Garmin Venu 2 Plus review: Who’s it for?

Although Fitbit and Apple are two of essentially the most distinguished gamers in terms of fitness trackers and smartwatches, Garmin, which has been round since 1989 and makes a number of high-end exercise trackers, continues to be within the sport. I took a have a look at its newest lively way of life health tracker/smartwatch, the Venu 2 Plus, to see the way it stacks up as a exercise buddy.

I’ll confess, I’m typically on #TeamApple in terms of private tech. I’ve purchased into the ecosystem 100%. However I assumed it was time to seek out out what life was like exterior the infinite loop of the Appleverse, so the Venu 2 Plus was the primary cease on that journey.

The Venu 2 Plus, Garmin’s upscale providing, appears to be like good. It efficiently combines the model of a smartwatch with the toughness and lengthy battery lifetime of a sports activities tracker. I examined a chrome steel black mannequin with a unbelievable OLED show with deep blacks and vibrant colours, which particularly helped me see it clearly on a vivid, sunny day.

The Venu 2 Plus is 43.6mm in diameter with a 33mm display screen and chrome steel again cowl. It weighs 51 grams, making it fairly a bit heavier than the aluminum Apple Watch 7 (38.8 grams). Whereas in smartwatch mode, which suggests not utilizing GPS to trace exercises, Garmin says the Venu 2 Plus will last as long as 9 days on a full battery. I discovered this to be fairly correct.

Total, the watch is modern and attractive, and if it weren’t for the silicone strap, you may put on this in a proper setting. (In equity, you may change the bands. I’d suggest the Ritche Quick Release Leather Watch Band or a ​​Ldfas steel link band if you wish to get fancy.)

Along with the touchscreen, the two Plus has three buttons. The highest button begins and stops actions, and holding it for 3 seconds brings up a display screen of personalized shortcuts. Maintain it for greater than that, and it’ll attempt to provoke an emergency name to first responders and any emergency contacts you arrange. The underside button takes you again to the earlier display screen however can double as a lap counter. Lengthy urgent it will get you into settings. (Extra on that beneath.)

Nonetheless, the largest benefit the Venu 2 Plus has over earlier Venu 2 fashions is its capacity to connect with your telephone, permitting you to make and obtain telephone calls and entry your telephone’s sensible assistant (Siri, Google Assistant, or Samsung’s Bixby). That is the aim of the center button. Press this, and it triggers your telephone’s assistant and performs any audio via the watch. I didn’t have an Android gadget to check it with, however utilizing it with Siri was.… advantageous. But it surely doesn’t have the deep integration Siri has one the Apple platform, naturally.

The mixing together with your telephone is nice however breaks no new floor. Along with the decision options, that are just about desk stakes nowadays, with an Android telephone, it’s also possible to obtain and reply to textual content messages with some easy pre-built solutions, reminiscent of “Sure,” “No,” or “I’ll name you later.” That received’t work for iPhone customers, nonetheless. Apple desires you to purchase an Apple Watch, so it doesn’t enable third-party replies to textual content messages. That’s not Garmin’s fault, after all, however it limits performance with iPhones.

It’s acquired a variety of sensors on it. GPS, barometer, compass, thermometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, ambient mild, coronary heart price, and pulse oximeter are all there. This implies it could possibly monitor absolutely anything you do, and it helps some 25 exercise varieties out of the field. (There are greater than 1,400 further actions accessible for obtain, too.) For some workout routines like energy coaching and yoga, you may see useful movies that present correct kind proper on the watch—however discovering these little movies is a chore. For example, to see the right kind video for the dumbbell fly train, I needed to push a facet button, swipe to the energy coaching part, then faucet six occasions via a series of icons to lastly see the video.

One standout well being monitoring function, nonetheless, is the Well being Snapshot. This takes a two-minute studying of key well being stats, together with common coronary heart price, respiratory, stress degree, and coronary heart price variability. It additionally contains what Garmin calls Physique Battery, an power monitoring rating that mixes how sleep, stress, and train have an effect on your readiness for coaching.

Talking of battery, this factor received’t stop. Effectively, it can, however solely after about 9 or 10 days, as Garmin promised. It additionally expenses shortly. As soon as, I forgot to cost it and let it run all the best way right down to empty. It charged as much as 60 p.c in about 45 minutes and didn’t budge off that for a lot of the remainder of the day.

As with most health expertise right this moment, no gadget exists independently. It wants an app, most likely a retailer of some sort so as to add new watch faces and actions, and a few technique to improve. Connection to a smartphone is de rigueur, because it’s nonetheless one of the best ways to see and analyze the oceans of information these health trackers accumulate.

Sadly, the Garmin Join app on the telephone verges on incomprehensible, with many layers of hard-to-navigate nested menus. Altering fundamental settings was so non-intuitive that I needed to Google learn how to change a watch face after I put in one and determined I didn’t prefer it. (It’s important to do it on the watch. You may’t change the watch face through the telephone app like you may with an Apple Watch.) It’s complicated; some settings must be performed on the telephone, and a few must be performed on the watch itself. However there appears to be no actual clue into which settings must be modified the place.

Navigating the Venu 2 Plus itself isn’t unhealthy, per se, however in comparison with the fluid simplicity of the Apple Watch, there’s an excessive amount of display screen swiping, smashing buttons, and usually looking for staple items like beginning a exercise. I used to be by no means fairly certain if I used to be supposed to make use of the facet buttons or the touchscreen. Usually I attempted each simply to see what would occur. It was irritating.

The app retailer for the gadget, accessed via the Garmin Join IQ app, is worse. It appears to be much more of a free-for-all than the early Google Play Retailer, with many deeply difficult watch faces catering to health geeks who want knowledge, knowledge, and extra knowledge. I scuba dive and my dive pc has an easier interface than a few of these watch faces accessible. I simply need to understand how far I ran, how lengthy it took me, and after I began and stopped. If I would like extra knowledge, I need to look on the telephone the place it’s simpler to seek out and interpret.

That’s to not say there aren’t fundamental watch faces, however these verge on the too simplistic with too little knowledge. It’s robust to seek out the best stability.

The shop additionally gives downloadable actions and a mish-mash of what Garmin calls “knowledge fields” that largely duplicate every others’ features. Looking for something particular is a chore, and the entire retailer may gain advantage from higher categorization and polish. For example, there’s no technique to search only for a listing of all of the downloadable actions; you need to seek for precisely what you’re in search of—kayaking, as an illustration—and get a number of irrelevant outcomes in your bother.

Lastly, there are a variety of Russian and Chinese language apps, watch faces, and knowledge fields to obtain. Garmin is a world firm and there are tons of respectable coders in each nations who take pleasure in health and need to make a dwelling promoting the fruits for his or her expertise. 99.9 p.c are possible legit. However I couldn’t shake the sensation that there’s no actual high quality management within the Garmin app retailer and I discovered myself leery of putting in stuff which may entry my intimate location and well being knowledge. Name me paranoid, however that is the world we dwell in.

All in all, the software program facet of the watch is a disgrace. A lot of this complexity and fiddliness exist as a result of the Venu 2 Plus is, at coronary heart, extra of a health tracker than a smartwatch. On the Apple Watch, for instance, there may be some fundamental health performance in its exercise app, however it leaves the intensive knowledge assortment and demo movies to third-party builders like Sensible Fitness center. The Venu 2 Plus doesn’t have the CPU oomph or the developer neighborhood to do that, nonetheless.

The Garmin Venu 2 Plus is a handsome smartwatch/health tracker mashup that may go for days and report knowledge on nearly any exercise you may think about. However I’ll be trustworthy: I’m undecided who that is for. Apple customers will gravitate in direction of an Apple Watch. Android customers could also be a greater match for the Venu 2 Plus, however they will additionally go for the superb Galaxy Watch 4 or get a less expensive Fitbit Inspire 2. In the long run, a fiddly interface, non-intuitive telephone app, and a half-baked retailer maintain it again from being one of many best smartwatches or best fitness trackers.

Suitable telephones	iPhone, Android	iPhone	Android
Dimension choices	40mm, 43mm, 45mm	41mm, 45mm	40mm, 44mm
Weight	51 grams	32 to 37 grams (41mm mannequin);38.8 to 45.1 grams (45mm mannequin)	30.3 grams (44mm), 25.9 grams
Show	AMOLED, optionally available always-on mode	At all times-on Retina LTPO OLED show	At all times-on Tremendous AMOLED show
Battery Life	Smartwatch mode: As much as 9 days<br />Battery saver: As much as 10 days<br />GPS mode with music: As much as 8 hours<br />GPS mode with out music: As much as 24 hours	As much as 18 hours	As much as 40 hours
Connectivity	GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi	LTE, UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, BeiDou	Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Sensors	Barometric altimeter, Compass, Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Thermometer, Ambient mild sensor, Pulse Ox Blood Oxygen Saturation Monitor	Compass, always-on altimeter, blood oxygen sensor, electrical coronary heart sensor, third-generation optical coronary heart sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient mild sensor, Apple Pay, GymKit	Accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, ambient mild, compass, optical coronary heart price sensor, electrical coronary heart sensor, organic impedance evaluation
Worth	$449	$399	$219