The Garmin Venu 2 is one of the greatest Garmin watches available right now. It amazingly effectively straddles the line between a smartwatch and a running watch, blending powerful exercise tracking capabilities with necessary daily apps to produce a smartwatch for all situations.
The Venu 2, like many current wearables, places a strong focus on wellbeing, with all-day stress monitoring and a continuous Body Battery energy score reminding you to look after your mental health. You may also track your water consumption, daily walks, stairs climbed, calories burnt, and sleep patterns.
However, the Venu 2 is more than just a fitness tracker; it comes equipped with powerful functions for tracking a variety of activities. Runners are especially well-served. The onboard GPS is exceptionally precise, as you’d expect from Garmin. A brand that established its reputation in reliable satellite navigation, offering measurements with a minuscule margin of error and producing highly detailed maps that illustrate your shifting pace during your training session.
What will you see here?
Price and release date
The Garmin Venu 2 was introduced in April 2021, with prices starting at $399.99/£349.99/AU$629 for both the 40mm and 45mm casing sizes. That’s somewhat more than the original Garmin Venu’s initial pricing in 2020. Also around double the price of a Garmin Venu Sq.
Design:
The Garmin Venu 2 appears similar to its predecessors, with a classic look that’s stylish enough for everyday wear while still being functional enough for workouts. With a silicone band, metal bezel, and polymer casing. It’s hardly innovative, but the new Venu solves one of our main issues about the previous Venu, which was its lack of varied size options.
Sizes
The original Venu 2 has a 44mm casing and a 33mm display, whilst the smaller Venu 2S has a 40mm case and a 27.9mm display. Both sizes take Garmin’s standard 18mm bands, allowing you to swap out the regular strap for something a bit more unique.
Colors
The 44mm model comes in two colorways: slate with a black case and granite blue with a matching casing. Both feature a stainless steel bezel that is silver in color. The graphite Venu 2S with a slate bezel, light sand with a light gold bezel, and mist grey with a silver bezel. Also white with a rose gold bezel is the four colors available for the 40mm Venu 2S.
When you order your watch in the United States, you may build a ‘custom’ design by selecting and combining straps and cases to build a mix that suits you.
Buttons and faces
A touchscreen and two tactile buttons on the right-hand side control the watch. The bottom of these functions as a back button, while the top right is context-sensitive, with symbols flashing on-screen to indicate what action it will execute at a given time. Similar to the Garmin Instinct’s dual-screen display.
There are various appealing watch faces to pick from, including several that are animated as the watch wakes up.
Display:
The Venu 2’s bright AMOLED touchscreen, like the original Garmin Venu, is one of its most eye-catching features. For 2021, the resolution has been increased to 416 x 416 dots for the 44mm Venu 2 and 360 x 360 pixels for the 40mm Venu 2S.
In contrast, the original 43.2mm Garmin Venu has a size of 390 x 390 pixels, while the flagship Fenix 6 has a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels. Because of the high pixel density, images and text are crisp and clear. Also, you can read graphs and charts in great detail without having to reference the smartphone app. If you want to view a graph of your heart rate or stress levels during the day or even during the week, it’s all right here.
You can adjust it higher for viewing in strong sunlight. Again, this will reduce battery life, but the difference isn’t as significant as we thought, merely lowering lifetime by a few percent every day.
Features:
The Garmin Venu 2 is a well-equipped smartwatch with a high-resolution screen that allows you to monitor accurate information about the day’s schedule, weather, app alerts, and more directly on your wrist.
The Venu 2, like the Venu Sq, features optional women’s health tracking. This you may add as a shortcut to your list of activities. Surprisingly, this option is more thorough than the one found in the ladies’, Garmin Lily. Also a broader variety of symptoms and emotions to help understand your cycle.
The watch can play music from a third-party app like
To begin downloading tunes, connect your phone to a Wi-Fi network through Garmin Connect. This is a simple procedure; simply tap the device indicated at the top of the app’s home screen and follow the directions.
Contactless purchase support
Garmin Pay supports contactless purchases using NFC if your bank is another one of those supported. Before you can use it, you must first configure it in the Garmin Connect app on your phone; otherwise, the choice will not appear in the watch’s menu.
Manage music on the phone
The Venu 2 can also manage music playing on your phone, allowing you to play/pause the current track, skip forward and backward, and adjust the volume. Unlike other watches, the display may display the composer and track name, as well as a progress meter and timer. You can also use the watch to control the playing of YouTube videos on your smartphone, which is useful if you’re casting them on a TV.
Fitness tracking:
The Garmin Venu 2 can monitor dozens of indoor and outdoor exercises, and during setup. You’ll be invited to select a few of your favorites – a useful feature that saves you from having to navigate through a big list every time you want to work out.
GPS
GPS accuracy was really good, matching our pre-measured 5km route to within 10 meters. That’s what you come to expect from a firm built on the basis of its satellite location technology. Also, it’s refreshing to see that it hasn’t changed.
When you finish an exercise, you’ll be shown a little map. As well as distance, time, steps, pace, calories, and heart rate statistics. A power meter and metrics from that sensor will be displayed at a glance.
Training programs
One of the finest aspects of Garmin Connect is the ability to create training programs to help you accomplish a specific goal. Also, exercise ideas that change based on your fitness level and prior performance. Browse the Venu 2’s optional widgets for a Garmin Coach shortcut that allows you to view these plans on your wrist and start your next scheduled training course with a fast tap.
The Venu 2 performs admirably at the gym. We put it through its paces in many rigorous spin classes. Also, it rapidly recognized variations in pulse rate, resulting in the predicted increases during sprints with no odd peaks or troughs.
You can scroll through previous workouts on the device at any time. Also if you’re considering upgrading from another Garmin device. You’ll be pleased to know that you can scroll through all recent workouts synced with Garmin Connect – not those recorded by Venu 2.
Garmin Connect App
The Venu 2, like other Garmin devices, connects to the Garmin Connect app on your smartphone through Bluetooth. It’s a well-designed software that collects and shows data from all of the company’s gadgets, including smartwatches, smart scales, and cycling power meters. Also foot pods, in a straightforward and uniform manner.
If your training partners don’t have Garmin devices, all of your exercise data can be automatically synced with 3rd apps like Strava. Workouts connected with Strava and Nutracheck very immediately.
Customizable Home screen
The home screen of the app is completely customizable, with quick-view widgets for your most recent workout, heart rate, sleep score, stress level, body battery, calories burnt, menstrual cycle, and more. You may add, or delete. Also, relocate them as you see fit. Also, the app can provide ‘health insights’ on the homepage if it detects a trend or shift in your daily habits. On a roll when it comes to meeting your daily step target or being visibly more active.
Social features
There are also some remarkable social features. Such as the option to establish challenges with friends, and engage in community challenges. Also, set up emergency contacts in the event you have an accident while training.
Is Garmin Venu 2 worth buying?
Venu 2 Plus is a more suitable option. The Venu 2 Plus is an excellent fitness watch that is easier to wear for extended periods of time than Garmin’s bulkier enthusiast running watches. This series’ new improvements, such as digital assistant compatibility, make the Venu 2 Plus seem more like a smartwatch than the Venu 2.
Is Vivoactive 4 better than Venu?
The only significant distinctions are the Venu’s higher-end design and extraordinarily sharp display. The battery life of the Vivoactive 4 is somewhat longer. Also, the watch face can be left on all of the time without worrying about quick battery loss. Decide if display quality, style, or battery life are more essential to you.
Conclusion
The Garmin Venu 2 is one of the greatest sports watches currently available, combining serious fitness capabilities with an amazing set of smartwatch tools for daily use. Although its design isn’t revolutionary and is quite similar to the original Garmin Venu. It’s suited for both workouts and everyday use. This is a difficult balance to find. The actual star is its bright, high-resolution AMOLED display. This allows you to see a massive amount of data at once and puts a wealth of information about your process groups and overall wellness right on your wrist.
