Music. So the garmin venue is kind of the smartwatch in a garmin’s uh lineup. That basically means it has a really nice screen other than that it’s pretty similar to a lot of the other watches in garmin’s range. There are two models in the new venue: 2 range, the venue 2, which is the one i tested today, and the venue 2s, which is just a smaller watch. It’S got all the same features, but the smaller size means it has a smaller screen and a shorter battery life battery life and screen size are two things that have been improved on the venue too, though, on the kind of main model. This now has a 1.3 inch screen, as opposed to a 1.2 inch on the garmin venue original and the venue 2s. The smaller one has a 1.1 inch screen battery life has taken quite a big jump, it’s now up to kind of 11 days in smartwatch mode and eight hours of gps plus music. Those numbers are a little smaller on the venue 2s. The original venue was only rated to last for five days in watch mode and then six hours of gps plus music. I tend to get about kind of three days out of it generally. The watch also has garmin’s elevate, four heart rate um sensor on the back. This is the kind of a new generation of the elevate sensor. Gum suggests that this new sensor upgrade will basically get you better optical heart rate, tracking, better kind of pulse oximeter accuracy, that kind of thing that’s quite necessary, because something else that’s new on the venue, too, is kind of a whole load of new health stats being Brought to the uh the kind of the series you’re getting kind of slightly more detailed sleep tracking going on here, you can take a health snapshot which you, basically you wear the watch for two minutes.
It’S like a dedicated sports mode. This uh, you wear a watch for two minutes and it gives you things like your heart rate during that time, heart rate variability, your stress, your blood oxygen, saturations, kind of a quick snapshot. Basically, a few key health stats there’s also going to be a new fitness age widget on the watch which isn’t here on the one i’m testing. At the moment, i can’t connect it to garmin connect at the moment or anything like that. You can find fitness age in garmin connect already it’s kind of tucked away under your vo2 score in the performance stats, but this widget will basically make it a much more widely available stat to everyone. It kind of basically tells you kind of how thick you are in a different way, i suppose like yeah, if you’re 32 years old you’ve got a fitness age of a 20 year old, good news, it’s. Also, a new quick charge feature in the watch where, if you plug it in for 10 minutes, you’ll get a day of use out of it or an hour of gps plus music, which is quite handy because obviously, this isn’t, the longest lasting garmin out there and There’S some kind of new workout modes there, i think of these there’s things like bouldering um, but hit the new hit workout. I think it’s, probably the best just because it comes with a load of preset timers for kind of classic hit.
Workouts, like tabata and every minute on the minute, workouts generally also, i think the kind of menus and displays have been sharpened up a little as a slightly better use of the screen. I think one of the criticisms i had with the venue original was like it’s a nice screen, but then garmin has done anything with it. The kind of widgets or glasses, as they’re called in here, are a bit more developed a bit more color involved. Even the kind of sports modes menu is a bit nicer, looking just basically making better use of this lovely amoled screen, which is really the key feature of the watch. So that’s, a good thing. Other stuff for design is it’s still the same kind of two button design on the side. Here you kind of hold down the bottom one as your menu button. The top right is kind of the classic going button takes you through to your kind of workouts, and the other thing has changed is the price, and this is unfortunately, a bad change. It’S got more expensive uh. The original venue is kind of 329 pounds in the uk, whereas the venue, 2 and 2s are both 349.99 in the uk only ‘9.99 and ‘9.99 euros uh other than that. It’S really kind of the same significant venue, all of garba’s kind of smart features which really are on lots of watches things like garmin pay, nfc payments um the connect iq app store, which is obviously not a particularly developed, app store but it’s there and it’s got Storage for music and links up spotify, playlists, there’s, more storage on this watch than the um previous venue.
It gets up to 650 songs. Uh was the previous one was rated as up to 500. So a little boost there for cramming in as much music as you can Music, so had the venue just over a day, and i took it down for my track session today, which was the run i had lined up on my plan just kind of doing eight Times one kilometer reps on the track: first time on the track, actually a long time for me, it’s been locked down and then i was recovering for a marathon, so i’m very excited to get there um track’s, not a brilliant test of gps. I will say that, so you know lots of watches, do struggle on the track and the venue did come up reading quite long compared to the garmin fenix 6 pro i was wearing, which was in track run mode, which is a lot more accurate, actually on a Track so yeah over 11 uh, just over 11k, it was kind of half a day long, but we’ll also do a lot more testing on the gps accuracy on kind of more normal routes than the track when it comes to heart rate accuracy. Actually, at the time of the run i didn’t know it was a new heart rate center i’ve been trying to scrambling for details on the watch all day um, but i was actually really impressed with it. I had to say so. I haven’t been able to sync the watch to garmin connect.
Yet so i can’t actually look at the heart rate graph in any real detail compared to the one from the phoenix which is linked up to our hrm pro chest strap, but on the watch, the the actual heart rate graph looks really good. You know this was a good workout to test it out. It was kind of you know: eight kilometer rep. You can see the rise and fall of my heart rate. I was kind of doing four uh four kind of about marathon pace and then four about um. 5K pace and you see the heart rate going higher in the 5k pace, reps that kind of thing and coming back down quite quickly. The overall average and max heart rate readings weren’t, far off a chest, strap so yeah. It was a pretty good performance actually from the heart rate sensor. I don’t know what’s quite testing workout, for it we’ll do loads more testing on that before we claim that this new elevate, four generation sensor is amazing, but so far the signs are positive screen. Uh. Obviously so this you can have it set to always on if you set it to always on, for the kind of main watch face uh. It will also go always on during your activities, but it kind of dims a bit if you know when it’s, when you’re. Just running normally and then, as you do, the gesture the screen will brighten up so on dull days, kind of any level of always on the screen is kind of okay to read, but today it was bright, sunshine and you can’t see the screen until you turn It towards your wrist and it kind of brightens up and then you get you can see it very clearly there once you’ve got the screen really kind of awake um.
You can see your stats quite clearly, but you know it’s one of those where you do have to turn your wrist and look at it to actually see your stats rather than kind of just glancing down like that, like you might do with the phoenix on the Other wrist, you know, that’s, one downside of the venue’s nicer screen is that safe battery, the actual kind of always on setting is a little bit dull for running in bright sunshine. It’S also duller than the apple watch is kind of always on setting, for example, which obviously has one day of battery life. Garment had a bit more here, um, but they’ve done that by dimming the screen a bit more during activities. At the end of run, you don’t get any kind of training insights on the watch. Obviously, it’s going to have fitness age which is tied to vo2 max i’m, not sure how that’s going to be played, because you don’t really seem to get vrt max scores on the watch. Um and you know you don’t get things like your training is productive. You don’t, you know that training session was really good for your anaerobic fitness, all that kind of stuff, that’s there’s more folks. You know as kind of lifestyley sports watch as opposed to something like the four runner series now battery so i’d, like to say i used to get about three days out of the venue original if i was training kind of wrigley, which is running every day, um.
If it was a lighter load, the time might get up to four days, so the new one in the first 24 hours i had with it. It knocked off about 25 of the battery life uh, that included about 80 minutes of kind of outdoor gps activity, and i will say, a lot of fiddling because it was a new. You know toy and i was playing with it and setting it all up and stuff like that so i’m, hoping that over time in more general use, i’ll get towards five days, even when training quite heavily um, and maybe, if you’re, you know not running every day. Necessarily might get a little bit more, but we’ll give a lot more detail on that in the full review. But at the moment it probably seems like it might be a slight improvement on the original venue, but um. One thing i can’t talk about is the new sleep things, because, even though i did get a sleep rating when i woke up in the morning, it since disappeared from the watch and as i can’t sink into garmin connect that data is now gone forever. I hope that won’t happen when i can link it to garmin connect, but i did notice that it had read my sleep as too long uh, something ahead of every garment. What i’ve ever tried that does sleep tracking again we’ll keep an eye on that when we do our full review, because Music, so the venue two and the two s times, seemed to really build on what the venue offered, which was basically a watch that had garmin’s Kind of really impressive native sports tracking in a more attractive kind of design.
With that, you know really nice amoled screen, but it’s improved in a few key ways: the screen’s a bit bigger battery life’s a little bit longer. All those things are positives and yeah. I can’t say it: does you know what it’s meant to do? It’S a really nice screen to interact with it’s, very engaging watch? You know if you are wanting some of that garmin kind of sports tracking but you’re tired of looking at those transfective displays that are on all the other watches, and you want something a bit brighter and more exciting. You know, then, here it is it’s more sporty than a kind of true smartwatch, something like the apple watch or you know a samsung galaxy it’s better on the sports tracking front, but it’s not actually all that smart it’s, fair to say the lack of a proper App store, really, you know, does set. You know those kind of true sport, which is a part in my opinion, but it is kind of smarter than the watches you’re getting from you know the big sports manufacturing brands like polar and coros um elsewhere. This is smarter than those it’s got that nice screen and the music storage and all that kind of stuff within garmin’s own range. Obviously you can get all these features apart from the screen and other watches and that’s, where i kind of struggled with the first venue, especially compared to the vivoactive 4.. The screen is nice, but is it enough of an upgrade to pay more for worse battery life when you’re getting a very similar experience? All around, however kind of all the new features seem fine on the watch.
I’M excited to keep testing that new heart rate sensor see if it really is an improvement. The new health tracking features are all kind of fine there’s, nothing massively novel there i will say one thousand is obviously that new price being higher it does make it a harder choice to upgrade to the venue, and it is now that little bit more expensive still Should finish off by saying it’s still not gon na be as good as sports watch as you’ll find in the four runner range for less money, the four and a two four five, even the four and a 45 simply having a proper always on display. Um kind of a five button setup all that kind of stuff really does make it a little bit more practical and easy to use on the run, but it is a good sports tracker. This it’s got garmin stuff in there um. If you have used lots of four runners, you won’t really notice a huge difference in the actual kind of sports tracking experience. You still get the lap button, which is obviously big in the world of smart watches, so yeah so far uh. It seems like kind of more of the same in terms of what the venue offered, but all done a little bit better and that’s. A good thing and we’ll have a whole load more information on the venue too, when we do our full multi test review, because mike is also going to have to watch in to look out for that down the line that’s it guys.
That is our quick first run, video on the garmin venue. 2.. Let us know in the comments you know if you’re interested in this watch uh if you’ve used the venue original what you thought of it.iVOmFEoVpe4
