauge screen too.
You can further configure bits like auto lap (distance based), auto pause, auto scroll, and the GPS type (GPS/GPS+GLONASS/GPS+GALILEO):
The Venu uses the same Sony chipset as every other Garmin watch released in 2019 (and every other watch released in the last year+ from Suunto, Polar, and COROS). We’ll get to GPS accuracy later.
Once you’re ready to run, you’ll just press the upper right button again. It works just like any other Garmin watch in terms of showing you your running stats such as time, distance, pace, and anything else you’ve added.
While there is auto-lap, there’s also manual laps, which can be done by simply pressing the lower right button to trigger a new lap. To start/stop your workout you’ll press the upper right button. After which you’re given the option to save or discard.
Once saved, your workout summary stats are shown – though it’s disappointingly super basic. There’s so much Garmin could do here with this screen.
However, it’s also transmitted to Garmin Connect/Garmin Connect Mobile using Bluetooth or WiFi (depending on where you are). This allows you to pull up piles more stats there:
And if you’ve got your account setup to sync with Strava, TrainingPeaks, MyFitnessPal or any of numerous other sites – it’ll show up immediately there as well.
Finally, it’s worthwhile noting that the Venu contains Garmin newish Safety & Tracking features. These are roughly in two buckets:
– Incident Detection: If you crash your bike, or fall while running and walking (you can configure individually)
– Assistance Alerts: Will send an emergency alert to predefined contacts with your live GPS location
The assistance alerts are loosely based atop Garmin’s LiveTracking features, which are also available as well (so you can share your live location with friends/family each time you start a workout). Again, the main goal of assistance alerts is if you’re somewhere you feel unsafe and want to semi-discretely let someone know you may be in trouble – holding that upper right button for three seconds will start the alerting process. However, all of these require your cell phone be within range (since it uses that for cellular connectivity).
For the crash/incident detection, I’ve only had it false trigger once in three months – when I stopped quickly on a road bike after a small drop off a curb, just this past week actually. The algorithm is looking for a high-g impact event followed by no movement (I was waiting for friends to catch-up). Still, you can simply cancel it within 20 seconds. For safety assistance alerts, you’ve only got 5 seconds though (those require holding it for 3 seconds though).
So about now you may be wondering how the Venu/Vivoactive 4 differs from a sports standpoint compared to something like the Forerunner 245/245 Music. The main thing is around the physiological tracking – so bits like training load or recovery, which aren’t tracked on the Vivoactive/Venu series. Additionally, there’s also course following (so the ability to follow a specific route navigationally).
However, inversely, the Venu/Vivoactive 4 actually has a barometric altimeter, while the FR245 doesn’t. A slightly odd quirk in Garmin’s watch hierarchy. In addition, the FR245 doesn’t have the advanced yoga, Pilates, or related animations either. In other words, it’s still a bit of a confusing mess to figure out which watch has which features.
Music:
The Venu joins Garmin’s other recent wearables in having music support built-in. This means you can pair it up to Bluetooth headphones (or even a Bluetooth speaker) and play back music or podcasts anywhere without a phone nearby. The Venu has 4GB of music storage on it (though slightly less usable space), and supports the following music streaming services for offline playback:
– Amazon Music
– Deezer
– Spotify
– iHeartRadio
In addition, you can of course drag your own music files on there, as well as configure podcasts to download. Though, the podcasts bit is mostly a mess – since it requires you to connect to your computer. Instead, if you want podcasts, it’s better to do so within Spotify – which is what I do.
Everything else works great though. And the Venu is leagues ahead of the Vivoactive 3 in terms of music connectivity. Dropouts are exceedingly rare here, even with AirPods or PowerBeats Pro.
From a music standpoint I’ll show Spotify, but all the streaming services work pretty similarly within the Garmin framework. First, you’ll get your account authorized. This is basically pairing your watch to Spotify. It only takes a second. After which you’ll be able to add new music from the watch. You’ll see you can choose from playlists, albums, podcasts, and playlists that were made for you or predefined by Spotify (such as workouts):
Once you’ve selected something to download it’ll ask to sync the music via WiFi. This takes a bit of battery, so it’ll ask you to plug in your watch.
After which the music is available for you to play back with headphones. You can connect just about any Bluetooth headphones. In my case I largely just used the Beats PowerBeats Pro:
You can pair multiple pairs of headphones as well if you’d like, which is kinda handy.
From there you’ve got simple music controls on the watch, as well as from certain headphones that use standardized controls like volume up/down or skip track.
I didn’t run into any frequent droppage issues either in the studio or out on runs with the Venu, which seems to be the general theme with Garmin’s 2019 watches, after first introducing music connectivity in 2018. During that time period they’ve noted how much forward progress they’ve made around connectivity and compatibility, and it seems to show.
GPS Accuracy:
There’s likely no topic that stirs as much discussion and passion as GPS accuracy. A watch could fall apart and give you dire electrical shocks while doing so, but if it shows you on the wrong side of the road? Oh hell no, bring on the fury of the internet!
GPS accuracy can be looked at in a number of different ways, but I prefer to look at it using a number of devices in real-world scenarios across a vast number of activities. I use 2-6 other devices at once, trying to get a clear picture of how a given set of devices handles conditions on a certain day. Conditions include everything from tree/building cover to weather.
Over the years, I’ve continued to tweak my GPS testing methodology. For example, I try to not place two units next to each other on my wrists, as that can impact signal. If I do so, I’ll put a thin fabric spacer of about 1”/3cm between them (I didn’t do that on any of my Apple Watch Series 5 activities however, all workouts only had a single device per wrist). But often I’ll simply carry other units by the straps, or attach them to the shoulder straps of my hydration backpack. Plus, wearing multiple watches on the same wrist is well known to impact optical HR accuracy.
Next, as noted, I use just my daily training routes. Using a single route over and over again isn’t really indicative of real-world conditions, it’s just indicative of one trail. The workouts you see here are just my normal daily workouts.
I’ve had quite a bit of variety of terrain within the time period of my Garmin Venu testing. This has included runs in: Amsterdam (Netherlands), French, Italian, and Swiss Alps, and Mallorca (Spain). Cities and mountains, trees and open-air, plus waterways and seas. It’s hit them all.
First up we’ll start with something relatively easy, a run south from Amsterdam. On this initial test I’ve got a mere five GPS devices, three of which are attached to a running stroller, and the remaining two (including the Garmin Venu and Apple Watch Series 5) are on my wrist. Here’s that data set:
At a high level, things look mostly fine. But let’s dig into the weeds. No, really, the actual weeds. To the right of these tracks is a pasture where horses hang out. In the below case, the Garmin FR945 is almost perfectly atop the running path. You’ll see the Garmin Venu is off to the right, while the Apple Watch is off to the left. The Garmin Venu is slightly more offset than Apple, but Apple cuts more corners.
If we got a bit further in the run, you can see this play out again. That white line is the actual path I ran on (and if I toggle to satellite view, it matches there, it just makes this picture harder to see due to the trees). You see that the Venu is super close here, whereas the Apple Watch cuts the corners nonchalantly. Which isn’t as bad as the COROS Vertix and FR945 being offset entirely (way into the woods).
You’ll see below that the FR945, COROS Vertix, and Garmin Venue all substantially cut the corner (all on Sony chipset) The Apple Watch Series 5 and Garmin FR935 (not on Sony GPS chipset) didn’t cut the corner.
And again this mess of a loop here. Apple cuts the corners, and Garmin Venu is off in the drink. Equally bad, just bad in different ways.
Now…some of this is nitpicking. No doubt about it. And at first glimpse it might not seem so bad. But then you look at the total distance you can see how the variations can add up for the different units. In this case the Apple Watch was way over, while Venu was about in the middle of the pack.
Note that I normally hate showing total distances, because you can be wrong 100% of the time and still get distance right (via enough corners/overages). But generally once we get this many units at once, there’s definitely something to patterns.
Next, let’s look at something a bit simpler: A track workout.
Technically it’s both a track workout and testing the ability of this watch to draw a straight line. The path I ran down is precisely straight. Crazy straight in fact. I take it every single day to and from work. It’s great…and goes under a gigantic ring highway that loops around the city – perfect for testing GPS re-acquisition. Here’s the high-level overview, and data set from just a few days ago.
Let’s zoom in first to that massive bridge set. This includes two railroad bridges along one of the busiest rail corridors in Europe. Plus two highway overpasses. It’s hundreds of meters wide. And, for the most part all three units handled it just fine. The Venu did stumble very slightly coming back out one direction, but not significantly.
As for the straight section? Hmm…not so hot for both Venu and the Apple Watch. At least not initially. From the outside they were a bit rough, but as they returned an hour later, they were much closer. This path is technically tree-lined on both sides, so that probably wasn’t helping matters.
So the big moment – the track itself? For this, I stayed exactly in Lane 1 (there was nobody else there), and round and round I went. About 10KM of round and round worth. I want to point out three things. Actually, four things, but with three arrows.
First off, before I do that – note that no matter how good your GPS is, in 2019, I still recommend doing track workouts by just counting distance. At least for the specific sets. Meaning, you should be looking at the markings on the track to know when you’ve run 400 meters, 800m, and so on. I merely use my watch for historical data purposes on a track, as well as managing heart rate and time. I don’t generally use it for pacing via GPS (or footpod). I just do mental math.
That said, these three arrows show us four things:
1) All units were pretty darn close. Nobody was off out of the property or anything weird.
2) The Garmin Venu took a few brief dips into the lower right infield of the pitch
3) The Apple Watch was slightly offset to the left, you see that left-most arrow in the woods pointing at the Apple track.
4) The FR945 seemed to favor being slightly on the upper outer edge, meaning it was slightly offset a touch bit north
All in though, these results from a GPS track (as in, the line itself) are perfectly acceptable to me for historical record keeping for running.
In addition, I have dug through my GPS tracks from outdoor bike rides as well (including some mountain areas), and found it pretty much fine. For example, here’s this ride in Mallorca (Spanish island) through very rocky/mountainous terrain. Here’s that file.
Even in one spot where the Apple Watch/iPhone combo struggled, the Garmin Venu mostly nailed this track through the mountains and cliffsides:
Now – as I look back on months of GPS data, there’s roughly a pattern that emerges: The Venu GPS is mostly good – and largely acceptable for the vast majority of people. You’ll likely be able to pace your training or racing efforts just fine with it (as I have these last few months). However, there are still GPS quirks likely related to the Sony chipset that keep popping up.
Just this past weekend for example while running a loop around the outside of a stadium for the DCR Open House, I had one portion of the track cut through the side of the stadium. Sure, it’s a stadium – a big honking thing that blocks GPS quite well. But at the same time, to the side there was nothing but air for hundreds of meters.
On the flip side, as you can see just above, it handled exceptionally well in the mountainous terrain above. So, sometimes it’s just hit or miss when it has an issue. Though I’ve never seen massive jaw-dropping issues. They’ve always been little things that make you kinda scratch your head. Still, as I said – my job is to nitpick this stuff, and most of my concerns are nitpicks.
(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.)
Heart Rate Accuracy:
Next up we’ve got heart rate accuracy. This roughly falls into two buckets: 24×7 HR, and workout HR. As is usually the case with most devices these days, I see no tangible issues with 24×7 HR. It works well across both normal daily routines as well as things like sleep. Speaking of which, I talk about RHR values and 24×7 monitoring here and why it’s interesting.
Before we move on to the test results, note that optical HR sensor accuracy is rather varied from individual to individual. Aspects such as skin color, hair density, and position can impact accuracy. Position, and how the band is worn, are *the most important* pieces. A unit with an optical HR sensor should be snug. It doesn’t need to leave marks, but you shouldn’t be able to slide a finger under the band (at least during workouts). You can wear it a tiny bit looser the rest of the day.
Ok, so in my testing, I simply use the watch throughout my normal workouts. Those workouts include a wide variety of intensities and conditions, making them great for accuracy testing. I’ve got steady runs, interval workouts on both bike and running, as well as swimming – though, I didn’t focus on optical HR accuracy there.
For each test, I’m wearing additional devices, usually 3-4 in total, which capture data from other sensors. Typically I’d wear a chest strap (usually the Garmin HRM-DUAL or Wahoo TICKR X) as well as another optical HR sensor watch on the other wrist (lately the Polar OH1 Plus, as well as the new Mio Pod lately). Note that the numbers you see in the upper right corner are *not* the averages, but rather just the exact point my mouse is sitting over. Note all this data is analyzed using the DCR Analyzer, details here.
In any case, first up is a nice run south out of Amsterdam. Nothing too tricky here to begin with – relatively stable, except also pushing a stroller (which can be challenging for optical HR). Here’s data against the Apple Watch Series 5 (optical HR sensor on other wrist), the Garmin HRM-DUAL chest strap, and the Mio Pod strap on my upper arm (data set here).
The Garmin Venu is the red one. Though of course, you can’t really see that – because they’re all virtually identical.
We do however see a bit of variance briefly from the Garmin Venu where it stumbles a bit within a 60-second span at the 6-minute marker. This could be due to the pressures from pushing the stroller, or could be anything else. Either way, all three are very similar.
So…let’s kick it up a notch.
Interval time!
Here’s a track workout I did, a bunch of 800’s and then a bunch of 200’s. Plus a warm-up and cool-down. Here’s that data set, Garmin Venu optical HR is in purple:
Let’s zoom right into those first few minutes, where you see a bunch of interesting things. First, the Garmin Venu seems to roughly get the trajectory right as I build up. In fact, it gets it more right than the chest strap in green – which spikes to 180bpm during a slow moving and casual warm-up. That’s common for dry fall days. Once I run enough a few minutes I get some sweat, probably adjusted it slightly, and life is fine.
So in this realm the Venu was most correct, right alongside the Polar OH-1 (and eventually the Apple Watch Series 5 after it finishes flat-lining, which I highlighted below).
So, into the 800’s we go:
Frankly, these are pretty darn good.
I can nitpick that the Apple Watch seems a bit too high at times, and might be doing some occasional cadence-lock in some cases. And the Garmin Venu appears to be a bit slow on the recovery in some intervals. The Polar OH1 also seems a bit latent in a couple of them too. But again, by and large – any of these would be more than accurate enough to pace/train by.
So, the 200 sprints?
A bit rougher on the first one, it’s like it caught everyone by surprise. Which, is fair. It’s how I felt too. The Venu missed the boat, the chest strap nailed it, and the Polar OH1 was slow. And the Apple Watch skipped around a ton missing lots of time here.
Aside from the HRM-DUAL, none of them were really acceptable for the first interval.But after that the remaining intervals were just fine. And realistically it wouldn’t materially impact most people during training, since nobody doing hard short 200m sprints is actually checking their heart rate during the sprint.
Next, let’s shift to some indoor cycling. This was actually a pretty intense indoor trainer workout. For context, here’s what the power output looked like:
And then here’s the matching heart rate data:
What you can (boringly) see is that all these sensors were virtually identical. The Garmin Venu struggled during the first 60 seconds or so, and then everyone settled in nicely. There were a few seconds here or there that different units briefly disagreed, but even during the sprints, the HR plots were very very close.
Finally – what about cycling? Well…that’s less optimal, and is roughly what I often see from wrist-based optical HR sensors. In general these work better in summer months than cooler winter months. Here’s a ride a few weeks ago. Look at this ride in three parts: Outbound, middle chunk, return. The middle chunk is throw-away, I was filming some drone stuff (and doing lots with my hands). But the outbound and return are normal riding.
So let’s zoom in on that first main riding chunk:
What we see here is that while things are mostly close – the Venu seems to be a bit spikey compared to the chest strap and the Apple Watch Series 5. It’s not massively overshooting in most cases, but is about 2-4BPM high quite often. There are a handful of times when it’s more than that, but that’s the general trend. I’d recommend that for winter riding where you want really accurate HR data on the Venu, to just use a paired chest strap.
Garmin’s ELEVATE optical HR sensor tech has come a long ways over the years. And it’s getting closer and closer to the point where it seems to mostly work for the majority of people. Just as with chest HR straps – there are always outliers. Be it individual people, or individual scenarios (such as cool dry days) – but I think we’re getting closer and closer to the point where things are mostly working for the vast majority of workouts and people.
Still, as noted, it’s not perfect. But the fact that on a cool dry fall day it can handle a hard track workout just fine is a good indication of the progress they’ve made.
(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.)
Product Comparison:
I’ve added the Garmin Venu into the product comparison database, allowing you to compare it against other products that I’ve reviewed in the past.
For the purposes of below I’ve compared it against the Apple Watch Series 5, Fitbit Ionic, and Samsung Galaxy Active Watch 2 – which are the ones most people will be comparing it against from a sports/fitness standpoint.
Note that with all these watches – but especially the Apple Watch, there are many cases below where “with 3rd party apps” can be used. The same is largely true of Garmin, Samsung, and somewhat with Fitbit. But the Apple Watch tends to offload more core fitness functionality to 3rd party apps than the others. I’ve tried to thread the needle of apps that I roughly know exist where I’ve listed that. But it’s not perfection in terms of knowing every app on earth. Ultimately, I don’t think any consumer does (or should). Plus, we’ve actually seen a pulling back of wearable apps from companies over the last year (basically, they stop updating them). Making it even harder to know an up to date app from a dysfunctional one dying on the vine.
And again – don’t forget you can make your own product comparison charts comparing any products using the product comparison database.
Summary:
After three months of usage, I have little question that this display type is the future of Garmin wearables. Not all wearables, not immediately anyway – but certainly the future for sure. Battery tech and display tech moves so fast. The display we see today in the Venu would have been spec’d out and determined well over a year ago. Same goes for the batteries used, as well as all the other components relying on that battery that are also getting more and more efficient.
I could easily see a scenario where Garmin looks to offer a AMOLED variant of the next Fenix version (note: I have no insider information here). The market is clearly there, and while many readers of this site may skew towards wanting to eke out every last hour on an ultra race, the reality is that probably 98% of Fenix purchasers will never need that type of battery life – likely close to 99%. Garmin will easily sell a million units of each Fenix series they produce – and having a higher-end display continues to be a major request. I don’t think they’re far off here.
However, as for the Venu – I don’t think they’re leveraging that screen enough. Things like the lack of watch faces is a prime example. I’d have hoped that by three months on we’d see more options there. I’d have hoped they’d use that screen to better enumerate emojis (which I’m still finding missing ones on a daily basis that just show up as empty squares). And I’d hoped that maybe some of the minor GPS quirks would be sorted.
I continue to think the mark was missed on pricing. And I suspect Garmin is learning that as we speak, with the price reduced to $299 from the usual $399 for the holiday period (and it selling quite strongly). I don’t think $399 is competitive. However, I think $299 for Venu is very competitive, and $249 for the Vivoactive 4 is equally strong. Like it or not, Garmin has to compete with Apple Watch Series 3 at $199 (and lower). While Garmin can point to Apple Watch Series 5 at $399 all they want, they’ll almost always lose that battle in the minds of most of the general public.
Still despite the above two paragraphs – I think it’s probably the best all-arounder watch that Garmin has ever made. While it’s not the most accurate GPS-wise, it seems to find the balance between having the features that hardcore sports folks want (like structured workouts, skiing/snowboard run tracking, and others), as well as more general lifestyle or health bits (such as offline Spotify and Amazon music, as well as detailed Yoga/Pilates support). It’s the most well rounded competitor to an Apple Watch Series 5, but with a clearly sport/fitness slant.
Found This Post Useful? Support The Site!
Hopefully you found this review/post useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
If you're shopping for the Garmin Venu or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot.
And finally, here’s a handy list of accessories that work well with this unit (and some that I showed in the review). Given the unit pairs with ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart sensors, you can use just about anything though.
This is a dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart cycling cadence sensor that you strap to your crank arm, but also does dual Bluetooth Smart, so you can pair it both to Zwift and another Bluetooth Smart app at once if you want.
This is one of the top straps I use daily for accuracy comparisons (the others being the Polar H9/H10). It's dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, and in fact dual-Bluetooth Smart too, in case you need multiple connectons.
Seriously, this will change your life. $9 for a two-pack of these puck Garmin chargers that stay put and stay connected. One for the office, one for your bedside, another for your bag, and one for your dog's house. Just in case.
This speed sensor is unique in that it can record offline (sans-watch), making it perfect for a commuter bike quietly recording your rides. But it's also a standard ANT+/BLE sensor that pairs to your device. It's become my go-to speed sensor.
This wifi-connected scale will track your weight and related metrics both on the scale display and in Garmin Connect (plus 3rd party apps like TrainingPeaks). It'll also then sync your weight to your watch/bike computer, to ensure accurate calorie data.
The HRM-PRO Plus is Garmin's top-end chest strap. It transmits dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, but also transmits Running Dynamics & Running Pace/Distance metrics, stores HR data during a swim, and can be used without a watch for other sports. Also, it can transmit XC Skiing Dynamics as well.
And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about!
Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
I picked up the Venu @ 299. I keep it for 24 hours before returning it. It had more bugs than a July picnic. It had all kinds of issues with Garmin Connect & Garmin Express. I’ve been using the VA’s since they were first introduced and I used the VA3 as a control unit to make sure the problems weren’t due to communicating with Garmin. I was underwhelmed by the availability of watchfaces. I couldn’t find one that inspired me and trying to adapt them through Garmin Express was an exercise in futility. In summary, the unit I had was not ready for prime time. Others appear to be having more success.
Weird, we’re you on the latest Garmin Connecg app update and iOS version? I know that’s been a challenge for people back in October, but it’s mostly gone quiet since.
Gone quiet because people can’t be arsed moaning any more I think. GCM has serious Bluetooth issues right now which have yet to be even acknowledged by Garmin. More noticeable when you write an app that uses Bluetooth but still a pain when pairing devices and just generally getting smart notifications reliably.
I had a Venu for 1 day too (got it at 310€) and returned it: Gesture activation stopped working and after a reset I couldn’t establish a connection to Garmin Connect anymore (IOS up to date on Ipjone 12 pro), no matter what I tried. Bluetoothproblems seems to be a major quirk of Garmin. Such a pitty, its a nice looking watch that I can rather imagine wearing all day than my good old Fenix 3.
This looks like a nice allround watch, but the omission of running cadence seems odd. This is an important metric even for entry level runners. The generally lower specced FR45 has it.
I am not as concerned about activity hours as I am “standy days”. The reason I love the 935 is that I only have to charge it one seems like 1 every 3 – 4 weeks. (I run 1-2 times a week for an hour and primarily use it for HR to my 1030 and steps/sleep tracking)
So,while I agree that 99% don’t need ultra trac, I think many of the people who go garmin over say apple right now do it because they don’t want to charge their watch every other day.
Unless they could get standby time up to 2 weeks, count me out.
I agree a bit closer with Frank’s timeline. I think 5-6 days of standby battery life with let’s say 3-4hrs of GPS workout time in there would probably cover the vast majority of athletes. In other words, get me from Monday to Friday night with the week’s worth of workouts, and then probably have to recharge if doing any really long weekend workouts.
Yeah, that pretty much matches my week – 4 workouts during the week, long run on Saturday, then leave my Fenix 5 charging while I use the Edge 130 out on the bike. Maybe 5 hours total GPS time + 2-3 hours swimming.
Does the display stay always on during runs and other workouts? It’s most infuriating to look at my watch during a run and have to raise my wrist or tap the bezel in order to see the elapsed time, current pace, etc.
It’s Gorilla Glass so will take a bit of abuse without breaking but can still get scratched. A lot of people use replaceable tempered glass screen protectors to good effect.
I sweat profusely during exercise, which makes phone use near impossible during or immediately after a workouy.
For this reason, I avoided the Venu as an option when upgrading from the 235.
The 2nd button certainly helps the VA/Venu line be more useful/functional when sweat is flowing.
Any issues or concerns related to the touchscreen during your evaluation period?
No issues at all with water/etc on the touchscreen. Though, to be fair I don’t tend to use the touchscreen much during a workout except swiping between pages. Rather, I just use the two buttons.
Having dedicated lap and start/stop buttons is good news and probably make it usable for timed intervals – trying to manually insert laps with a touch screen when training hard is a recipe for frustration (tried a couple of times with my Apple Watch and quickly gave up).
Good old FR 910XT with rectangular shape display and SiRF chipset…
In case of 11 available satellites out of 12, the accuracy was +/- 3m. And it is possible to pull this accuracy to the display as data field…
Days, when functionality was over fashionability, are gone…
I think the definition of functionality has changed. For Ultra Runners, they now get a multiplier of battery life that they didn’t get in the FR910XT days. To most of them, that’s far more important than the minor quirks around GPS accuracy in the woods (where it was already quirky anyway).
And that’s before we talk about things like HR, etc…
You can charge the 910XT with an external battery pack while it still will be recording the activity…
As an overview, I would like to see some statistics also. Not from marketing/sold units perspective, but from Garmin Connect. To get answers to questions like this:
What is the device split among Garmin users who have recorded at least 150km/month running?
What is the device split among Garmin users who recorded at least 1 triathlon/multisport event per year?
What is the device split among Garmin users who recorded at least 100km pool swimming per year?
What is the device split on cycling with a total distance >2000km/year?
I don’t have the actual answers to that, but I can take fairly good swags – assuming you’re talking all Garmin watch wearers:
150km/month running – my guess is under 5%
1 triathlon per year – probably close to 1%
100km per year – probably sub 0.5%
Cycling 2000KM per year – 2-5%
I think many people here vastly underestimate how many people buy Garmin watches these days for a side dish of fitness, but still mostly as a lifestyle watch.
Even within the Fenix realm, Garmin only hit it big (meaning, more than 1M units per series) once they shifted away from making it all sport and making it sport + a watch everyone else still wants to wear.
You can actually use Garmin insights to answer points 1,3 and 4 reasonably well.
I simply find a month when I run/bike/swim as close to the numbers listed above as possible.
Running
Feb 2019 I ran 165km (that’s as close as I can find to 150km), which puts me top 1% of all users 40-44 (male and female)
Swimming
Nov 2019 I swam 8.2km (so very close to the 100km year), which puts me at top 26% of all users 40-44 (male and female)
Biking
I have no months as low as the requested benchmark. My lowest is 294km which puts me in top 28% of all users 40-44 (male and female)
So Ray looks like you are underestimating the usage people get out of them, however some very important caveats:
– The data group is self selecting. Especially the swimming I’d say. To buy and wear a Garmin to record swimming you’re pretty serious about swimming. Note that for swimming to get top 1% I have to choose a month a swim 29km
– The data is all Garmin users. Not ‘watches’. I guess lots of cycling is Edge units
Note for cycling I don’t have any months where I’ve ever been too 1%. My best is top 9% with 737km/month.
Note – I did the analysis using iOS app, not sure if desktop gives better options to analyse?
My experience is that the more serious the athlete the older their watch. The new features don’t add much they would use so you see a lot of 910 and 920 usage because they just don’t need to upgrade. I even offered someone my old 920XT and she refused because a change might affect training so the status quo was better in her eyes.
Yes, Garmin Insights gives you a kind of comparism to other athletes, but says nothing about device split…
So I am more curious about what devices are used by a minority of athletes mentioned by Ray.
In other words, from the wide range of devices on the market, what have been used and what is being used by them.
I do about 150-200km per month and GC insights says I’m in the top 1% of km run…… I use a three year old Chronos but now in winter the watch may switch off if battery was under 50% at start! So I mostly switch off GPS and rely and stryd
I have been at some 230 k running per month for quite a long time. My daily average is ~20k steps (I don’t own a car).
According to Garmin’s own insights, both of my numbers are higher than 99% of platform users.
I was quite surprised reading this because I don’t think I am doing that much.
Garmin’s userbase is not as athletic as one may think.
I’d still prefer a forerunner type device (buttons + transflective LCD) vs. “lifestyle” (AMOLED + touch).
But it explains the market for more lifestyle focused devices pretty well. I am fine with that, as long as devices as we know like are still available (and not limited to the most expensive offerings).
Ray, thanks again for another great review. With these new Garmin watches that have music playback, would I be able to listen to music while lap swimming, assuming I have a sufficiently waterproof listening device on my ears or jawbone? Or would the water interfere with the signal?
I just bought the Sony WF-SP900 wireless headphones and they are great in the pool using internal storage for MP3. Also good and secure for running with Spotify on the watch etc. As well.
I’m using the Aftershokz Xrainerz link to aftershokz.com for swimming and really like them. Tried many permutations of in-ear headphones etc and was never really satisfied. These bone conduction headphones really work and are built for swimming. FYI – No problem with flip turns.
Ray – Nice review. Should we expect a seperate Vivoactive 4 review or will this one simply suffice? I know the only difference is the screen.
(I bought a VA4s for the wife as part of black friday – I love the smaller form factor of that watch without sacrificing screen size, it’s just reducing the bezel it appears).
My watch needs have changed over the years. I’ve been through countless models over the years starting with the FR305 and most recently the FR645. However, these days I just need a simple smartwatch to record daily dog walks, family bike rides (Wahoo for serious rides) and general tracking (steps, sleep, etc.).
I’ve lusted for an Apple Watch for years, however, I’ve been reluctant to leave the Garmin ecosystem as I’ve got data going back over a decade. So when the Venu was announced I was excited as it seemed perfect for my current needs but overpriced. But, I waited and picked one up last week when it was on sale for $299 and have been using/trying it for almost a week now. I haven’t had any connectivity issues, the battery seems to last a reasonable amount of time (about 2 days) in always on mode, and it tracks the stuff I’m interested in.
Having said that I’m not “wowed” by the experience and find myself still thinking about an AW5. The thing that has always bothered my about the AW is battery life and getting through the night for sleep tracking. I’m a horrible sleeper so monitoring is important to me. But your recent AW review clued me into the AutoSleep app and I’m thinking I might order an AW5 to try out especially since I’ve got nearly $150 in Apple gift cards to use. I’m still worried about leaving the Garmin ecosystem but I may just have to get over that.
I tried this for 7 days and loved all of it. I am a fitbit Ionic wearer. My problem was everyday I would have to setup my account. It was like starting new everyday. It would not stay logged in. It still had all my days of activity but the fact I had to start over everyday became tiresome so I sent it back. I do have an iPhone and had all latest updates. I was very bummed it did not work out for me. L
Great review. I currently use a Fenix 5 Plus with the transflective LCD. Thinking about a future iteration of the Fenix line potentially with an AMOLED display, I’m curious to know how Garmin’s AMOLED tech in the Venu compares to the transflective displays in direct sunlight. Is it still easily readable?
@urbanOrange:
I compared the display between Venu and Forerunner 245 and was surprised how good the AMOLED works in direct sunlight. I have no problems and also hope that next generations of Forerunner devices have an AMOLED.
Hey Ray, in your ‘Sports Tech Buyers Guide 2019′ you say “No matter how many times Garmin tries to convince itself that a $100 price bump over the real-world Vivoactive 3 Music price, I just don’t buy it.’
So I was all set to get the VA3M for the wife this xmas, but in the music section above you mention “And the Venu is leagues ahead of the Vivoactive 3 in terms of music connectivity.”
Could you elaborate on the VA3 connectivity issues?
Also, any chance you could dust out the rolling pin and get a photo of the Venu, VA4, VA4s and VA3M for a comparison of size?
So, the VA3 while ‘only’ 18 months old was really the second watch Garmin did on music, and there was a lot they learned from it. For most people, you’ll have no issues.
But, when there’s edge cases (such as with headphones that may be on the fringe power wise, combined with tall people in certain positions), that’s where you’ll see the 2019 watches jump ahead in maintaining that connection.
And yeah – I need to add in some rolling pin pics. I’ve got a bunch of those I need to shoot actually.
These things bothers me. I see no difference in specs when comparing BT-connectivity between VA3, 4 or Venu. I think Garmin should be more open about this. I plan to get Air Pods Pro or Jabra Elite 75t and a VA3 music or 4s or Venu. Knowing that there are differences in hardware would really help, and could keep me from buying incompatible products.
Thanks for all your work on these devices. It helped me get the VA1 back in the days (which i still use!).
I generally do battery tests sometime after the review and append back in.
My concern these days with battery tests is that they aren’t accurate anymore unless I can keep the watch moving (as the watches are now designed to shut off components without movement).
I picked up the Venu and loved the screen. This was my 5 watch in the range, I’ve had all the previous VivoActive versions. Unfortunately after 5 weeks the screen started to flicker, blink and then go off. I spoke to Garmin support who were very good but everything we tried didn’t work. ?
I took it back to where I bought it and used the Venu as a part payment on a Fenix 6 Pro ?
Had the Venu for over a month, but decided to return it. A lot of good things to say about it, but the sleep tracking is useless. Never got the time I actually fell asleep right and were mostly off by several hours. Last saturday I stayed up late playing some game on my computer. The following day the watch/Garmin connect actually reported me being in REM sleep during those hours. Every day I had to edit the sleep stats. The analysis itself were also questionable with very little awake and deep sleep time registered. For several nights I used both the Fitbit ionic and Samsung galaxy watch active 2 to compare. Having tested most of the newer flagships by the most known brands the last 6 months I can say Garmin is by far the worst when it comes to sleep tracking. It doesn’t even record naps.
When it comes to strength training I was also disappointed. The watch almost never catches the number of reps I did so I had to manually edit after each set which was a real hazzle. I have no problem understanding how difficult it must be for a watch to get this right, but still..
All the negatives aside I agree with most of what the author has listed as positives here. When it comes to GPS the watch is OK, but not better than fi Polar Ignite, Samsung galaxy watch active 2 or Fitbit ionic.
All this is of course my personal opinion and others may have better experiences.
My sleep record can be change 3-4 times within a day. Every time my Venu sync with garmin connect, the record always self-adjusted which is weird for me. I emailed Garmin support and they said this how it work…….
I have the VA3 and just purchased the Venu.
Perhaps there is something I’m doing wrong with my new Venu? When the Venu is in “always on” screen mode you cannot reach widgets via the touch screen as you can with the VA3. When in “always on” mode you must use the button to access widgets? for me, having to use the button to access widgets in “always on” screen almost makes the touchscreen useless on the Venu.
Again, On the VA 3 I can simply use the touchscreen and scroll through widgets while on the Venu you can’t accesses widgets by touch from the “always on” screen.
My suggestion to Garmin add double or triple tap option to the Venu “always on screen” to allow access to scrolling thru widgets without having to use the buttons.
Dennis
I’m using the “always on” option and haven’t had any issues accessing the widgets without using the buttons. I simply double tap the screen and then I can scroll through everything using the touchscreen.
I picked up the Venu as soon as I could actually find a place to buy it, following the announcement. Overall I’ve been very happy with it, coming from a Fitbit Ionic. There are a few caveats: the sleep tracking accuracy is pretty bad, and body battery is basically useless, for me at least. I don’t understand why open water swimming isn’t supported, and the Connect IQ app has been broken for months on iOS, although you can work around that by using the website instead. I am also a little annoyed that I paid $400 only to have the price drop to $300 a month later, but that’s always a risk of being an early adopter.
In terms of the core functionality of fitness tracking though, I feel like the Venu is a big step up from the Ionic. At $300 I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants a highly capable running/cycling watch but doesn’t need all the bells and whistles on the Fenix series.
Couple questions:
1. How does it transition between sports, if you were a tri-athlete?
2. Is there any smart watches that work with Youtube Music, or Google Music?
I admit I’m not tech smart, but where is the setting to decide if DND turns the display off?? I can’t find it.
Also, I sleep at weird time due to work schedule, so I’d much rather have the always on follow the DND (green moon). So selected schedule controls DND, and DND controls the display. That’s how the VA HR & VA3 did it with background light and that seemed much more logical.
I’m also missing a setting to set how long the display stays at full, before going back to the reduced always on version. This is mainly when you wake it by tapping. When the wrist turn is not detected. About 50% of the time for me….
Is there a way in GIQ store to see which of the custom watchfaces supports always on?? I have read/seen, that certain things have to be programmed correctly, for it to work with later sw????
You need to check out the Venu section of the Garmin Forums. Lots of people are having major issues with this watch, myself included but I exercised my Get Out Of Jail Free option on Amazon and flipped back to an AW5 despite not really even being an Apple nor iPhone fanboy.
I still use my VA3 and venerable 520 (though I took a framing hammer to my Fenix earlier this year so am done with that overrated line) so I’m not leaving Garmin Connect anytime soon, but the AW5 with a couple of free/low cost aftermarket apps is 100% autosync-compatible with GC and in my case Sporttracks and Polar Flow just for Backup grins. And the AW5 is a wicked piece of engineering and execution unlike what our friends at Garmin pump out waaaay before the oven “ready” beeper goes off.
My Venu had about 70% working functionality (watch is now gone but its last update was about 2 weeks ago so it was recent firmware). Among the major issues were: the Brightness feature simply doesn’t do anything (common problem), and the rotate-wrist-to-check-time is a total waste of time as the auto-on feature either a) doesn’t work at all resulting in total watch lockup, or b) is so slow it’s after to look at the sun and guess the approx TOD.
Anyway, you do great work Ray and I’m a big fan, but Garmin’s outsourced software house did a really shitty job not only on this watch but many other recent models, so I’m done with them until things change.
I wouldn’t call your off-the-curb experience a false trigger. I’d call it “how to test incident detection”. :)
The same thing will happen with an Edge 1030. Pedal along at cruising speed with a sidewalk curb next to you. At the next driveway ramp roll up onto the sidewalk and maintain your speed. Now suddenly brake and bunny hop off the curb onto the street to an immediate stop. Blam! The incident siren will sound.
As you say the algorithm has met its match. For all practical purposes it appears you slammed into something and stopped moving. The first time this happens it’s a “WTH!!?” moment as you scramble to cancel the alert notification.
Maybe Garmin should add this test procedure to their manuals. :)
Maybe i should have gotten that one instead of the swim 2 – if it is as accurate in swimming.
After the first 10km (3 swims) with the Swim 2 in a pool i’m not that convinced that it is any better than my old Fenix 3 HR – except for HR while swimming (that was also the reason i bought it.
– Stroke recognition is not as good. several mistaken freestyle for butterfly (pretty consistent when i did 5x all out for a length and it easy back)
– When i set an alarm for a length – i.e 500 meter the the fenix gave the alarm on the middle of the last length advising that the next wall is the target. The swim 2 on the other hand first announce that i’ve reached the target half ways _after_ i reached the target.
So far i’ve only tested with auto pause on and that seems to work most of the time. Have had 2 issues in the 3 workout but sure of the course yet
Hmm. I didn’t take advantage of the FR 945 sale that was just on. Mainly because I wanted the slighter larger display and resolution of the F6. I was going to bit the bullet and get the F6 Pro.
However if the F7 next year has an AMOLED display I would gravitate towards that. I imagine an F7Pro with AMOLED will probably be close to $900 based on current pricing.
Thank you for the detailed review. It is very helpful. A couple of questions. Ignoring price (as they are currently priced about the same for the holidays), I was wondering if you had a bottom line opinion between the Venu and the Vivoactive 4. Is the better screen worth the battery life trade off and how much is the battery life trade off in the real world any way? Also, I would love to see one additional metric where you intentionally stretch the battery life by turning off 24/7 HR monitoring. So HR monitoring just during workouts, 3-4 hrs per week of GPS runs, basic activity tracking, and screen set to maximize battery life, what would the battery life be in days. I anticipate that after the initial data from Pulse Ox and 24/7 HR monitoring, that is how I would use the watch.
What is the diference between allways mode on and allways display on?
Can you explain better that?
Anotarem question:
Spotify premium can be use in offline mode? When you used Spotify the screen change and you can control the music by the Watch?
What is the diference between allways mode on and allways display on?
Can you explain better that?
Anotarem question:
Spotify premium can be use in offline mode? When you used Spotify the screen change and you can control the music by the Watch?
Great review. But I have a question. It doesn’t track recovery but does Garmin connect merge the data from cycling with the 1030 and running with the venu into one trading load etc. ?
Good review, spot on I think. I’ve had the Venu for a month or so, and am really pleased with it.
One disappointment is that it looks unlikely to get PacePro – I really fancy this as a capability, but as Garmin are clearly positioning this in their Health & Fitness category, as opposed to Sports, Pacepro is targetted at the latter. Which is a shame – understandable in some ways, but given the cost of the device, it is slightly irksome.
Does Venu have the scrolling area on the side of the watch just like Vivoactive 3 had? I couldn’t find this info anywhere, hoping it could be reviewed/compared here
I’m torn between the Vivoactive 4S and the Venu, so I’ve been waiting in anticipation for this review! Thank you!
If the price difference wasn’t an issue, would you say that the niceness of the AMOLED screen outweighs any battery life loss?
And is the 20h bettery life (GPS only) you have in the comparison table similar to what you have found in real-world use, and should we expect to see the same life with the 4S as well? I’ve been reading reviews on Amazon trashing the battery life.
What setting would you use for the Vivoactive 3 Music? In the overview on this site you said that it doesn’t support GALILEO but both that and GLONASS are present as options in addition to regular GPS. Thanks!
Hi Ray,
Great review as always.
I’ve had the Venu since launch as an upgrade from the non-music vivoactive 3 and frankly burned $400 as a vanity purchase. The only feature I was really looking for was the music streaming capability, and if the VA3 music wasn’t so fugly I probably wouldn’t have waited this long to upgrade. For everyday use the functionality is nearly identical to the vivoactive, but of course the design is much more attractive and AMOLED just looks way more modern. Some notes that I found:
-Battery life in always-on mode is significantly worse than VA3, as expected. I used to be able to get through the majority of the week without having to worry about charging, but now I get battery anxiety after 2-3 days. Initially I had always-on mode, SPO2 mode all day and turned off the DND sleep mode and it was quite poor. Turning off always-on extended it to about 4-5 days like I expected, but the gesture detection is so poor that it was failing at the primary purpose of being a watch. So you definitely need to do some tricks and make some compromises to make the battery last IMO
-SPO2 data is kind of fun, but overall pretty useless. If you’re somebody who wakes up in the middle of the night or some other chronic condition that could show unusual symptoms it might give some additional data that you might find interesting, but overall it’s not too actionable when it shows 99% all of the time and the same respiration rate every time. All-day operation is next to useless since the measurement is extremely sensitive and prone to movement artifacts.
-App support is very very poor. Most Connect IQ apps are pretty portable between FR, Fenix, and VA series due to similar screens and PPI, but due to the much higher resolution screen. This means that the vast majority of existing apps are not compatible with Venu. This is especially bad because most developer’s are random 3rd party developers, who probably don’t have a Venu to develop on and aren’t going to bother developing ports just for this watch. Garmin needs to develop a compatibility mode that pixel doubles or something to support older apps. Same with watch faces. I used to use apps for remote control and home automation, but of course none of these work now. I suspect this will continue to be the case until all watches share the same AMOLED screen and developers are dragged kicking and screaming
-HR performance for cycling continues to be below par. I do a lot of cyclocross races, and the watch consistently craps the bed by taking up to 15-minutes to lock on. Optical heart rate is always about using algorithms to heuristically reject unlikely frequencies, and I don’t suppose there are many researchers with training data sets with an instantaneous change from 0-max heart rate under bumpy conditions, but I continue to be disappointed by optical heart rate under non-static conditions. This watch is no different.
Overall I’m very satisfied with the Venu, the design is a very attractive alternative to the Apple watch, but I have to wonder if the VivoActive 3 (Music) is not a better fit for the vast majority of consumers given the 50% cost.
Got the Venu for Christmas but she-who-must-be-obeyed requires it stay in the box until the 24th . Been using the Vivoactive 3 for quite and like it a lot but looking forward to a better screen experience.
Question: Is the Venu compatible with the Garmin Swim and Garmin Tri HR straps? The Vivo3 wasn’t so I’ve been using my Forerunner 920XT for those workouts.
Suggestion: I too have had problems with cool dry days and other conditions leading to poor HR strap pickups initially. I now use Spectra 360 electrode gel (the same goop they use when you get an ECG) on the HR strap whenever I workout (pic attached). No more pickup problems.
Hi,
Many thanks for a great review.
Can it transmit HR to another Garmin device (by ANT+) e.g. when I am on my bike using an Edge 1030, can the Venu transmit my HR to the 1030?
Great review as always! Any chance you will share your thought on link to powerwatch.com . They claim that it doesn’t need to be recharged and has GPS functionality …
Just a quick heads up I posted a hands-on walk-through video of the user interface and menus, for those that want about 15 minutes of hands-on virtually non-stop stuffs:
I bought my venu two weeka ago and I’m very pleased!!
One thinh that annoys me is that when adding new watchfaces from connect IQ (IOS device) it takes a lot of time (event minutes) despite being only a few kbs… Is this an usual issue??
I also added an amazon playlist and it took 30 minutes!
How bright is your backlight setting? There has been a big discussion on the Garmin forums about the Fenix 6 and blueish backlight. Like it’s a defect on some units.
Question on battery management: Is there a way to switch on and off the high resolution of the AMOLED screen?
That could be part of the battery management of the next Fenix and would satisfy me as an ultrarunner as well providing me with a good looking screen for the 99.9% of the time in my life when I am not running ultras!
Any testing of sweat loss accuracy? After accidentally “achieving” Hyponatremia and a subsequent week long vacation in the ER following too much water on the back of a long run last summer, I am very interested in whether this feature works.
Really great review as always. I myself got the Vivoactive 4 at launch and was really disappointed, especially for the price. I couldn’t agree with you more when you said Garmin missed the boat on pricing with the Venu and the Vivoactive 4. The feature set just doesn’t warrant that kind of price especially given what else is on the market right now.
Also I know you look at things from a more activity perspective but for me the biggest downside to Garmin is how poor the sleep tracking is. It would miss long stretches of time where I was either up in the middle of the night or keeping registering sleep even after I woke up and was using the connect app! Honestly the sleep tracking was just so poor I took it back (not only means your sleep feedback is off but also means body battery is useless being it’s based off it.
Actually went with the Polar Black Friday weekend deal of Vantage M and the OH1+ for $230.00. Couldn’t be happier! Polar appears to be light years ahead of Garmin in sleep and recovery tracking and the OH1+ has proven to be really accurate and comfortable to wear. The battery indicator light being really my only real grumble.
I totally agree. The sleep tracking was so bad it actually made me doubt how accurate the other metrics etc of the watch is. The GPS isn’t that great either. This was my first Garmin experience and the word that kept going through my head was “overrated”.
Hey, Ray!
In your comparison database mention NO for RECORD HR UNDERWATER capability of Venu. Is it really so? Have you had a chance to test the HR working when swimming? This is one of the core feature I am considering buying Venu for.
Thanks.
With the Venu, can a user pair Stryd as a foot pod and expect pace, distance and cadence to come from Stryd while still having gps enabled in order to get a map of a run after activity is complete? I’ve noticed that while stryd can be paired as a foot pod, there doesn’t seem to be an option I’ve found to choose distance from foot pod, or auto calibration on/off, or speed source choice.
Great review, much appreciated. I ordered both the Venu and the 4S (using the deals you found and posted about) to try them out. I have pros and cons for each, but i am curious whether Garmin gave you any informatnoi about screen burn in on the Venu. AMOLED screens are obviously susceptible to that, and given that Garmin has never made an AMOLED smartwatch i was wondering what if anything they did to account for it. Samsung does things like periodically shift what is being displayed by a few pixels so the same pixels don’t stay on all the time. Do you know if Garmin did anything like that?
I wondered about the screen burn in issues as well when I had my Venu. I searched the Garmin forums but could never find an answer. Eventually I didn’t have to worry about it as I decided to return the Venu for other reasons just yesterday. Good luck finding an answer.
Yes, Garmin does indeed move Venu elements around a few pixels for things that are prone to being on the display a longer period of time, notably watch faces and data fields.
Thanks! I wonder if that is true all watch faces or just the “Garmin” watch faces. If someone makes their own watch face, do they need to write “code” to move it around by a few pixels every so often or does the watch just know to do that. Depending on the answer, it could be that burn-in is mitigated if you use a Garmin watch face, but not if you use a third-party. In any event, i use a Garmin watch face so i am keeping the Venu.
Great detailed review, again!
The GPS module of my Garmin 735XT just crashed and I do get a refund. I’m considering spending a bit of extra money for a real ‘smart’ watch and buying this venu as a replacement but I’m wondering whether the venu has a built in multi-sport mode:/ triathlon sportprofile?
Thanks for the comprehensive review! Can you confirm what the maximum custom pool length is? Vivoactive has annoying 99 m limit and can’t be used in longer pools.
I’m switching back and forth between your 245, 645, and Venu reviews — looks like the 645 and the Venu are closest in a lot of ways. If price was equal (or not a concern) would you lean towards the older 645 or the newer Venu?
Ok – so more accurate question: is the Venu worth a $50 price premium to the 645 music for a runner who is coming from a 35 and before that a 620? Maybe if I care about the (potentially temporarily) underutilized awesome screen, but any other thoughts to consider?
Venu doesn’t allow you to utilize Hrm-run running metrics. Heartrate from the wrist is newer and better in Venu. extra thing that i found out was the touchscreen, as i live in Finland and i have to use gloves almost half a year i myself find touch only watch isn’t good.
I have a Venu and been using it for about a month at least.
It’s my first Fitness tracker watch and while I love the features.
I’m shocked at the delay in the screen waking up after raising my arm to see the watch face.
I’m in communication with Garmin who haven’t yet given me specs on the expected time it should take or that it’s a problem… I’m a product manager and do a lot of UAT, I wouldn’t have released this to production until this bug was fixed.
Paying £300+ for a watch… where you need to wait to tell the time is ridiculous.
Has anyone else had this issue?
I removed all music and watch faces.
This happens on the built-in (not live) watch faces.
When I use the IQ watch faces, it takes twice as long to wake up and then after about 5mins I get the error screen and have to mess about to see the watch face?
Here’s a youtube clip I had to make for Garmin to review my issues, let me know what you think please.
Comment on the video so they can see others opinions. link to youtube.com
To put it into perspective, I bought a knock off clone of the Samsung Gear watch about 4 years ago… 4 YEARS!! and it was instantly awake, that cost me £25 including delivery.
Thank you for the great review. Have used your reviews to buy several Garmin’s.
Please forgive me in advance if I missed a post/comment on the following: What is the run/walk interval sets for the Venu? I have a Forerunner 230, my husband an Instinct, and they are both in 15 second increments…which is frustrating. Is the Venu the same? I miss the capability of 5 second increments of my old Timex Ironman, but prefer the features in the Garmin. If anyone can help me with the increment question, I would really appreciate it! Thank you. :)
I’d test one out in the shop first.
While it is a great watch, I am really not impressed with the delay/lag in the screen waking up when you lift your arm to look at it.
In my opinion, it should be pretty much instant not 1-2 seconds.
Garmin has confirmed this is how they expect it to behave and haven’t said they are looking to improve this at any point going forward.
It’s a shame as it does get very frustrating whenever I want to quickly see the time… I have to wait.
I can’t help with the interval sets on Venu question sorry. Although I did just check and if you mean the Auto Lap feature, I can set it to 00.01 which comes up as 52ft.
I was talking about the Run/Walk feature found within Alerts and/or the Run prompts. You can set most Garmins to alert when to run and/or walk break during a long run by setting alert times for each type of activity (run or walk). The last couple of Garmins we purchased have 15 second increments for for each of these activities with the hour portion 0-59.
I can check out at a dealer, I was just hoping someone already has a Venu that they can look (or already use this feature) OR can tell if there is ANY Garmin that has a better seconds’ interval than 15 seconds.
I checked out the Owner’s Manuals for 735XT, Venu, etc. etc. (p. 17 on most of these manuals) and the manual only provides instructions to “Enter the time for the run interval” or “Enter the time for the walk interval,” which could mean that the walk already has its presets or that I can actually enter any interval segment I want. A conundrum for sure.
Anyway, I really appreciate the response!
Dr. Coconuts
FYI- I had an Apple watch 2. The build in swim ap didn’t have a drill log, but you could download swim.com which did have a drill mode. So, you can do drill log/mode on Apple watch 2. I’m assuming the same is true for the Apple watch 5.
Zero issues with the AMOLED in bright sun. Super bright sun. Summer sun in fact.
Taking pictures of any display is always tricky (trust me, it’s essentially all I do daily), but my guess is that if someone is saying their Venu screen is bad in sun, then they’ve honestly likely dorked up the settings somehow. It’s just a non-issue.
I got the Venu two weeks ago as a birthday present and I’m very happy with it. Also with battery life.
I switched off PulseOX and delete any widgets I don’t use. Even with always on display and a short run a day with GPS ánd music I get 3 dys battery. Switched off gps for walking.
Anyway, thanks for your in-depth review because it made me (and a collegae of mine) buy the watch.
Getting 3 days of battery with the always on mode and 30 min workout per day.
Did an hour workout with full music including downloading music first. Drained the battery completely!
Not sure between this and vivoactive 4, but I like the brightness and crispness of the Venue. I do wish there were more garmin made watch faces, there are a bunch of 3d party ones, but not thrilled with most of them.
Hell Ray,
I just picked up the venu and feel a bit under whelmed by it. The absence of watch faces is troubling. I spoke with one of the developers about creating a watch face and he mentioned the moving pixels is making it challenging to create always on watch faces. Any word from Garmin on creating more watch faces? The current ones on the watch are not appealing. Now I am considering something else…
Oddly enough, that’s actually something I brought up on Tuesday at CES with Garmin’s Vivo team.
On the 3rd party watch faces, specifically Live Watch faces, folks should be able to create as fancy of faces as they want already. I haven’t heard of the pixel moving aspect being an issue for 3rd parties. I assumed Garmin was handling that behind the scenes. Do you have some details (linkable) on someone saying that’s an issue?
As for other stock watch faces, yup, I brought that up as well.
Nothing written just discussing the always on feature with a developer of one the watch faces I am using. He eluded to the fact that creating an always on screen was challenging for him due to the no one pixels staying filled for too long. If this is the case it is limiting the Venu. I like the always on feature on the watch, it makes it beautiful and better than others.
Garmin should also trying creating decent watch faces for those who own Venu. The current selection is very limited. In particular something like the Fenix watch face in always on. If they fail to have more features and faces people might be turned off. Also those the Venu have an AI feature that automatically detects the exercise type?
Now considering if the Fenix 6s might be something I might get.
Hi there, I have watched a number of your videos, though didn’t answer my questions, nor did this post.
Do you know if the Venu supports the HRM RUN at all? Given the Venu support ANT and BT it should right? I don’t want to go ahead and buy the HRM RUN if it isn’t going to work.
I have had no issues with my Venu at all it has been great, now wanting to add more metrics and stats, i’m a bit of a stat nerd.
Spotify does not work for me at all. This was the main reason I bought this as a replacement over my 935.
Venu and spotify app are upgraded to latest version. iPhone and Garmin Connect as well. Venu has been authorized for spotify on the phone, it’s on the WiFi, I can load playlists to the watch, I have my headphones paired. But every time I want to play music the app crashes and throws me back to the blue triangle screen.
Sad to see Garmins till makes great hardware and then ruins it with crappy software. I have bought many Garmin devices in my life, and bad software seems to be a common theme. Maybe it’s time for me to accept that stability and ease of use is more important to me than high end sports features, get an Apple Watch and just be done with Garmin
Hey Ray, you mentioned in your post you were able to get 2-3 days in always on mode. Could you share your settings. I am using the default setting and NEKi watch face but can only manage 4 days (not always on).
I am almost at the end of my 30 day return window and unfortunately, I think the Venu is going back.
I love the display. But I don’t like the fact that the only ‘always on’ watchface I can really use is the analog hands from Garmin, and I don’t want that one. There are a bunch of other watchfaces from 3d parties I like, but not always on. I found that the gesture mode doesn’t always work, and when I want to see the time, I look like a ____ (don’t want to be PC incorrect) waving my hand all around. If someone has a good 3d party watchface they are using, that has a digital display and things like HR, , date,,steps, etc and can be always on for date/time, pls let me know, maybe I am returning without having all the info. (Besides Garmin’s forum, is there another forum for users?)
I also really want a pandora music app, I don’t use spotify.
I find that the HR lots of times takes a while to be what it really should be. It will be at 120 while the handgrip of the trainer/elliptical/treadmill in the gym is at 90! Eventually it is correct, but I need this to be accurate.
I think this display is the future of watches, but I think the watch might still be a beta. If you want bleeding edge and hope that garmin does firmware updates to it to improve/add features, it would be OK to keep I think.
I totally agree with you, I sent mine back and Garmin obviously know how poor parts of this tech are, as they gave me a full refund after I’d been wearing it for around 2months and even had a couple of scratches on it.
I did find a good Custom face which works nicely with Always on, see below:
Crystal: link to apps.garmin.com
You can change the colours too.
I found this with Always on enabled to be a good one.
I’m currently looking around for a better watch as an alternative.
Even if I do come back to the Venu, I hope the fact I got Garmin to refund will make them think again and be more proactive in improving this device. Sucks to have such a poor experience on my first smart watch.
Wondering if any updates have corrected / improved GPS & HR accuracy? Trying to decide between Venue & Suunto 7.
Updated years ago from Ambit 3 to current Fenix 5, fed up with Fenix inaccuracies, constant BT disconnections, and terrible looking display. Time for a change. Appreciate any assistance. Mahalo.
Hey guys, I have both the vivoactive 4 and Venu. I am trying to decide which one I should stick with. Love the Venu’s bright screen but despise the short battery life in always on mode. Love the battery on vivoactive but hate the dull screen. …..
Did exactly the same thing as you Ebenezer. Screen brightness won out. I am currently using a 3d party digital screen in an semi always on mode (shows time/day/date/battery) until you move your arm, then shows HR, steps etc).
I get 3 days battery life without using specific workouts or music before I need a recharge. The Vivo was maybe a day or so better. I had a inexpensive though highly rated sport watch that lasted 30 days.link to amazon.com, was $70.
My conclusion was to either use the 30 day battery smartfit watch, or keep the Venu. The 24-36 hours of the vivoactive extra charge wasn’t worth the much dimmer screen. The Venu’s screen is the future. I don’t think this version will ever get better, but I think version 2 will probably have better battery and screen technology.
In fact, IMO, I think all new Garmin watches going forward will be using this screen tech.
So I kept the Venu, my biggest issue is really that when exercising it frequently takes 10 minutes for the watches HRM to be accurate, and I really need that function. Was going to return it for that reason, not battery life. YMMV
One quick question I had was related to the “animations” on the watch. I added two Yoga workouts, they show up fine in my Connect App and on the watch, but no matter what I do I cannot get the animation to play on the watch itself. I do have “Enable Videos” in the settings set to ON. This is a brand new Venu, updated to the latest firmware. Also, both Connect and Connect IQ are fully updated. The phone is an Android phone but I guess that should not make a difference. Any advice?
Did you test the Venu in a pool or open water swim ? Venu vs HRM-Tri/735xt . I don’t understand why they have so many functions , gym, breathing, but no metrics in open water ? Garmin discontinued the Swim watch, then released the Venu, then released the Swim 2 . The Venu makes the forerunner series seem a bit dated but lacks the functions of a triathlon watch ? If it has GPS, and accelerometer to measure stroke type and count, what is the difference in open water ? Why not include it ?
Yup, I did indoor pool swimming without any issue – worked fine for me. There’s no openwater swim mode though, so nothing to test there.
The openwater swim mode is seen as a triathlon focused option, so it tends to be reserved for higher end triathlon watches. The Swim 2 is a bit of a quirk in that system.
Functionality wise openwater swim mode has significant algorithms around it to ensure that the GPS accuracy and track is good/usable despite being underwater the majority of the time (for each arm stroke, only a small portion of that is during the recovery above-water).
Hi, I bought this smartwatch a week ago coming from a Fitbit Ionic hoping for a better tracking of swim workouts, but I’m really disappointed with Garmin since you can load workouts for many activities as walking, running, cycling, cardio…except swimming!
Please have you got any hint that Garmin is going to update the swim app in order to allow users to load their own workouts?
Thank in advance
Hey Ray,
Just gone back to Garmin (Edge 530), after a few years sabbatical with Wahoo.
Been looking for a new watch for a while, have always had Android Wear, but use it mainly for notifications.
Do you think this would be a suitable replacement? I especially like the idea of HR rebroadcast.
1) Does the venu let you upload Strava Segments and let you know when they’ve started/stopped?
2) Is there any type of virtual coach for running that speaks to you?
Hi, I bought my Garmin Venu a week ago but when I check my daily review in Connect there are huge gaps where there is no data recorded. Does anybody have any suggestions for this. I originally had to do a reset after the first day as the workouts were in French and English. Cheers Brad.
Utility is king with these devices so I’d like to know if the amoled screen is easier to see for those of us without 20-20 vision! I currently still use my Fenix 3, for running mainly. Great device however I can’t see the Fenix 3 screen display and data fields that easily when running – I wear contact lenses which correct short sightedness but make me longer sighted so the watch is too close in use!
After reading the review I’m thinking of buying a Venu because of the clearer screen, then setting the screen to ‘always on’ with the exception of when not in use (I don’t wear these watches when not doing sports). My question is would this device be both easier to see, and deliver circa 5 days worth of battery use (based on running for around an hr once per day with gps/glonas) when set up to switch off the screen when not in use (I tend only to wear these devices when undertaking an activity, placed in a drawer rest of time).
Pete, I’ve had my Venu for several months and have found the screen to be much more readable than the Vivoactive I was using. I’m getting 3-5 days on mine and I wear it almost continuously including while sleeping. The battery life seems a little shorter when I’m using it to work out (which is daily) but on bike rides I use the Garmin Edge 530 for data collection and the Venu is just a watch then. Otherwise I use it for running, swimming sometimes and strength training. That’s when the battery life suffers a bit. I’ve liked it a lot and am glad I got it.
Thanks for replying DrDennyM. Great to hear that the screen is much more readable.
I’m sure I’ve read that the ‘always on’ setting can be selected with an option that switches-off the screen when the device auto-detects that it’s not in use. I thinking this might eek out more days charged as I’ll only wear an hr or so per day.
Thanks for your great review. I’m in doubt what to choose: Venu or Samsung Active 2
With actual price around 300$ they are almost same, but Active 2 has microphone (it’s really useful ,that you can reply during trainings) , and blood pressure (I’m not sure that it’s properly works) , plus they promise activate ECG.
But Garmin is Garmin :)
What do you think?
As an android user, I looked very seriously at the Samsung watches. I also wanted heart monitoring functions, but at the time Samsung did not have the ECG yet. BP needs a cuff, no watch can do this AFAIK.
I have other garmin equipment, bike computer, etc., so for a workout watch, I went with the Venu. I like light wt watches, the fenix series was too big and heavy. My only 2 complaints are battery life is about 3 days, I have the display always on, workout 1x a day. If you play music, turn on GPS etc., you will get 4 to 8 hours! Second complaint, and I sound like a broken record here is that the HRM doesn’t give an accurate reading for me for the 1st 5 to 10 min of activity. It then locks on, but I had hoped not to have to bring my chest strap HRM with me, that this would replace the need for it. It doesn’t.
Screen is great, and I think future watches will use this tech, and battery life will improve.
I had a 46mm Galaxy Watch and loved everything about it apart from the health tracking. The heart rate monitoring was awful, especially resting (would jump from around 50 to way over 100 while sitting watching tv). This wasn’t just one watch either, I had two others which had pressure sensors go faulty that did the same. They used the same hrm sensor on the Gear Sport which was as bad and also on the active series, according to forums this hasn’t improved.
Thanks for the very detailed review, it’s very helpful. In your photos and your YouTube video, the Granite Blue looks almost teal, but in other photos, such as on Garmin’s website, it looks more steel grey. Can you say whether the Granite Blue is “blue” or more “grey”?
For walking meditation it is helpful to know how many steps you made during an activity as accurately as possible. I had big problems with Garmin devices, since Garmin does not allow to access to number of steps done during an activity in Garmin connect anymore. Steps have to be calculated manually from Garmin Connect data, which is not very comfortable. Alternatively to a Garmin device, a Clue Step counter can be used. With the CLUE Step Counter it should be possible to read out the number of steps done during an activity by a PC application. The device is user modifiable.
I have my Venu for a month now. Still happy with it :)
Sticking to the Crystal watch face. Hope that Garmin would give us more room for design with the onboard faces.
Question: do you know if it is possible to replace the bezel (dyi or professional)? I already have a few tiny scratches and probably a few more to come in the future.
I’m curious if you have a problem with the Crystal watch face not displaying immediately, either when you gesture with your wrist, or when you press the lower-left button to turn on the display. Whenever I try a custom watch face with my Venu, there is about a 2-second delay before the watch face appears (the stock watch faces come up immediately).
As far as I know all custom watch faces are slower. But Crystal for me still is reasonably ok. When pushing a button it can be slow but with gestures I don’t experience that (it probably still is slow but I don’t really notice it).
I dont’t know if there is a speed difference with Always On Display turned on or off. Mine is always on.
Thank you for the comment. With always on, the watch face comes up right-away With always on turned off, there is a 2 second delay. Appreciate the response.
Hi Joey, same here! I noticed it early this morning when the watch is still in night mode with AOD off. As if it needs an espresso to wake up just like me :)
Excellent review! Stumbled upon your website through a google search, and REALLY appreciate the detailed information. I’m looking at the Garmin Venu primarily as an everyday fitness tracking watch, with independent GPS tracking – primarily for hiking. Two questions relating to this:
1. I didn’t see any mention of elevation accuracy, and when I clicked on the links you posted to your workout data sets, this was one area where the various trackers you work seemed to vary significantly. Elevation gain is obviously a big part of hiking, so do you have any thoughts on elevation data accuracy for the Garmin Venu?
2. Any insights on the screen’s display in direct sunlight? I previously had a FitBit Blaze that was horrible in the sun. Debating if the Vivoactive 4 might be a better option, since I’ve heard OLED screens tend to not be as bright. It’s unlikely I would ever activate the “always on” function, so the live watch faces have no value for me.
Hi Team DC. Thanks fr a thorough review. One thing that bother’s me is that the Venu can only store 7 timed activities. Going on a multi day hike or doing more than one activity per day can easily fill this up and result in frustrations if no signal or wifi is nearby to upload. Do you know if they have upped this number with an update yet? Since it can hold 500 songs, I’m sure there’s enough memory to use for timed activities.
i’m having a real problem with playlists on my garmin venu – i can’t seem to delete them – tried via my computer where my playlists were created (and i can see the contents of my music on my venu as it’s plugged into my computer). I’d also like to add songs to existing playlists and can’t seem to do it..
any suggestions? otherwise i love the watch!
Hey, thanks for the great review! Question – I noticed on your video (and have read elsewhere) that the Venu touchscreen is a big laggy – do you know, is that the same on the Vivoactive 4 or is it specific to the AMOLED display? Thanks!
There is about a 2-second delay in the Venu watch face when you are not using the always on feature (which drains battery about twice as fast). I did receive a firmware update from Garmin last week and it appears as if the delay has been reduced and is now less than 1 second (tolerable in my opinion).
As for the Vivoactive, though I haven’t owned any Garmin except the Venu, my understanding is there is no lag in the other models, only the Venu due to the AMOLED display.
Hello, I just had the garmin venu and also ready to send it back because the « basic » function of audio alerts to headphones is really missing me. How a product from sept 2019 could not contain audio alerts evry miles/km or to be setup through the connect app ? I a getting back to my forerunner 735XT(with its poor screen!!)
Would all yoga exercise be made watching the venu and not hearing only the steps to be made ? This is something garmin engineer did not think about ?
I really like the screen but audio alerts are really missing …
Is the Venu you have in the “7 things” video the same as this, the slate blue? It looks quite grey on these photos but much more blue on the video?
Thank you for a very helpful and comprehensive review.
I suspect it’s the lighting. The 7 Things Video was mostly shot outside in August (mostly in early morning), whereas the bulk of the review shots were inside under studio lights in December. I try and get them to match as best as possible, but outside lighting is about 6500K+, whereas indoors my studio is set for 5500k.
You have marked “no” on ant+ weight scale. Does that mean it’s not compatible with Garmin’s own Index scale? Will there be issues using both on the same account? I guess the scale talks directly to Garmin Connect and so does the watch (though a smartphone connection)
The Garmin Index Scale isn’t actually an ANT+ Weight Scale. It has ANT+ in it for setting it up, but it’s a WiFi scale, so it doesn’t actually talk via the ANT+ Weight Scale system like older scales.
But with WiFi it integrates into your Garmin Connect account, so from a functionality standpoint, it’s honestly what you want anyway.
I’m really leaning towards this being the watch for me but I’m concerned about battery life. My question is, if all the bells and whistles are turned off so that battery life is extended, will this watch get me through a Saturday long run that might be 4-5 hours or more? I don’t mind daily charging because I generally attach my watch to its charger while in the shower anyway but I don’t want it to stop 15 feet short of a marathon finish line because I’m a slow runner and it took me 6 hours to run it.
I don’t mind carrying my phone. Most of my shorts have pockets, so that’s not a problem.
Thank you. I’d not been able to find anything that answered about longer runs. Most things I found only had runs of an hour and my pace is on the slower side, so I needed to make sure it would last for longer.
If you are carrying your phone, then you don’t even need your watch for the gps. Just use an app on your phone. You can still use the watch for timing / splits, etc. Not sure if the gps would last 6 hours
I love the screen and weight of the watch, I really wish it had about 2x the battery life. I think next gen of watches will do this.
Also the watch has a proprietary charging cord, so if you travel, you should get another one.
the Venu is crap design and crap quality. Unless you set the screen to stay lit, then you have to double tap with the other hand to wake up the screen. Annoying in any circumstance moreso when running or cycling. And then the battery lasts only a couple days. After 4 months, the battery won’t hold a charge for even 2 hours. Garmin has some good products, this one is a loser
After 10 days of trying it, I was disapointed of not having also the audible alerts (Time/Distance) in earphones .. so sent it back for refund and waiting for Venu V2. I came back to my Forerunner 735XT…
“Unless you set the screen to stay lit, then you have to double tap with the other hand to wake up the screen.”
But that’s the same trade-off you make with any of the AMOLED screens. That wasn’t really a surprise here. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Samsung, Fitbit, Apple Watch, or anyone else using AMOLED or similiar. If the screen is crazy nice/brilliant, then it’s going to burn more battery. Thus the ability for you to choose whether to keep it on or not.
I recently bought a Garmin Venu when my AW S5 stopped syncing GPS tracks to my phone. I figured I would give the Venu a try with its AMOLED screen. In the past, I had a 735XT that I loved, a 935 and a 945.
I don’t think I will buy another Garmin that does not have an AMOLED screen. This screen is beautiful. I am getting 3 days of battery life with the screen set to always on. Venu has everything I need and nothing I don’t. Since I use a Garmin Edge, I do not need the cycling power support on my watch. I never paid attention to Garmin’s denial of service style data presentation so I don’t mind not having recovery time, training load etc. At 50, I know my body better than my watch. Overall, this device is highly recommended.
This watch still costs € 379 in Europe, for a watch that is more than a year old. Would like to buy a watch with this features, but i think it´s overpriced. What do you think? Are there better choices?
You’re right! It’s over over over priced for what you get. Consider that if you use it for swim you can’t load your own workouts ( confirmed by Garmin assistance )
Maybe a crazy question, but is there a way to use the Garmin Extended display option, but with a smart phone? Would be great to be able to use an iphone or Android as a head unit display (much larger) on the bike, and simply display the info coming from the Garmin watch. Is this just science fiction?
Online at Currys. Might be in store too. Looks V good value but not my first choice. Might have to wait for black Friday. Or may purchase and return of better deal comes up
Thinking about buying the venu on sale but im torn between it and the forerunner 240. Mainly because of the lack of the recovery advisor on the venu. Is this an important feature? I want to get more into running but I am not super serious about it.
Perhaps a couple of 5k runs per week. Any thoughts?
A sport watch that falls short of expectations… especially for swimming
Purchased 1 year ago, at € 299, for having better metrics than my previous Fitbit Ionic Adidas Edition, bought at € 210 a year before, I strongly advise against it because it promises a lot but does not deliver. Initially I took it for my swimming and walking workouts, then, due to Covid, I used it for cardio workouts at home / gym, walking and trekking.
Packaging: sportwatch with only 1 strap and charging cable… the fitbit had 2 straps of 2 different sizes
Strap: uncomfortable because, in addition to being a little short for those with large wrists, it is plasticky and has no other holes than the closing ones and therefore, sweating or in the heat, it is annoying to keep connected.
Screen: nice, reads well even in the sun and is an improvement over other Garmin models with a transflective display
Battery: poor. Regulated without Always on display and Pulse-Ox, blood oxygenation detection, only during sleep, with 2/3 workouts per week of 1h, lasts about 3 days and not 5 as advertised. In the 1-day treks with the GPS always active, you need to have it fully charged at the beginning to last till evening.
GPS: outdoors, the coupling to the satellites is quite fast with some uncertainties in the initial minutes and the accuracy is also decent
Touch: works quite well even with protective film
Daily use:
• combined with an Oneplus 5T, notifications arrive in 90% of cases. Given the round screen, in long messages the ends are lost.
• The advertised app for hydration tracking, Garmin Hydration Tracking, has always worked badly or has not worked. In fact it continues to get negative reviews on the Garmin Store on other sports watches as well
• Sleep tracking: poor, seems to rely more on pre-set rest times than actual tracking. From this point of view Fitbit was much more precise and also marked the afternoon naps which this does not do.
• Screen activation with a flick of the wrist: in normal use it is frustrating because, depending on the watchface installed and especially with data-rich watchfaces, it can take 3/4 seconds to turn on and then consult the time becomes almost impossible. During training, however, it works well
Sportwatch:
• Swimming: useless because, although Garmin says that workouts can be downloaded, this feature is excluded for swimming (confirmed by Garmin assistance) and therefore remains the basic function of counting laps not so precise
• Cardio / gym workouts: big limitations here too. You can load your workouts, but you cannot go from one exercise to another and go back (for example. If a machine is busy in the gym, you cannot go to the next and then resume) (confirmed by Garmin assistance). Furthermore, the counting during the exercises is very inaccurate (e.g. weights)
• Running: you can import your workouts, but not the routes (confirmed by Garmin assistance)
• Walking: like running
• Trekking: functional, with GPS active it tracks the route taken and allows you to navigate backwards.
• Floor detection: imprecise as depending on how you run / walk it mistakes those movements for floors climbed
So for those looking for a sportwatch / smartwatch without advanced features / training management it is better to choose other decidedly cheaper models, instead those who need to track their workouts must skip this model and look at the more expensive / complete ones
Not unusual. It’s almost always the cable, rather than the port. Assuming the port doesn’t have any gunk in it (dirt, sports gel, nacho cheese sauce), then it’s likely the connectors on the cable.
I got so annoyed by them, I eventually found a far better charging cable out there: link to dcrainmaker.com
Is there a specific reason, Ray, why there is no “trainingstatus” // “training effect” on this watch?
Really tought it would be standard on this watch. One big feature that I miss :(
Generally speaking Garmin limits any of the training load type features to the higher end watches, so basically, not the Vivo series (which includes Venu).
I don’t really have a good reason there unfortunately, since these days the FR245 costs the same amount and does have it.
I’m hoping you can help with this. I called Garmin and they were supposed to get back to me by email, no news and it’s been over a week!
I have a new Venu and love it, but I have one problem I can’t seem to fix. Once per week, I join a Zoom indoor cycling session with my old Spin instructor, so I use the Wahoo app on my Kickr to manage the trainer (she runs it using power zones, so I use ERG mode to keep myself honest). When done, I upload the ride to Strava, and then upload a .fit file to my computer to drag into Garmin connect, since Wahoo won’t upload to Garmin automatically. I drag the file into Garmin connect and it uploads seamlessly.
As I look at my “history” in my Venu, all my workouts are there, including ones I do through Zwift, but the manually uploaded workout does not. I can see it in Garmin mobile on my phone and in Garmin connect on the web, but the Venu won’t show it.
Is there a setting I’m missing? I can’t figure out why the Venu won’t show it. Let me know what you think.
I think this is the expected behavior. The web connect site centralizes all your activities/training setups coming from any device, but this does not the other way around(from web site to Watch) concerning activities.
If that is the expected behavior, why is the Venu showing my Zwift workouts, which are done via Zwift, not recorded on the Venu? That’s what puzzles me. If the Zwift workout appears, then shouldn’t everything on Garmin Connect appear?
Interesting. I’d have to do some deeper poking, but technically speaking the workouts from Zwift to Garmin use a specific push API that’s only available to a handful of partners (Zwift, TrainerRoad, Tacx [owned by Garmin], and I think I’m forgetting one other).
Garmin has always kept the whole import into Garmin Connect thing in a weird state. It’s annoying. I don’t really get why they’ve held this specific line this hard over the years, especially as more and more platforms are more and more open. It’s really the last stand Garmin seems to have for some reason.
Thanks! Let me know what you discover. Garmin doesn’t seem to understand that the more difficult they are with allowing people to share data across devices, the more likely it is that people will drop their products for devices that are more flexible (which has crossed my mind during this whole thing).
Not to mention the crazy Garmin ransomware blackout that happened last year. Thank God I was also using Strava at the time…
By the way, the only reason I’m using the Wahoo app on my aforementioned training session is because it’s so much easier to read on my phone when I’ve got sweat dripping in my eyes than my Garmin 520! UGH.
Hey Ray. My Wife has a Garmin Venu and we have A saris H3. Your spec sheet says it will work with power meters and everything with an IQ app and it will get around it being disabled in the software. Can you share what app/apps will work with the venu?
Any guess on when we might see replacement for Vivoactive 4/Venu? Have VA3 and holding out for what they come up with next (Sq wasn’t what I’m looking for)
Also wondering if that AMOLED screen tech might show up in a higher end sport watch. I see they used in an Aviation model, but that looks like a Venu with aviation features.
I like everything the Venu has to offer. I have an iPhone, is there any way to have built in responses on the Venu so you are able to respond from your watch quickly, if your phone is packed away or if you’re swimming etc? Or can you only respond with a Garmin through your phone?
Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t permit 3rd parties from accessing the text message responses (to send). They only allow read-only access. Apple does permit their own Apple Watch to send messages.
Question for anyone who can help. Ran tonight with my new Venu and old Fenix 3hr. As far as I can tell, all settings were the same other than Venu was set to smart recording and Fenix to 1 second. Both set to gps + glonas and both had same auto pause settings. I had to stop for several stop lights at intersections. My understanding is the Time and the Moving Time should be close with the Elapsed Time including the non-moving time. The Fenix shows elapsed time 47:37, moving time 46:18 and time 46:23. That all seems reasonable to me. However, the Venu shows elapsed time 47:38 (I started the Venu first), moving time 45:57, and time 46:08. Can anyone explain why the Venu showed almost twice the difference in moving time vs time and the 20 second difference in moving times. FYI, I wore the Venu on left wrist, which it was set for, and the Fenix 3hr on the right wrist. Maybe this is a dumb question and has been answered somewhere on Ray’s blog but I didn’t know where to look.
I have been using Venu for about 18 months now (got it as a Christmas present back in 2019). Before it I had FR 620 and FR 630. I never used music feature and almost never did I use Garmin Pay, though I set it up the first day.
The battery life is OK (I am using a custom watchface), I have to charge once every week with no activity or twice with average running activities. The worst part is GPS. I did not realize for a long time that I have to connect the watch to Wi-Fi to update the location of satellites. For that reason I was waiting up-to 20 minutes for watch to get the signal in a freezing winter cold. And even with up-to date satellite positions, while running in circles around my neighborhood I had varying results. Due to GPS errors I ran my fastest kilometre in less than 3 minutes, though in much better shape several years prior I ran it in almost 4 minutes.
Overall, Venu is an average watch and I cannot recommend it to anyone looking for mid-level watches for running. Even bulky plastic FR I had prior were a better option.
It is October 2021 and I’ve seen some good pricing on the Venu. Looking to make the jump from an Apple watch.
I am interested to know how granular the respiration rate tracking gets on the Venu. Can I see breaths per minute on a per minute basis? Can I see it real-time? If not, is there a Garmin watch that has such functions?
The Garmin Venu shows Respiratory Rate in real time, for instance with the protocol Yoga just shortly after you start the activity. I paired a Polar H10 to the Venu and did not wear the watch on the wrist. The Yoga protocol showed heart rate, but no respiratory rate. Is wrist worn respiratory rate accurate? Peter H. Charton says no, because of motion artifacts during movements:
But what is when the watch is at complete rest (altough not very comfortable to do for certain Yoga exercises)? Respiratory rate could be helpful for practicing breath meditation. Unfortunately, there is no gold standard reference device for respiratory rate. I suggest to validate the device manually by counting the number of breath taken in a minute and compare the data on the device.
I realize this is a rather pedestrian question, but NYTimes’ Wirecutter says the step tracking on the Venu is wildly inaccurate, showing 50% more steps than taken. Is that true. I don’t see that issue mentioned in Ray’s very comprehensive review. I just bought a Venu Sq for $149, coming from a Vivoactive 3. I have noticed that the step counter on the Vivoactive 3 does vary from my friend’s Apple watch.
I was very happy with my Venu since December 2020. Then I started noticing the screen wasn’t as bright, then I could see ghosting in the display colors. Then the battery life started to decrease. Then I contacted support and was told that this is all normal and I could have the screen replaced for $160. I did not address the battery issue. There’s many posts on Garmins support site with issues just like mine. Apparently these have ~3yr life expectancy so factor that in to your buying decision.
I swim, bike and run. Then, I come here and write about my adventures. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time. If you’re new around these parts, here’s the long version of my story.
You'll support the site, and get ad-free DCR! Plus, you'll be more awesome. Click above for all the details. Oh, and you can sign-up for the newsletter here!
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
Want to compare the features of each product, down to the nitty-gritty? No problem, the product comparison data is constantly updated with new products and new features added to old products!
Wanna create comparison chart graphs just like I do for GPS, heart rate, power meters and more? No problem, here's the platform I use - you can too!
Think my written reviews are deep? You should check out my videos. I take things to a whole new level of interactive depth!
Smart Trainers Buyers Guide: Looking at a smart trainer this winter? I cover all the units to buy (and avoid) for indoor training. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Check out
my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
Get all your awesome DC Rainmaker gear here!
FAQ’s
I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Below are the most popular.
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
I picked up the Venu @ 299. I keep it for 24 hours before returning it. It had more bugs than a July picnic. It had all kinds of issues with Garmin Connect & Garmin Express. I’ve been using the VA’s since they were first introduced and I used the VA3 as a control unit to make sure the problems weren’t due to communicating with Garmin. I was underwhelmed by the availability of watchfaces. I couldn’t find one that inspired me and trying to adapt them through Garmin Express was an exercise in futility. In summary, the unit I had was not ready for prime time. Others appear to be having more success.
Weird, we’re you on the latest Garmin Connecg app update and iOS version? I know that’s been a challenge for people back in October, but it’s mostly gone quiet since.
Totally agree on watch faces.
Up to date but on Android.
Gone quiet because people can’t be arsed moaning any more I think. GCM has serious Bluetooth issues right now which have yet to be even acknowledged by Garmin. More noticeable when you write an app that uses Bluetooth but still a pain when pairing devices and just generally getting smart notifications reliably.
I had a Venu for 1 day too (got it at 310€) and returned it: Gesture activation stopped working and after a reset I couldn’t establish a connection to Garmin Connect anymore (IOS up to date on Ipjone 12 pro), no matter what I tried. Bluetoothproblems seems to be a major quirk of Garmin. Such a pitty, its a nice looking watch that I can rather imagine wearing all day than my good old Fenix 3.
This looks like a nice allround watch, but the omission of running cadence seems odd. This is an important metric even for entry level runners. The generally lower specced FR45 has it.
Source: Garmins comparison between Venu and FR45: link to buy.garmin.com
The Venu has it too. In fact you can see it in my run screenshots from Garmin Connect.
Remember the first rule of Garmin.com specifications: They’re probably wrong.
Are they also wrong about the vivoactive 4/venu supporting wrist HR while swimming?
I am not as concerned about activity hours as I am “standy days”. The reason I love the 935 is that I only have to charge it one seems like 1 every 3 – 4 weeks. (I run 1-2 times a week for an hour and primarily use it for HR to my 1030 and steps/sleep tracking)
So,while I agree that 99% don’t need ultra trac, I think many of the people who go garmin over say apple right now do it because they don’t want to charge their watch every other day.
Unless they could get standby time up to 2 weeks, count me out.
+1
If fenix 7 is offered in AMOLED variant with 5-6 days of battery, versus trad’l transflective LCD with 13-14, I’m going latter.
Current f6 is 8 days with night time pulse ox (15 days without) and 4 hours weekly activities. It’s so so good.
Then again, the marketers can probably make me buy anything they want so who knows. :)
I agree a bit closer with Frank’s timeline. I think 5-6 days of standby battery life with let’s say 3-4hrs of GPS workout time in there would probably cover the vast majority of athletes. In other words, get me from Monday to Friday night with the week’s worth of workouts, and then probably have to recharge if doing any really long weekend workouts.
Ideally, charging once a week should be the goal.
This.
Give me a week or more.
I don’t understand the apple and wearos folks who are happy with charging every day, but that’s their choice.
Yeah, that pretty much matches my week – 4 workouts during the week, long run on Saturday, then leave my Fenix 5 charging while I use the Edge 130 out on the bike. Maybe 5 hours total GPS time + 2-3 hours swimming.
Does the display stay always on during runs and other workouts? It’s most infuriating to look at my watch during a run and have to raise my wrist or tap the bezel in order to see the elapsed time, current pace, etc.
I never had a sport / smart watch, but I like the idea of one.
How well does the screen withstand scratching, if I would wear the watch while rock climbing can it withstand the occasionally banging into the wall?
It’s Gorilla Glass so will take a bit of abuse without breaking but can still get scratched. A lot of people use replaceable tempered glass screen protectors to good effect.
It’s not the durability, but usability, that concerned me.
Drops of sweat affect capacitance perception of touchscreens.
There’s no issues with this screen in my usage and sweat.
I would say none of the watches out there withstand scratching. I think the sapphire screens do better but at a cost.
I have had a screen protector on every smart watch I use. They have worked well.
I sweat profusely during exercise, which makes phone use near impossible during or immediately after a workouy.
For this reason, I avoided the Venu as an option when upgrading from the 235.
The 2nd button certainly helps the VA/Venu line be more useful/functional when sweat is flowing.
Any issues or concerns related to the touchscreen during your evaluation period?
No issues at all with water/etc on the touchscreen. Though, to be fair I don’t tend to use the touchscreen much during a workout except swiping between pages. Rather, I just use the two buttons.
Having dedicated lap and start/stop buttons is good news and probably make it usable for timed intervals – trying to manually insert laps with a touch screen when training hard is a recipe for frustration (tried a couple of times with my Apple Watch and quickly gave up).
I want one. But not at 350 euro. When price drops to ~ 250 euro it will likely replace my Fitbit Versa.
Good old FR 910XT with rectangular shape display and SiRF chipset…
In case of 11 available satellites out of 12, the accuracy was +/- 3m. And it is possible to pull this accuracy to the display as data field…
Days, when functionality was over fashionability, are gone…
I think the definition of functionality has changed. For Ultra Runners, they now get a multiplier of battery life that they didn’t get in the FR910XT days. To most of them, that’s far more important than the minor quirks around GPS accuracy in the woods (where it was already quirky anyway).
And that’s before we talk about things like HR, etc…
You can charge the 910XT with an external battery pack while it still will be recording the activity…
As an overview, I would like to see some statistics also. Not from marketing/sold units perspective, but from Garmin Connect. To get answers to questions like this:
What is the device split among Garmin users who have recorded at least 150km/month running?
What is the device split among Garmin users who recorded at least 1 triathlon/multisport event per year?
What is the device split among Garmin users who recorded at least 100km pool swimming per year?
What is the device split on cycling with a total distance >2000km/year?
I don’t have the actual answers to that, but I can take fairly good swags – assuming you’re talking all Garmin watch wearers:
150km/month running – my guess is under 5%
1 triathlon per year – probably close to 1%
100km per year – probably sub 0.5%
Cycling 2000KM per year – 2-5%
I think many people here vastly underestimate how many people buy Garmin watches these days for a side dish of fitness, but still mostly as a lifestyle watch.
Even within the Fenix realm, Garmin only hit it big (meaning, more than 1M units per series) once they shifted away from making it all sport and making it sport + a watch everyone else still wants to wear.
Hi Ray et al,
You can actually use Garmin insights to answer points 1,3 and 4 reasonably well.
I simply find a month when I run/bike/swim as close to the numbers listed above as possible.
Running
Feb 2019 I ran 165km (that’s as close as I can find to 150km), which puts me top 1% of all users 40-44 (male and female)
Swimming
Nov 2019 I swam 8.2km (so very close to the 100km year), which puts me at top 26% of all users 40-44 (male and female)
Biking
I have no months as low as the requested benchmark. My lowest is 294km which puts me in top 28% of all users 40-44 (male and female)
So Ray looks like you are underestimating the usage people get out of them, however some very important caveats:
– The data group is self selecting. Especially the swimming I’d say. To buy and wear a Garmin to record swimming you’re pretty serious about swimming. Note that for swimming to get top 1% I have to choose a month a swim 29km
– The data is all Garmin users. Not ‘watches’. I guess lots of cycling is Edge units
Note for cycling I don’t have any months where I’ve ever been too 1%. My best is top 9% with 737km/month.
Note – I did the analysis using iOS app, not sure if desktop gives better options to analyse?
Dan
Wow that puts me in the minority – use my 230 with 1000 miles running (indoor and outdoor), 3500 miles of cycling (indoor mainly plus a 520).
My 230 has been hard to beat – but this looks compelling for a daily watch that I can go run on.
My experience is that the more serious the athlete the older their watch. The new features don’t add much they would use so you see a lot of 910 and 920 usage because they just don’t need to upgrade. I even offered someone my old 920XT and she refused because a change might affect training so the status quo was better in her eyes.
Yes, Garmin Insights gives you a kind of comparism to other athletes, but says nothing about device split…
So I am more curious about what devices are used by a minority of athletes mentioned by Ray.
In other words, from the wide range of devices on the market, what have been used and what is being used by them.
I do about 150-200km per month and GC insights says I’m in the top 1% of km run…… I use a three year old Chronos but now in winter the watch may switch off if battery was under 50% at start! So I mostly switch off GPS and rely and stryd
I have been at some 230 k running per month for quite a long time. My daily average is ~20k steps (I don’t own a car).
According to Garmin’s own insights, both of my numbers are higher than 99% of platform users.
I was quite surprised reading this because I don’t think I am doing that much.
Garmin’s userbase is not as athletic as one may think.
I’d still prefer a forerunner type device (buttons + transflective LCD) vs. “lifestyle” (AMOLED + touch).
But it explains the market for more lifestyle focused devices pretty well. I am fine with that, as long as devices as we know like are still available (and not limited to the most expensive offerings).
Ray, thanks again for another great review. With these new Garmin watches that have music playback, would I be able to listen to music while lap swimming, assuming I have a sufficiently waterproof listening device on my ears or jawbone? Or would the water interfere with the signal?
No, unfortunately music (Bluetooth specifically) won’t transmit more than about 1″ underwater. :(
I just bought the Sony WF-SP900 wireless headphones and they are great in the pool using internal storage for MP3. Also good and secure for running with Spotify on the watch etc. As well.
I’m using the Aftershokz Xrainerz link to aftershokz.com for swimming and really like them. Tried many permutations of in-ear headphones etc and was never really satisfied. These bone conduction headphones really work and are built for swimming. FYI – No problem with flip turns.
Ray – Nice review. Should we expect a seperate Vivoactive 4 review or will this one simply suffice? I know the only difference is the screen.
(I bought a VA4s for the wife as part of black friday – I love the smaller form factor of that watch without sacrificing screen size, it’s just reducing the bezel it appears).
I’m working on a second one for that, probably a week or two out though, since most of my focus has been Venu.
Another solid review. Thanks.
My watch needs have changed over the years. I’ve been through countless models over the years starting with the FR305 and most recently the FR645. However, these days I just need a simple smartwatch to record daily dog walks, family bike rides (Wahoo for serious rides) and general tracking (steps, sleep, etc.).
I’ve lusted for an Apple Watch for years, however, I’ve been reluctant to leave the Garmin ecosystem as I’ve got data going back over a decade. So when the Venu was announced I was excited as it seemed perfect for my current needs but overpriced. But, I waited and picked one up last week when it was on sale for $299 and have been using/trying it for almost a week now. I haven’t had any connectivity issues, the battery seems to last a reasonable amount of time (about 2 days) in always on mode, and it tracks the stuff I’m interested in.
Having said that I’m not “wowed” by the experience and find myself still thinking about an AW5. The thing that has always bothered my about the AW is battery life and getting through the night for sleep tracking. I’m a horrible sleeper so monitoring is important to me. But your recent AW review clued me into the AutoSleep app and I’m thinking I might order an AW5 to try out especially since I’ve got nearly $150 in Apple gift cards to use. I’m still worried about leaving the Garmin ecosystem but I may just have to get over that.
I tried this for 7 days and loved all of it. I am a fitbit Ionic wearer. My problem was everyday I would have to setup my account. It was like starting new everyday. It would not stay logged in. It still had all my days of activity but the fact I had to start over everyday became tiresome so I sent it back. I do have an iPhone and had all latest updates. I was very bummed it did not work out for me. L
Great review. I currently use a Fenix 5 Plus with the transflective LCD. Thinking about a future iteration of the Fenix line potentially with an AMOLED display, I’m curious to know how Garmin’s AMOLED tech in the Venu compares to the transflective displays in direct sunlight. Is it still easily readable?
@urbanOrange:
I compared the display between Venu and Forerunner 245 and was surprised how good the AMOLED works in direct sunlight. I have no problems and also hope that next generations of Forerunner devices have an AMOLED.
Hey Ray,
You’ve omitted WiFi from the comparison table by the look of it?
Hey Ray, in your ‘Sports Tech Buyers Guide 2019′ you say “No matter how many times Garmin tries to convince itself that a $100 price bump over the real-world Vivoactive 3 Music price, I just don’t buy it.’
So I was all set to get the VA3M for the wife this xmas, but in the music section above you mention “And the Venu is leagues ahead of the Vivoactive 3 in terms of music connectivity.”
Could you elaborate on the VA3 connectivity issues?
Also, any chance you could dust out the rolling pin and get a photo of the Venu, VA4, VA4s and VA3M for a comparison of size?
So, the VA3 while ‘only’ 18 months old was really the second watch Garmin did on music, and there was a lot they learned from it. For most people, you’ll have no issues.
But, when there’s edge cases (such as with headphones that may be on the fringe power wise, combined with tall people in certain positions), that’s where you’ll see the 2019 watches jump ahead in maintaining that connection.
And yeah – I need to add in some rolling pin pics. I’ve got a bunch of those I need to shoot actually.
These things bothers me. I see no difference in specs when comparing BT-connectivity between VA3, 4 or Venu. I think Garmin should be more open about this. I plan to get Air Pods Pro or Jabra Elite 75t and a VA3 music or 4s or Venu. Knowing that there are differences in hardware would really help, and could keep me from buying incompatible products.
Thanks for all your work on these devices. It helped me get the VA1 back in the days (which i still use!).
Where are gone the pic on tiny forearm
And idealy a comparison with vivoacrive 4s and 4
Could help for christmas ;)
Or on the rolling pin, and leaving it outside tracking all night to test battery life, and…
I generally do battery tests sometime after the review and append back in.
My concern these days with battery tests is that they aren’t accurate anymore unless I can keep the watch moving (as the watches are now designed to shut off components without movement).
Does this one have all the treadmill calibration problems that seem to affect all the watches lately?
Any idea if garmin will ever fix that bug?
I picked up the Venu and loved the screen. This was my 5 watch in the range, I’ve had all the previous VivoActive versions. Unfortunately after 5 weeks the screen started to flicker, blink and then go off. I spoke to Garmin support who were very good but everything we tried didn’t work. ?
I took it back to where I bought it and used the Venu as a part payment on a Fenix 6 Pro ?
Had the Venu for over a month, but decided to return it. A lot of good things to say about it, but the sleep tracking is useless. Never got the time I actually fell asleep right and were mostly off by several hours. Last saturday I stayed up late playing some game on my computer. The following day the watch/Garmin connect actually reported me being in REM sleep during those hours. Every day I had to edit the sleep stats. The analysis itself were also questionable with very little awake and deep sleep time registered. For several nights I used both the Fitbit ionic and Samsung galaxy watch active 2 to compare. Having tested most of the newer flagships by the most known brands the last 6 months I can say Garmin is by far the worst when it comes to sleep tracking. It doesn’t even record naps.
When it comes to strength training I was also disappointed. The watch almost never catches the number of reps I did so I had to manually edit after each set which was a real hazzle. I have no problem understanding how difficult it must be for a watch to get this right, but still..
All the negatives aside I agree with most of what the author has listed as positives here. When it comes to GPS the watch is OK, but not better than fi Polar Ignite, Samsung galaxy watch active 2 or Fitbit ionic.
All this is of course my personal opinion and others may have better experiences.
So far the sleep tracking has been pretty good for me. Definitely better than my old 645 which would give me huge chunks of nothingness most night.
My sleep record can be change 3-4 times within a day. Every time my Venu sync with garmin connect, the record always self-adjusted which is weird for me. I emailed Garmin support and they said this how it work…….
which one is better at sleep tracking between fitbit ionic and Samsung galaxy watch active2?
I have the VA3 and just purchased the Venu.
Perhaps there is something I’m doing wrong with my new Venu? When the Venu is in “always on” screen mode you cannot reach widgets via the touch screen as you can with the VA3. When in “always on” mode you must use the button to access widgets? for me, having to use the button to access widgets in “always on” screen almost makes the touchscreen useless on the Venu.
Again, On the VA 3 I can simply use the touchscreen and scroll through widgets while on the Venu you can’t accesses widgets by touch from the “always on” screen.
My suggestion to Garmin add double or triple tap option to the Venu “always on screen” to allow access to scrolling thru widgets without having to use the buttons.
Dennis
I’m using the “always on” option and haven’t had any issues accessing the widgets without using the buttons. I simply double tap the screen and then I can scroll through everything using the touchscreen.
Mike,
Thanks for that. I just rebooted the Venu and now tapping on the screen (always-on) works fine and allows scrolling through the widgets.
Dennis
I picked up the Venu as soon as I could actually find a place to buy it, following the announcement. Overall I’ve been very happy with it, coming from a Fitbit Ionic. There are a few caveats: the sleep tracking accuracy is pretty bad, and body battery is basically useless, for me at least. I don’t understand why open water swimming isn’t supported, and the Connect IQ app has been broken for months on iOS, although you can work around that by using the website instead. I am also a little annoyed that I paid $400 only to have the price drop to $300 a month later, but that’s always a risk of being an early adopter.
In terms of the core functionality of fitness tracking though, I feel like the Venu is a big step up from the Ionic. At $300 I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants a highly capable running/cycling watch but doesn’t need all the bells and whistles on the Fenix series.
Hi Ray,
Couple questions:
1. How does it transition between sports, if you were a tri-athlete?
2. Is there any smart watches that work with Youtube Music, or Google Music?
Thanks in advance if you respond.
This is not a tri-watch, so there is no transitions or multisport.
Not that I know of at the moment
I admit I’m not tech smart, but where is the setting to decide if DND turns the display off?? I can’t find it.
Also, I sleep at weird time due to work schedule, so I’d much rather have the always on follow the DND (green moon). So selected schedule controls DND, and DND controls the display. That’s how the VA HR & VA3 did it with background light and that seemed much more logical.
I’m also missing a setting to set how long the display stays at full, before going back to the reduced always on version. This is mainly when you wake it by tapping. When the wrist turn is not detected. About 50% of the time for me….
Is there a way in GIQ store to see which of the custom watchfaces supports always on?? I have read/seen, that certain things have to be programmed correctly, for it to work with later sw????
You need to check out the Venu section of the Garmin Forums. Lots of people are having major issues with this watch, myself included but I exercised my Get Out Of Jail Free option on Amazon and flipped back to an AW5 despite not really even being an Apple nor iPhone fanboy.
I still use my VA3 and venerable 520 (though I took a framing hammer to my Fenix earlier this year so am done with that overrated line) so I’m not leaving Garmin Connect anytime soon, but the AW5 with a couple of free/low cost aftermarket apps is 100% autosync-compatible with GC and in my case Sporttracks and Polar Flow just for Backup grins. And the AW5 is a wicked piece of engineering and execution unlike what our friends at Garmin pump out waaaay before the oven “ready” beeper goes off.
My Venu had about 70% working functionality (watch is now gone but its last update was about 2 weeks ago so it was recent firmware). Among the major issues were: the Brightness feature simply doesn’t do anything (common problem), and the rotate-wrist-to-check-time is a total waste of time as the auto-on feature either a) doesn’t work at all resulting in total watch lockup, or b) is so slow it’s after to look at the sun and guess the approx TOD.
Anyway, you do great work Ray and I’m a big fan, but Garmin’s outsourced software house did a really shitty job not only on this watch but many other recent models, so I’m done with them until things change.
I wouldn’t call your off-the-curb experience a false trigger. I’d call it “how to test incident detection”. :)
The same thing will happen with an Edge 1030. Pedal along at cruising speed with a sidewalk curb next to you. At the next driveway ramp roll up onto the sidewalk and maintain your speed. Now suddenly brake and bunny hop off the curb onto the street to an immediate stop. Blam! The incident siren will sound.
As you say the algorithm has met its match. For all practical purposes it appears you slammed into something and stopped moving. The first time this happens it’s a “WTH!!?” moment as you scramble to cancel the alert notification.
Maybe Garmin should add this test procedure to their manuals. :)
Maybe i should have gotten that one instead of the swim 2 – if it is as accurate in swimming.
After the first 10km (3 swims) with the Swim 2 in a pool i’m not that convinced that it is any better than my old Fenix 3 HR – except for HR while swimming (that was also the reason i bought it.
– Stroke recognition is not as good. several mistaken freestyle for butterfly (pretty consistent when i did 5x all out for a length and it easy back)
– When i set an alarm for a length – i.e 500 meter the the fenix gave the alarm on the middle of the last length advising that the next wall is the target. The swim 2 on the other hand first announce that i’ve reached the target half ways _after_ i reached the target.
So far i’ve only tested with auto pause on and that seems to work most of the time. Have had 2 issues in the 3 workout but sure of the course yet
Hmm. I didn’t take advantage of the FR 945 sale that was just on. Mainly because I wanted the slighter larger display and resolution of the F6. I was going to bit the bullet and get the F6 Pro.
However if the F7 next year has an AMOLED display I would gravitate towards that. I imagine an F7Pro with AMOLED will probably be close to $900 based on current pricing.
Thank you for the detailed review. It is very helpful. A couple of questions. Ignoring price (as they are currently priced about the same for the holidays), I was wondering if you had a bottom line opinion between the Venu and the Vivoactive 4. Is the better screen worth the battery life trade off and how much is the battery life trade off in the real world any way? Also, I would love to see one additional metric where you intentionally stretch the battery life by turning off 24/7 HR monitoring. So HR monitoring just during workouts, 3-4 hrs per week of GPS runs, basic activity tracking, and screen set to maximize battery life, what would the battery life be in days. I anticipate that after the initial data from Pulse Ox and 24/7 HR monitoring, that is how I would use the watch.
What is the diference between allways mode on and allways display on?
Can you explain better that?
Anotarem question:
Spotify premium can be use in offline mode? When you used Spotify the screen change and you can control the music by the Watch?
What is the diference between allways mode on and allways display on?
Can you explain better that?
Anotarem question:
Spotify premium can be use in offline mode? When you used Spotify the screen change and you can control the music by the Watch?
Great review. But I have a question. It doesn’t track recovery but does Garmin connect merge the data from cycling with the 1030 and running with the venu into one trading load etc. ?
Good review, spot on I think. I’ve had the Venu for a month or so, and am really pleased with it.
One disappointment is that it looks unlikely to get PacePro – I really fancy this as a capability, but as Garmin are clearly positioning this in their Health & Fitness category, as opposed to Sports, Pacepro is targetted at the latter. Which is a shame – understandable in some ways, but given the cost of the device, it is slightly irksome.
Does Venu have the scrolling area on the side of the watch just like Vivoactive 3 had? I couldn’t find this info anywhere, hoping it could be reviewed/compared here
The Venu does not have a scrolling area on the side like the VA3. I don’t miss it on my Venu since I never used it on my VA3.
I’m torn between the Vivoactive 4S and the Venu, so I’ve been waiting in anticipation for this review! Thank you!
If the price difference wasn’t an issue, would you say that the niceness of the AMOLED screen outweighs any battery life loss?
And is the 20h bettery life (GPS only) you have in the comparison table similar to what you have found in real-world use, and should we expect to see the same life with the 4S as well? I’ve been reading reviews on Amazon trashing the battery life.
I really like the display. Still tweaking for battery life but in my experience, it’s not much different than my VA3
Hi Ray, another great review. A quick question – which GPS setting where you using please – GPS only, GPS+GLONAS or GPS+GALILEO? Thanks.
I used GPS+GLONASS, which is where Garmin says they’ve spent the most time for the Sony device chipsets.
For the FR935, I use Galileo, which I find gets me teh best track there.
Thanks Ray
What setting would you use for the Vivoactive 3 Music? In the overview on this site you said that it doesn’t support GALILEO but both that and GLONASS are present as options in addition to regular GPS. Thanks!
Galileo wasn’t supported at launch, but is now.
I generally see pretty strong Galileo results on the MediaTek chipset that the VA3 series uses.
Hi Ray,
Great review as always.
I’ve had the Venu since launch as an upgrade from the non-music vivoactive 3 and frankly burned $400 as a vanity purchase. The only feature I was really looking for was the music streaming capability, and if the VA3 music wasn’t so fugly I probably wouldn’t have waited this long to upgrade. For everyday use the functionality is nearly identical to the vivoactive, but of course the design is much more attractive and AMOLED just looks way more modern. Some notes that I found:
-Battery life in always-on mode is significantly worse than VA3, as expected. I used to be able to get through the majority of the week without having to worry about charging, but now I get battery anxiety after 2-3 days. Initially I had always-on mode, SPO2 mode all day and turned off the DND sleep mode and it was quite poor. Turning off always-on extended it to about 4-5 days like I expected, but the gesture detection is so poor that it was failing at the primary purpose of being a watch. So you definitely need to do some tricks and make some compromises to make the battery last IMO
-SPO2 data is kind of fun, but overall pretty useless. If you’re somebody who wakes up in the middle of the night or some other chronic condition that could show unusual symptoms it might give some additional data that you might find interesting, but overall it’s not too actionable when it shows 99% all of the time and the same respiration rate every time. All-day operation is next to useless since the measurement is extremely sensitive and prone to movement artifacts.
-App support is very very poor. Most Connect IQ apps are pretty portable between FR, Fenix, and VA series due to similar screens and PPI, but due to the much higher resolution screen. This means that the vast majority of existing apps are not compatible with Venu. This is especially bad because most developer’s are random 3rd party developers, who probably don’t have a Venu to develop on and aren’t going to bother developing ports just for this watch. Garmin needs to develop a compatibility mode that pixel doubles or something to support older apps. Same with watch faces. I used to use apps for remote control and home automation, but of course none of these work now. I suspect this will continue to be the case until all watches share the same AMOLED screen and developers are dragged kicking and screaming
-HR performance for cycling continues to be below par. I do a lot of cyclocross races, and the watch consistently craps the bed by taking up to 15-minutes to lock on. Optical heart rate is always about using algorithms to heuristically reject unlikely frequencies, and I don’t suppose there are many researchers with training data sets with an instantaneous change from 0-max heart rate under bumpy conditions, but I continue to be disappointed by optical heart rate under non-static conditions. This watch is no different.
Overall I’m very satisfied with the Venu, the design is a very attractive alternative to the Apple watch, but I have to wonder if the VivoActive 3 (Music) is not a better fit for the vast majority of consumers given the 50% cost.
Got the Venu for Christmas but she-who-must-be-obeyed requires it stay in the box until the 24th . Been using the Vivoactive 3 for quite and like it a lot but looking forward to a better screen experience.
Question: Is the Venu compatible with the Garmin Swim and Garmin Tri HR straps? The Vivo3 wasn’t so I’ve been using my Forerunner 920XT for those workouts.
Suggestion: I too have had problems with cool dry days and other conditions leading to poor HR strap pickups initially. I now use Spectra 360 electrode gel (the same goop they use when you get an ECG) on the HR strap whenever I workout (pic attached). No more pickup problems.
I just wet mine the rub a little soap on. Works well too.
What, no rolling pin pix? That’s the money shot!
About power meter capability. In your own review is mentioned that Apple 5 is capable to see power together with app. Thanks for another great review.
Hi,
Many thanks for a great review.
Can it transmit HR to another Garmin device (by ANT+) e.g. when I am on my bike using an Edge 1030, can the Venu transmit my HR to the 1030?
Yup
Thank you! Great news
Great review as always! Any chance you will share your thought on link to powerwatch.com . They claim that it doesn’t need to be recharged and has GPS functionality …
Here’s my post on it from last January (a preview of sorts). There’s a lot of caveats to their claims: link to dcrainmaker.com
Thanks! Somehow missed your post despite being a regular
Hey folks-
Just a quick heads up I posted a hands-on walk-through video of the user interface and menus, for those that want about 15 minutes of hands-on virtually non-stop stuffs:
link to youtube.com
Enjoy!
Hi Ray!
Thank you very much for another superb review!!
I bought my venu two weeka ago and I’m very pleased!!
One thinh that annoys me is that when adding new watchfaces from connect IQ (IOS device) it takes a lot of time (event minutes) despite being only a few kbs… Is this an usual issue??
I also added an amazon playlist and it took 30 minutes!
Thanks again!!
Hydration tracking widget is now available for the Vivoactive 3 series as well.
How bright is your backlight setting? There has been a big discussion on the Garmin forums about the Fenix 6 and blueish backlight. Like it’s a defect on some units.
Question on battery management: Is there a way to switch on and off the high resolution of the AMOLED screen?
That could be part of the battery management of the next Fenix and would satisfy me as an ultrarunner as well providing me with a good looking screen for the 99.9% of the time in my life when I am not running ultras!
Any testing of sweat loss accuracy? After accidentally “achieving” Hyponatremia and a subsequent week long vacation in the ER following too much water on the back of a long run last summer, I am very interested in whether this feature works.
I don’t think I saw it mentioned… can you change the straps on this watch?
Yup!
Really great review as always. I myself got the Vivoactive 4 at launch and was really disappointed, especially for the price. I couldn’t agree with you more when you said Garmin missed the boat on pricing with the Venu and the Vivoactive 4. The feature set just doesn’t warrant that kind of price especially given what else is on the market right now.
Also I know you look at things from a more activity perspective but for me the biggest downside to Garmin is how poor the sleep tracking is. It would miss long stretches of time where I was either up in the middle of the night or keeping registering sleep even after I woke up and was using the connect app! Honestly the sleep tracking was just so poor I took it back (not only means your sleep feedback is off but also means body battery is useless being it’s based off it.
Actually went with the Polar Black Friday weekend deal of Vantage M and the OH1+ for $230.00. Couldn’t be happier! Polar appears to be light years ahead of Garmin in sleep and recovery tracking and the OH1+ has proven to be really accurate and comfortable to wear. The battery indicator light being really my only real grumble.
I totally agree. The sleep tracking was so bad it actually made me doubt how accurate the other metrics etc of the watch is. The GPS isn’t that great either. This was my first Garmin experience and the word that kept going through my head was “overrated”.
Hey, Ray!
In your comparison database mention NO for RECORD HR UNDERWATER capability of Venu. Is it really so? Have you had a chance to test the HR working when swimming? This is one of the core feature I am considering buying Venu for.
Thanks.
Good catch – fixed!
I did a couple pool sets back in October with it, I’ll go a diggin’!
Ok, the database record now fixed to YES. But what about your experience on this field? How accurate is Venu HR while swimming?
With the Venu, can a user pair Stryd as a foot pod and expect pace, distance and cadence to come from Stryd while still having gps enabled in order to get a map of a run after activity is complete? I’ve noticed that while stryd can be paired as a foot pod, there doesn’t seem to be an option I’ve found to choose distance from foot pod, or auto calibration on/off, or speed source choice.
Anyone?
Great review, much appreciated. I ordered both the Venu and the 4S (using the deals you found and posted about) to try them out. I have pros and cons for each, but i am curious whether Garmin gave you any informatnoi about screen burn in on the Venu. AMOLED screens are obviously susceptible to that, and given that Garmin has never made an AMOLED smartwatch i was wondering what if anything they did to account for it. Samsung does things like periodically shift what is being displayed by a few pixels so the same pixels don’t stay on all the time. Do you know if Garmin did anything like that?
I wondered about the screen burn in issues as well when I had my Venu. I searched the Garmin forums but could never find an answer. Eventually I didn’t have to worry about it as I decided to return the Venu for other reasons just yesterday. Good luck finding an answer.
Interesting point, I’ll ask.
Asked…and answered from the Venu team.
Yes, Garmin does indeed move Venu elements around a few pixels for things that are prone to being on the display a longer period of time, notably watch faces and data fields.
Cheers!
Thanks! I wonder if that is true all watch faces or just the “Garmin” watch faces. If someone makes their own watch face, do they need to write “code” to move it around by a few pixels every so often or does the watch just know to do that. Depending on the answer, it could be that burn-in is mitigated if you use a Garmin watch face, but not if you use a third-party. In any event, i use a Garmin watch face so i am keeping the Venu.
Cool review. Btw. you’ve promised to post some link to the t-shirt you have but it’s not there :) I’d appreciate posting that.
thanks
Oh – weird – it should have automatically show up below the video. Odd!
In any case, here’s the direct link: link to teespring.com
Enjoy!
Hi,
Great detailed review, again!
The GPS module of my Garmin 735XT just crashed and I do get a refund. I’m considering spending a bit of extra money for a real ‘smart’ watch and buying this venu as a replacement but I’m wondering whether the venu has a built in multi-sport mode:/ triathlon sportprofile?
Thanks for helping me out!
Br,
Karlien
Hi Karlien-
No, there’s no multisport mode on the Venu or Vivo-series units.
Cheers,
Ray
Hi,
isn’t multi sport somewhat available using iq aids like hMSport ? Think it does support the venu now.
Thanks for the comprehensive review! Can you confirm what the maximum custom pool length is? Vivoactive has annoying 99 m limit and can’t be used in longer pools.
I’m switching back and forth between your 245, 645, and Venu reviews — looks like the 645 and the Venu are closest in a lot of ways. If price was equal (or not a concern) would you lean towards the older 645 or the newer Venu?
Ok – so more accurate question: is the Venu worth a $50 price premium to the 645 music for a runner who is coming from a 35 and before that a 620? Maybe if I care about the (potentially temporarily) underutilized awesome screen, but any other thoughts to consider?
Venu doesn’t allow you to utilize Hrm-run running metrics. Heartrate from the wrist is newer and better in Venu. extra thing that i found out was the touchscreen, as i live in Finland and i have to use gloves almost half a year i myself find touch only watch isn’t good.
I was hoping to buy the watch in the UK but can’t seem to get through to Clever Training UK, am I missing something?
Hmm, sorry, is the link not working, or? Here’s the link:
link to clevertraining.co.uk
Happy to help get it sorted!
Thanks!
I have a Venu and been using it for about a month at least.
It’s my first Fitness tracker watch and while I love the features.
I’m shocked at the delay in the screen waking up after raising my arm to see the watch face.
I’m in communication with Garmin who haven’t yet given me specs on the expected time it should take or that it’s a problem… I’m a product manager and do a lot of UAT, I wouldn’t have released this to production until this bug was fixed.
Paying £300+ for a watch… where you need to wait to tell the time is ridiculous.
Has anyone else had this issue?
I removed all music and watch faces.
This happens on the built-in (not live) watch faces.
When I use the IQ watch faces, it takes twice as long to wake up and then after about 5mins I get the error screen and have to mess about to see the watch face?
Here’s a youtube clip I had to make for Garmin to review my issues, let me know what you think please.
Comment on the video so they can see others opinions.
link to youtube.com
To put it into perspective, I bought a knock off clone of the Samsung Gear watch about 4 years ago… 4 YEARS!! and it was instantly awake, that cost me £25 including delivery.
Thanks
Thank you for the great review. Have used your reviews to buy several Garmin’s.
Please forgive me in advance if I missed a post/comment on the following: What is the run/walk interval sets for the Venu? I have a Forerunner 230, my husband an Instinct, and they are both in 15 second increments…which is frustrating. Is the Venu the same? I miss the capability of 5 second increments of my old Timex Ironman, but prefer the features in the Garmin. If anyone can help me with the increment question, I would really appreciate it! Thank you. :)
Hi Dr Coconuts
I’d test one out in the shop first.
While it is a great watch, I am really not impressed with the delay/lag in the screen waking up when you lift your arm to look at it.
In my opinion, it should be pretty much instant not 1-2 seconds.
Garmin has confirmed this is how they expect it to behave and haven’t said they are looking to improve this at any point going forward.
It’s a shame as it does get very frustrating whenever I want to quickly see the time… I have to wait.
Check my video – link to youtube.com
I can’t help with the interval sets on Venu question sorry. Although I did just check and if you mean the Auto Lap feature, I can set it to 00.01 which comes up as 52ft.
Thanks
Hello, Daragh,
Thank you for trying to answer my question.
I was talking about the Run/Walk feature found within Alerts and/or the Run prompts. You can set most Garmins to alert when to run and/or walk break during a long run by setting alert times for each type of activity (run or walk). The last couple of Garmins we purchased have 15 second increments for for each of these activities with the hour portion 0-59.
I can check out at a dealer, I was just hoping someone already has a Venu that they can look (or already use this feature) OR can tell if there is ANY Garmin that has a better seconds’ interval than 15 seconds.
I checked out the Owner’s Manuals for 735XT, Venu, etc. etc. (p. 17 on most of these manuals) and the manual only provides instructions to “Enter the time for the run interval” or “Enter the time for the walk interval,” which could mean that the walk already has its presets or that I can actually enter any interval segment I want. A conundrum for sure.
Anyway, I really appreciate the response!
Dr. Coconuts
Just purchased this. No pandora?!? Why not. I don’t use spotify! Was thinking about vivo 4 instead of amoled venue, does this have pandora?
FYI- I had an Apple watch 2. The build in swim ap didn’t have a drill log, but you could download swim.com which did have a drill mode. So, you can do drill log/mode on Apple watch 2. I’m assuming the same is true for the Apple watch 5.
Hi there,
Thanks you so much for this in depth review.
How does the AMOLED display perform in sun light, compared to the VA4 for instance? What’s your experience?
I’ve seen pictures on the internet claiming it’s terrible. This is what will determine my choice for the Venu or the VA4 or Fenix 5.
Thanks in advance,
Rutger
Ps excuse me for my english, since I’m from Europe
Zero issues with the AMOLED in bright sun. Super bright sun. Summer sun in fact.
Taking pictures of any display is always tricky (trust me, it’s essentially all I do daily), but my guess is that if someone is saying their Venu screen is bad in sun, then they’ve honestly likely dorked up the settings somehow. It’s just a non-issue.
Nice straight forward answer. Thanks man
Hi there,
I got the Venu two weeks ago as a birthday present and I’m very happy with it. Also with battery life.
I switched off PulseOX and delete any widgets I don’t use. Even with always on display and a short run a day with GPS ánd music I get 3 dys battery. Switched off gps for walking.
Anyway, thanks for your in-depth review because it made me (and a collegae of mine) buy the watch.
Stay safe and healthy,
Rutger
(Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Hi,
Thanks for all the review. Is there a way to create a structure workout for swimming on the Venu. Like Garmin Swim 2 can do?
Thanks,
T
Getting 3 days of battery with the always on mode and 30 min workout per day.
Did an hour workout with full music including downloading music first. Drained the battery completely!
Not sure between this and vivoactive 4, but I like the brightness and crispness of the Venue. I do wish there were more garmin made watch faces, there are a bunch of 3d party ones, but not thrilled with most of them.
Does it measure ascent and descent ?
Yup!
Hell Ray,
I just picked up the venu and feel a bit under whelmed by it. The absence of watch faces is troubling. I spoke with one of the developers about creating a watch face and he mentioned the moving pixels is making it challenging to create always on watch faces. Any word from Garmin on creating more watch faces? The current ones on the watch are not appealing. Now I am considering something else…
Oddly enough, that’s actually something I brought up on Tuesday at CES with Garmin’s Vivo team.
On the 3rd party watch faces, specifically Live Watch faces, folks should be able to create as fancy of faces as they want already. I haven’t heard of the pixel moving aspect being an issue for 3rd parties. I assumed Garmin was handling that behind the scenes. Do you have some details (linkable) on someone saying that’s an issue?
As for other stock watch faces, yup, I brought that up as well.
Nothing written just discussing the always on feature with a developer of one the watch faces I am using. He eluded to the fact that creating an always on screen was challenging for him due to the no one pixels staying filled for too long. If this is the case it is limiting the Venu. I like the always on feature on the watch, it makes it beautiful and better than others.
Garmin should also trying creating decent watch faces for those who own Venu. The current selection is very limited. In particular something like the Fenix watch face in always on. If they fail to have more features and faces people might be turned off. Also those the Venu have an AI feature that automatically detects the exercise type?
Now considering if the Fenix 6s might be something I might get.
Hi there, I have watched a number of your videos, though didn’t answer my questions, nor did this post.
Do you know if the Venu supports the HRM RUN at all? Given the Venu support ANT and BT it should right? I don’t want to go ahead and buy the HRM RUN if it isn’t going to work.
I have had no issues with my Venu at all it has been great, now wanting to add more metrics and stats, i’m a bit of a stat nerd.
It should work with just HRM-Dual
Hi Ray, hope you can help.
If i have, let’s say 3 Whatsapp notifications, I only can read the first message of each one.
1. With the touch screen you can: ignore, mark as readed, discard or came back to the notification widget.
2. With the buttons : jump between different notifications.
How to read the complete conversation?
Hope there’s a way to do it, seems useless for me if yon can’t read all message in a notification
Thanks!
Spotify does not work for me at all. This was the main reason I bought this as a replacement over my 935.
Venu and spotify app are upgraded to latest version. iPhone and Garmin Connect as well. Venu has been authorized for spotify on the phone, it’s on the WiFi, I can load playlists to the watch, I have my headphones paired. But every time I want to play music the app crashes and throws me back to the blue triangle screen.
Sad to see Garmins till makes great hardware and then ruins it with crappy software. I have bought many Garmin devices in my life, and bad software seems to be a common theme. Maybe it’s time for me to accept that stability and ease of use is more important to me than high end sports features, get an Apple Watch and just be done with Garmin
Try Prime Music if you have Prime. Works great with Venu.
Hey Ray, you mentioned in your post you were able to get 2-3 days in always on mode. Could you share your settings. I am using the default setting and NEKi watch face but can only manage 4 days (not always on).
I am almost at the end of my 30 day return window and unfortunately, I think the Venu is going back.
I love the display. But I don’t like the fact that the only ‘always on’ watchface I can really use is the analog hands from Garmin, and I don’t want that one. There are a bunch of other watchfaces from 3d parties I like, but not always on. I found that the gesture mode doesn’t always work, and when I want to see the time, I look like a ____ (don’t want to be PC incorrect) waving my hand all around. If someone has a good 3d party watchface they are using, that has a digital display and things like HR, , date,,steps, etc and can be always on for date/time, pls let me know, maybe I am returning without having all the info. (Besides Garmin’s forum, is there another forum for users?)
I also really want a pandora music app, I don’t use spotify.
I find that the HR lots of times takes a while to be what it really should be. It will be at 120 while the handgrip of the trainer/elliptical/treadmill in the gym is at 90! Eventually it is correct, but I need this to be accurate.
I think this display is the future of watches, but I think the watch might still be a beta. If you want bleeding edge and hope that garmin does firmware updates to it to improve/add features, it would be OK to keep I think.
Just my 2c.
Hi Scott
I totally agree with you, I sent mine back and Garmin obviously know how poor parts of this tech are, as they gave me a full refund after I’d been wearing it for around 2months and even had a couple of scratches on it.
I did find a good Custom face which works nicely with Always on, see below:
Crystal:
link to apps.garmin.com
You can change the colours too.
I found this with Always on enabled to be a good one.
I’m currently looking around for a better watch as an alternative.
Even if I do come back to the Venu, I hope the fact I got Garmin to refund will make them think again and be more proactive in improving this device. Sucks to have such a poor experience on my first smart watch.
Hope this helps.
Wondering if any updates have corrected / improved GPS & HR accuracy? Trying to decide between Venue & Suunto 7.
Updated years ago from Ambit 3 to current Fenix 5, fed up with Fenix inaccuracies, constant BT disconnections, and terrible looking display. Time for a change. Appreciate any assistance. Mahalo.
Hey guys, I have both the vivoactive 4 and Venu. I am trying to decide which one I should stick with. Love the Venu’s bright screen but despise the short battery life in always on mode. Love the battery on vivoactive but hate the dull screen. …..
Did exactly the same thing as you Ebenezer. Screen brightness won out. I am currently using a 3d party digital screen in an semi always on mode (shows time/day/date/battery) until you move your arm, then shows HR, steps etc).
I get 3 days battery life without using specific workouts or music before I need a recharge. The Vivo was maybe a day or so better. I had a inexpensive though highly rated sport watch that lasted 30 days.link to amazon.com, was $70.
My conclusion was to either use the 30 day battery smartfit watch, or keep the Venu. The 24-36 hours of the vivoactive extra charge wasn’t worth the much dimmer screen. The Venu’s screen is the future. I don’t think this version will ever get better, but I think version 2 will probably have better battery and screen technology.
In fact, IMO, I think all new Garmin watches going forward will be using this screen tech.
So I kept the Venu, my biggest issue is really that when exercising it frequently takes 10 minutes for the watches HRM to be accurate, and I really need that function. Was going to return it for that reason, not battery life. YMMV
Great in-depth review. Loved your videos as well.
One quick question I had was related to the “animations” on the watch. I added two Yoga workouts, they show up fine in my Connect App and on the watch, but no matter what I do I cannot get the animation to play on the watch itself. I do have “Enable Videos” in the settings set to ON. This is a brand new Venu, updated to the latest firmware. Also, both Connect and Connect IQ are fully updated. The phone is an Android phone but I guess that should not make a difference. Any advice?
Thanks.
Cheers…Kishore
—
Did you test the Venu in a pool or open water swim ? Venu vs HRM-Tri/735xt . I don’t understand why they have so many functions , gym, breathing, but no metrics in open water ? Garmin discontinued the Swim watch, then released the Venu, then released the Swim 2 . The Venu makes the forerunner series seem a bit dated but lacks the functions of a triathlon watch ? If it has GPS, and accelerometer to measure stroke type and count, what is the difference in open water ? Why not include it ?
Yup, I did indoor pool swimming without any issue – worked fine for me. There’s no openwater swim mode though, so nothing to test there.
The openwater swim mode is seen as a triathlon focused option, so it tends to be reserved for higher end triathlon watches. The Swim 2 is a bit of a quirk in that system.
Functionality wise openwater swim mode has significant algorithms around it to ensure that the GPS accuracy and track is good/usable despite being underwater the majority of the time (for each arm stroke, only a small portion of that is during the recovery above-water).
hi can anyone tell me if jump rope is a preloaded activity or if it can be added?
thank you
And Garmin Venu record underwater HR without HRM-TRI?
Do you think a firmware update will allow this watch to connect to an ant+ Powermeter ?
Thx
Powermeter has never been part of Vivoactive firmware. Chances are slim to none that it will start now or in the future.
Hi, I bought this smartwatch a week ago coming from a Fitbit Ionic hoping for a better tracking of swim workouts, but I’m really disappointed with Garmin since you can load workouts for many activities as walking, running, cycling, cardio…except swimming!
Please have you got any hint that Garmin is going to update the swim app in order to allow users to load their own workouts?
Thank in advance
help me! trying to connect my airpods and the screen freezes trying to find them!
Is it possible to export data files (over USB) to analyze them myself (i.e. using Golden Cheetah)?
Yup! All Garmin devices allow you to plug them in and look at the .FIT file (activity files) via USB. Just a simple USB mass storage device.
Hey Ray,
Just gone back to Garmin (Edge 530), after a few years sabbatical with Wahoo.
Been looking for a new watch for a while, have always had Android Wear, but use it mainly for notifications.
Do you think this would be a suitable replacement? I especially like the idea of HR rebroadcast.
Hi,
Does garmin venu comes with Vo2 Max just like FR245?
Short answer: Yes :)
Oppinions vary on accuracy though. I’ve tested mine and it seemed plausible :)
Two quick questions:
1) Does the venu let you upload Strava Segments and let you know when they’ve started/stopped?
2) Is there any type of virtual coach for running that speaks to you?
Hi, I bought my Garmin Venu a week ago but when I check my daily review in Connect there are huge gaps where there is no data recorded. Does anybody have any suggestions for this. I originally had to do a reset after the first day as the workouts were in French and English. Cheers Brad.
Utility is king with these devices so I’d like to know if the amoled screen is easier to see for those of us without 20-20 vision! I currently still use my Fenix 3, for running mainly. Great device however I can’t see the Fenix 3 screen display and data fields that easily when running – I wear contact lenses which correct short sightedness but make me longer sighted so the watch is too close in use!
After reading the review I’m thinking of buying a Venu because of the clearer screen, then setting the screen to ‘always on’ with the exception of when not in use (I don’t wear these watches when not doing sports). My question is would this device be both easier to see, and deliver circa 5 days worth of battery use (based on running for around an hr once per day with gps/glonas) when set up to switch off the screen when not in use (I tend only to wear these devices when undertaking an activity, placed in a drawer rest of time).
Thanks
Pete
Pete, I’ve had my Venu for several months and have found the screen to be much more readable than the Vivoactive I was using. I’m getting 3-5 days on mine and I wear it almost continuously including while sleeping. The battery life seems a little shorter when I’m using it to work out (which is daily) but on bike rides I use the Garmin Edge 530 for data collection and the Venu is just a watch then. Otherwise I use it for running, swimming sometimes and strength training. That’s when the battery life suffers a bit. I’ve liked it a lot and am glad I got it.
Thanks for replying DrDennyM. Great to hear that the screen is much more readable.
I’m sure I’ve read that the ‘always on’ setting can be selected with an option that switches-off the screen when the device auto-detects that it’s not in use. I thinking this might eek out more days charged as I’ll only wear an hr or so per day.
Guess the answer is for me to give it a go!
Best wishes
Pete
I have a similar issue and the brighter clearer screen works for me. I cannot even read my wifes Forerunner.
I have to wear mine on my right wrist as I have tattoos on my left and it seems to block the data stream (just thought I would drop that in)
Which GPS were/are you using on the Venu?
GPS only? GPS + Galileo? GPS + GLONASS?
Since we live in the same area, I’m wondering if you tested these systems recently.
Thanks,
Rutger
I used search and couldn’t find any results, but now I see you answered this question last december. Sorry for that.
Thanks for your great review. I’m in doubt what to choose: Venu or Samsung Active 2
With actual price around 300$ they are almost same, but Active 2 has microphone (it’s really useful ,that you can reply during trainings) , and blood pressure (I’m not sure that it’s properly works) , plus they promise activate ECG.
But Garmin is Garmin :)
What do you think?
As an android user, I looked very seriously at the Samsung watches. I also wanted heart monitoring functions, but at the time Samsung did not have the ECG yet. BP needs a cuff, no watch can do this AFAIK.
I have other garmin equipment, bike computer, etc., so for a workout watch, I went with the Venu. I like light wt watches, the fenix series was too big and heavy. My only 2 complaints are battery life is about 3 days, I have the display always on, workout 1x a day. If you play music, turn on GPS etc., you will get 4 to 8 hours! Second complaint, and I sound like a broken record here is that the HRM doesn’t give an accurate reading for me for the 1st 5 to 10 min of activity. It then locks on, but I had hoped not to have to bring my chest strap HRM with me, that this would replace the need for it. It doesn’t.
Screen is great, and I think future watches will use this tech, and battery life will improve.
I had a 46mm Galaxy Watch and loved everything about it apart from the health tracking. The heart rate monitoring was awful, especially resting (would jump from around 50 to way over 100 while sitting watching tv). This wasn’t just one watch either, I had two others which had pressure sensors go faulty that did the same. They used the same hrm sensor on the Gear Sport which was as bad and also on the active series, according to forums this hasn’t improved.
Does the Venu support a MTB sportsmode?
Thanks for the very detailed review, it’s very helpful. In your photos and your YouTube video, the Granite Blue looks almost teal, but in other photos, such as on Garmin’s website, it looks more steel grey. Can you say whether the Granite Blue is “blue” or more “grey”?
For walking meditation it is helpful to know how many steps you made during an activity as accurately as possible. I had big problems with Garmin devices, since Garmin does not allow to access to number of steps done during an activity in Garmin connect anymore. Steps have to be calculated manually from Garmin Connect data, which is not very comfortable. Alternatively to a Garmin device, a Clue Step counter can be used. With the CLUE Step Counter it should be possible to read out the number of steps done during an activity by a PC application. The device is user modifiable.
link to learn.adafruit.com
Hi Ray,
I have my Venu for a month now. Still happy with it :)
Sticking to the Crystal watch face. Hope that Garmin would give us more room for design with the onboard faces.
Question: do you know if it is possible to replace the bezel (dyi or professional)? I already have a few tiny scratches and probably a few more to come in the future.
Thanks! :)
Rutger
(Aalsmeer, The Netherlands)
The bezel includes the antenna, so replacing it would near 100% destroy the GPS and communications side of the watch. :)
I’ve honestly never heard of anyone replacing a bezel on a GPS watch before.
Sorry!
I’m curious if you have a problem with the Crystal watch face not displaying immediately, either when you gesture with your wrist, or when you press the lower-left button to turn on the display. Whenever I try a custom watch face with my Venu, there is about a 2-second delay before the watch face appears (the stock watch faces come up immediately).
Hi,
As far as I know all custom watch faces are slower. But Crystal for me still is reasonably ok. When pushing a button it can be slow but with gestures I don’t experience that (it probably still is slow but I don’t really notice it).
I dont’t know if there is a speed difference with Always On Display turned on or off. Mine is always on.
Rutger,
Thank you for the comment. With always on, the watch face comes up right-away With always on turned off, there is a 2 second delay. Appreciate the response.
Joey.
Hi Joey, same here! I noticed it early this morning when the watch is still in night mode with AOD off. As if it needs an espresso to wake up just like me :)
Excellent review! Stumbled upon your website through a google search, and REALLY appreciate the detailed information. I’m looking at the Garmin Venu primarily as an everyday fitness tracking watch, with independent GPS tracking – primarily for hiking. Two questions relating to this:
1. I didn’t see any mention of elevation accuracy, and when I clicked on the links you posted to your workout data sets, this was one area where the various trackers you work seemed to vary significantly. Elevation gain is obviously a big part of hiking, so do you have any thoughts on elevation data accuracy for the Garmin Venu?
2. Any insights on the screen’s display in direct sunlight? I previously had a FitBit Blaze that was horrible in the sun. Debating if the Vivoactive 4 might be a better option, since I’ve heard OLED screens tend to not be as bright. It’s unlikely I would ever activate the “always on” function, so the live watch faces have no value for me.
Thanks!
A view infos about elevation accuracy would be great. I’m planing to buy the venu watch and mainly will used it to track my hikes.
Hi Team DC. Thanks fr a thorough review. One thing that bother’s me is that the Venu can only store 7 timed activities. Going on a multi day hike or doing more than one activity per day can easily fill this up and result in frustrations if no signal or wifi is nearby to upload. Do you know if they have upped this number with an update yet? Since it can hold 500 songs, I’m sure there’s enough memory to use for timed activities.
i’m having a real problem with playlists on my garmin venu – i can’t seem to delete them – tried via my computer where my playlists were created (and i can see the contents of my music on my venu as it’s plugged into my computer). I’d also like to add songs to existing playlists and can’t seem to do it..
any suggestions? otherwise i love the watch!
Hey, thanks for the great review! Question – I noticed on your video (and have read elsewhere) that the Venu touchscreen is a big laggy – do you know, is that the same on the Vivoactive 4 or is it specific to the AMOLED display? Thanks!
*a bit laggy, not big laggy :)
Guy,
There is about a 2-second delay in the Venu watch face when you are not using the always on feature (which drains battery about twice as fast). I did receive a firmware update from Garmin last week and it appears as if the delay has been reduced and is now less than 1 second (tolerable in my opinion).
As for the Vivoactive, though I haven’t owned any Garmin except the Venu, my understanding is there is no lag in the other models, only the Venu due to the AMOLED display.
Thanks,
Joey.
Great sale right now, $50 off. Clever Training is of course preferred here, also available on other sites.
Follow Ray’s link to support the site. I don’t know how to embed nicely, sorry
link to clevertraining.com
Hello, I just had the garmin venu and also ready to send it back because the « basic » function of audio alerts to headphones is really missing me. How a product from sept 2019 could not contain audio alerts evry miles/km or to be setup through the connect app ? I a getting back to my forerunner 735XT(with its poor screen!!)
Would all yoga exercise be made watching the venu and not hearing only the steps to be made ? This is something garmin engineer did not think about ?
I really like the screen but audio alerts are really missing …
Is the Venu you have in the “7 things” video the same as this, the slate blue? It looks quite grey on these photos but much more blue on the video?
Thank you for a very helpful and comprehensive review.
Yup, same one!
I suspect it’s the lighting. The 7 Things Video was mostly shot outside in August (mostly in early morning), whereas the bulk of the review shots were inside under studio lights in December. I try and get them to match as best as possible, but outside lighting is about 6500K+, whereas indoors my studio is set for 5500k.
Thanks for the quick reply. I assumed so but was thinking how nice the blue looked on the video and I hadn’t seen that colour available!
Is there ANY way to track an open water swim with this watch?
You can put it atop your swim-cap – still the most accurate method: link to dcrainmaker.com
Hi Ray.
You have marked “no” on ant+ weight scale. Does that mean it’s not compatible with Garmin’s own Index scale? Will there be issues using both on the same account? I guess the scale talks directly to Garmin Connect and so does the watch (though a smartphone connection)
Sorta.
The Garmin Index Scale isn’t actually an ANT+ Weight Scale. It has ANT+ in it for setting it up, but it’s a WiFi scale, so it doesn’t actually talk via the ANT+ Weight Scale system like older scales.
But with WiFi it integrates into your Garmin Connect account, so from a functionality standpoint, it’s honestly what you want anyway.
I’m really leaning towards this being the watch for me but I’m concerned about battery life. My question is, if all the bells and whistles are turned off so that battery life is extended, will this watch get me through a Saturday long run that might be 4-5 hours or more? I don’t mind daily charging because I generally attach my watch to its charger while in the shower anyway but I don’t want it to stop 15 feet short of a marathon finish line because I’m a slow runner and it took me 6 hours to run it.
Yes. If you just use gps it should. If you are listening to music via your watch and other devices, probably not.
Do you carry your phone with you, or do you not want to have that with you?
I get about 3 days with about 1 hr gps per day.
I don’t mind carrying my phone. Most of my shorts have pockets, so that’s not a problem.
Thank you. I’d not been able to find anything that answered about longer runs. Most things I found only had runs of an hour and my pace is on the slower side, so I needed to make sure it would last for longer.
If you are carrying your phone, then you don’t even need your watch for the gps. Just use an app on your phone. You can still use the watch for timing / splits, etc. Not sure if the gps would last 6 hours
I love the screen and weight of the watch, I really wish it had about 2x the battery life. I think next gen of watches will do this.
Also the watch has a proprietary charging cord, so if you travel, you should get another one.
the Venu is crap design and crap quality. Unless you set the screen to stay lit, then you have to double tap with the other hand to wake up the screen. Annoying in any circumstance moreso when running or cycling. And then the battery lasts only a couple days. After 4 months, the battery won’t hold a charge for even 2 hours. Garmin has some good products, this one is a loser
After 10 days of trying it, I was disapointed of not having also the audible alerts (Time/Distance) in earphones .. so sent it back for refund and waiting for Venu V2. I came back to my Forerunner 735XT…
“Unless you set the screen to stay lit, then you have to double tap with the other hand to wake up the screen.”
But that’s the same trade-off you make with any of the AMOLED screens. That wasn’t really a surprise here. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Samsung, Fitbit, Apple Watch, or anyone else using AMOLED or similiar. If the screen is crazy nice/brilliant, then it’s going to burn more battery. Thus the ability for you to choose whether to keep it on or not.
I recently bought a Garmin Venu when my AW S5 stopped syncing GPS tracks to my phone. I figured I would give the Venu a try with its AMOLED screen. In the past, I had a 735XT that I loved, a 935 and a 945.
I don’t think I will buy another Garmin that does not have an AMOLED screen. This screen is beautiful. I am getting 3 days of battery life with the screen set to always on. Venu has everything I need and nothing I don’t. Since I use a Garmin Edge, I do not need the cycling power support on my watch. I never paid attention to Garmin’s denial of service style data presentation so I don’t mind not having recovery time, training load etc. At 50, I know my body better than my watch. Overall, this device is highly recommended.
This watch still costs € 379 in Europe, for a watch that is more than a year old. Would like to buy a watch with this features, but i think it´s overpriced. What do you think? Are there better choices?
It’s €319 here in The Netherlands
You’re right! It’s over over over priced for what you get. Consider that if you use it for swim you can’t load your own workouts ( confirmed by Garmin assistance )
In the portuguese site of garmin it costs €379,99.
In these days clearly overpriced, when compared with other brands that do regular promotions.
I got mine from Amazon for 280€ just yesterday, the grey one. The black was 307€
Maybe a crazy question, but is there a way to use the Garmin Extended display option, but with a smart phone? Would be great to be able to use an iphone or Android as a head unit display (much larger) on the bike, and simply display the info coming from the Garmin watch. Is this just science fiction?
No, unfortunately not.
Long time viewer first time commenter.
Venu price has dropped in UK to £199….. Is that a buy now? Was looking at this and Vivo series, possibly older FR models for running and biking
Thanks for reading!
I think that’s roughly about normal for sale prices. It comes and goes, but I don’t think I’ve seen it any lower.
Is that online or in a physical store?
Amazon still lists it for about £270.
Online at Currys. Might be in store too. Looks V good value but not my first choice. Might have to wait for black Friday. Or may purchase and return of better deal comes up
link to hotukdeals.com
Thinking about buying the venu on sale but im torn between it and the forerunner 240. Mainly because of the lack of the recovery advisor on the venu. Is this an important feature? I want to get more into running but I am not super serious about it.
Perhaps a couple of 5k runs per week. Any thoughts?
*forerunner 245
thanks!
did some1 tested swimming? I get 20-30% more laps, very strange
s
This is my review, hopig it’s useful:
A sport watch that falls short of expectations… especially for swimming
Purchased 1 year ago, at € 299, for having better metrics than my previous Fitbit Ionic Adidas Edition, bought at € 210 a year before, I strongly advise against it because it promises a lot but does not deliver. Initially I took it for my swimming and walking workouts, then, due to Covid, I used it for cardio workouts at home / gym, walking and trekking.
Packaging: sportwatch with only 1 strap and charging cable… the fitbit had 2 straps of 2 different sizes
Strap: uncomfortable because, in addition to being a little short for those with large wrists, it is plasticky and has no other holes than the closing ones and therefore, sweating or in the heat, it is annoying to keep connected.
Screen: nice, reads well even in the sun and is an improvement over other Garmin models with a transflective display
Battery: poor. Regulated without Always on display and Pulse-Ox, blood oxygenation detection, only during sleep, with 2/3 workouts per week of 1h, lasts about 3 days and not 5 as advertised. In the 1-day treks with the GPS always active, you need to have it fully charged at the beginning to last till evening.
GPS: outdoors, the coupling to the satellites is quite fast with some uncertainties in the initial minutes and the accuracy is also decent
Touch: works quite well even with protective film
Daily use:
• combined with an Oneplus 5T, notifications arrive in 90% of cases. Given the round screen, in long messages the ends are lost.
• The advertised app for hydration tracking, Garmin Hydration Tracking, has always worked badly or has not worked. In fact it continues to get negative reviews on the Garmin Store on other sports watches as well
• Sleep tracking: poor, seems to rely more on pre-set rest times than actual tracking. From this point of view Fitbit was much more precise and also marked the afternoon naps which this does not do.
• Screen activation with a flick of the wrist: in normal use it is frustrating because, depending on the watchface installed and especially with data-rich watchfaces, it can take 3/4 seconds to turn on and then consult the time becomes almost impossible. During training, however, it works well
Sportwatch:
• Swimming: useless because, although Garmin says that workouts can be downloaded, this feature is excluded for swimming (confirmed by Garmin assistance) and therefore remains the basic function of counting laps not so precise
• Cardio / gym workouts: big limitations here too. You can load your workouts, but you cannot go from one exercise to another and go back (for example. If a machine is busy in the gym, you cannot go to the next and then resume) (confirmed by Garmin assistance). Furthermore, the counting during the exercises is very inaccurate (e.g. weights)
• Running: you can import your workouts, but not the routes (confirmed by Garmin assistance)
• Walking: like running
• Trekking: functional, with GPS active it tracks the route taken and allows you to navigate backwards.
• Floor detection: imprecise as depending on how you run / walk it mistakes those movements for floors climbed
So for those looking for a sportwatch / smartwatch without advanced features / training management it is better to choose other decidedly cheaper models, instead those who need to track their workouts must skip this model and look at the more expensive / complete ones
My 14 month old Venu is having charging problems. I need to jiggle the charge plug around in the port on the watch to get out to charge.
Anybody else have this issue?
Not unusual. It’s almost always the cable, rather than the port. Assuming the port doesn’t have any gunk in it (dirt, sports gel, nacho cheese sauce), then it’s likely the connectors on the cable.
I got so annoyed by them, I eventually found a far better charging cable out there: link to dcrainmaker.com
Enjoy!
Thanks, that did the trick.
Is there a specific reason, Ray, why there is no “trainingstatus” // “training effect” on this watch?
Really tought it would be standard on this watch. One big feature that I miss :(
Generally speaking Garmin limits any of the training load type features to the higher end watches, so basically, not the Vivo series (which includes Venu).
I don’t really have a good reason there unfortunately, since these days the FR245 costs the same amount and does have it.
Graphs are to small to appreciate.
You can click on the graphs to expand, or before every graph is the link to open up the entire data set and zoom around full screen.
Hi Ray,
I’m hoping you can help with this. I called Garmin and they were supposed to get back to me by email, no news and it’s been over a week!
I have a new Venu and love it, but I have one problem I can’t seem to fix. Once per week, I join a Zoom indoor cycling session with my old Spin instructor, so I use the Wahoo app on my Kickr to manage the trainer (she runs it using power zones, so I use ERG mode to keep myself honest). When done, I upload the ride to Strava, and then upload a .fit file to my computer to drag into Garmin connect, since Wahoo won’t upload to Garmin automatically. I drag the file into Garmin connect and it uploads seamlessly.
As I look at my “history” in my Venu, all my workouts are there, including ones I do through Zwift, but the manually uploaded workout does not. I can see it in Garmin mobile on my phone and in Garmin connect on the web, but the Venu won’t show it.
Is there a setting I’m missing? I can’t figure out why the Venu won’t show it. Let me know what you think.
Thanks again for all your awesome advice!!
I think this is the expected behavior. The web connect site centralizes all your activities/training setups coming from any device, but this does not the other way around(from web site to Watch) concerning activities.
Hi Tong–
If that is the expected behavior, why is the Venu showing my Zwift workouts, which are done via Zwift, not recorded on the Venu? That’s what puzzles me. If the Zwift workout appears, then shouldn’t everything on Garmin Connect appear?
Interesting. I’d have to do some deeper poking, but technically speaking the workouts from Zwift to Garmin use a specific push API that’s only available to a handful of partners (Zwift, TrainerRoad, Tacx [owned by Garmin], and I think I’m forgetting one other).
Garmin has always kept the whole import into Garmin Connect thing in a weird state. It’s annoying. I don’t really get why they’ve held this specific line this hard over the years, especially as more and more platforms are more and more open. It’s really the last stand Garmin seems to have for some reason.
Thanks! Let me know what you discover. Garmin doesn’t seem to understand that the more difficult they are with allowing people to share data across devices, the more likely it is that people will drop their products for devices that are more flexible (which has crossed my mind during this whole thing).
Not to mention the crazy Garmin ransomware blackout that happened last year. Thank God I was also using Strava at the time…
By the way, the only reason I’m using the Wahoo app on my aforementioned training session is because it’s so much easier to read on my phone when I’ve got sweat dripping in my eyes than my Garmin 520! UGH.
Hey Ray. My Wife has a Garmin Venu and we have A saris H3. Your spec sheet says it will work with power meters and everything with an IQ app and it will get around it being disabled in the software. Can you share what app/apps will work with the venu?
Thanks.
Yup, here ya go: link to apps.garmin.com
Cheers!
Any guess on when we might see replacement for Vivoactive 4/Venu? Have VA3 and holding out for what they come up with next (Sq wasn’t what I’m looking for)
Also wondering if that AMOLED screen tech might show up in a higher end sport watch. I see they used in an Aviation model, but that looks like a Venu with aviation features.
I like everything the Venu has to offer. I have an iPhone, is there any way to have built in responses on the Venu so you are able to respond from your watch quickly, if your phone is packed away or if you’re swimming etc? Or can you only respond with a Garmin through your phone?
Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t permit 3rd parties from accessing the text message responses (to send). They only allow read-only access. Apple does permit their own Apple Watch to send messages.
yes post was very useful
really appreciate
Question for anyone who can help. Ran tonight with my new Venu and old Fenix 3hr. As far as I can tell, all settings were the same other than Venu was set to smart recording and Fenix to 1 second. Both set to gps + glonas and both had same auto pause settings. I had to stop for several stop lights at intersections. My understanding is the Time and the Moving Time should be close with the Elapsed Time including the non-moving time. The Fenix shows elapsed time 47:37, moving time 46:18 and time 46:23. That all seems reasonable to me. However, the Venu shows elapsed time 47:38 (I started the Venu first), moving time 45:57, and time 46:08. Can anyone explain why the Venu showed almost twice the difference in moving time vs time and the 20 second difference in moving times. FYI, I wore the Venu on left wrist, which it was set for, and the Fenix 3hr on the right wrist. Maybe this is a dumb question and has been answered somewhere on Ray’s blog but I didn’t know where to look.
I have been using Venu for about 18 months now (got it as a Christmas present back in 2019). Before it I had FR 620 and FR 630. I never used music feature and almost never did I use Garmin Pay, though I set it up the first day.
The battery life is OK (I am using a custom watchface), I have to charge once every week with no activity or twice with average running activities. The worst part is GPS. I did not realize for a long time that I have to connect the watch to Wi-Fi to update the location of satellites. For that reason I was waiting up-to 20 minutes for watch to get the signal in a freezing winter cold. And even with up-to date satellite positions, while running in circles around my neighborhood I had varying results. Due to GPS errors I ran my fastest kilometre in less than 3 minutes, though in much better shape several years prior I ran it in almost 4 minutes.
Overall, Venu is an average watch and I cannot recommend it to anyone looking for mid-level watches for running. Even bulky plastic FR I had prior were a better option.
Hey there,
It is October 2021 and I’ve seen some good pricing on the Venu. Looking to make the jump from an Apple watch.
I am interested to know how granular the respiration rate tracking gets on the Venu. Can I see breaths per minute on a per minute basis? Can I see it real-time? If not, is there a Garmin watch that has such functions?
Thanks!
Marc
The Garmin Venu shows Respiratory Rate in real time, for instance with the protocol Yoga just shortly after you start the activity. I paired a Polar H10 to the Venu and did not wear the watch on the wrist. The Yoga protocol showed heart rate, but no respiratory rate. Is wrist worn respiratory rate accurate? Peter H. Charton says no, because of motion artifacts during movements:
link to youtube.com
But what is when the watch is at complete rest (altough not very comfortable to do for certain Yoga exercises)? Respiratory rate could be helpful for practicing breath meditation. Unfortunately, there is no gold standard reference device for respiratory rate. I suggest to validate the device manually by counting the number of breath taken in a minute and compare the data on the device.
I realize this is a rather pedestrian question, but NYTimes’ Wirecutter says the step tracking on the Venu is wildly inaccurate, showing 50% more steps than taken. Is that true. I don’t see that issue mentioned in Ray’s very comprehensive review. I just bought a Venu Sq for $149, coming from a Vivoactive 3. I have noticed that the step counter on the Vivoactive 3 does vary from my friend’s Apple watch.
Hello Thank you for your review. This will be my 2nd garmin based on your reviews. Would you recommend an additional glass screen protector?
Jenson has this on sale at 139 link to jensonusa.com.
I was very happy with my Venu since December 2020. Then I started noticing the screen wasn’t as bright, then I could see ghosting in the display colors. Then the battery life started to decrease. Then I contacted support and was told that this is all normal and I could have the screen replaced for $160. I did not address the battery issue. There’s many posts on Garmins support site with issues just like mine. Apparently these have ~3yr life expectancy so factor that in to your buying decision.