Review is whats the difference between the galaxy watch 4 and the garmin venue 2, so thats. What this video is all about, so both of these are smart watches with great looking touchscreen displays both have gps for tracking outdoor activities and both of them also have heart rate sensors for tracking all those health metrics, but theres a difference in the smartwatch experience between These two, as well as the kind of data that these devices collect, as well as the accuracy of that data, so in this video ill, be covering the differences from a feature standpoint, but i also have some real life examples where i was wearing the venue. Two on one wrist and the watch four on the other. Just to give you a good idea of the differences in gps and hardware accuracy, but i also do have some full in depth. Reviews of both these devices, which ill have linked down in the description below which id encourage you to check out once youre done over here. So im going to try to cover as many things as possible in this video. But if you have anything additional to share, make sure to leave a comment down in the comment section down below and if the information in this video does help you out at all dont, be shy about hitting that like button. As it definitely helps this video and the channel a lot quite a bit – and i appreciate it so i think the most important thing to cover right out of the gate is that the watch board is only compatible with android phones.
You wont be able to pair the watch for with an iphone, but with the venue 2. You can pair this with either an iphone or an android phone. So with that big requirement out of the way lets talk about the hardware, so the garmin venue 2 its a great looking watch and it comes in two different sizes: a 40 millimeter version and a 45 millimeter version, and it comes in a variety of color options. They have a nice stainless steel bezel on the outside, with the rest of the case being made out of plastic, and the display is protected by corning gorilla glass 3. with the galaxy watch, 4 theres, actually two different versions to choose from the galaxy watch 4 and Then the galaxy watch 4 classic with the standard watch 4 being made out of aluminum and the classic being made out of stainless steel and then, in addition, the classic version gets a physical rotating bezel, where the standard watch 4 has a touch, sensitive, bezel and then, With both versions of the galaxy watch 4, they come in a small and large size option with each of them and again lots of color options for the displays. All of these watches have really great looking touchscreen displays, with the display sizes being quite similar between these small and large variants of each of them, but the pixel density is going to be a little bit better on the samsungs. Both of these do have an always on displayed mode, but using that feature will take a hit on battery life, which i guess lets just go ahead and talk about that right now and theres going to be a big difference between these two in this department.
So, with these smaller galaxy watch fords, you can probably get about a day out of them before you have to recharge them and then, with the venue 2s, which is the smaller of the garmin venues you can get about five to seven days and then with the Larger size options you can get about a day and a half out of the larger watch for where you can get over a week out of the larger venue too. Now your mileage will vary depending on how many outdoor activities that youre tracking, as well as how much youre interacting with the watch like for calls and texts and stuff like that. But there is a big difference in terms of the day to day battery life and then for gps battery life in terms of tracking outdoor activities with the smaller watch, for you can get a total of about six hours and then a total of about eight hours. On the larger watch for and then with the bendy 2s, you can get up to 19 hours of gps battery life and up to 22 hours on the larger venue too. So now with battery life. Out of the way lets talk about the smartwatch features, so, like i mentioned earlier, the watch fours are only compatible with android phones. Where, with the venue twos, you can pair these with either an iphone or an android phone, but the smart watch experience will differ depending on which phone that you have so with the galaxy watch force youll be able to take calls directly on the watch itself, using Its onboard microphone and speaker, and with the venue 2 youll, be able to answer or decline.
The call but youll actually be speaking on the phone as it lacks the microphone and speaker for calls and then for texting with the watchforce youll, be able to reply to messages using quite a robust variety of options like an on screen keyboard voice dictation as well As writing on the screen and with the venue 2, you will be able to reply if you have an android phone, but these are going to be pre defined responses that youll set up in garmin connect, but you can set up custom messages if you like, and If youre on an iphone, you will be able to view those messages, but you wont be able to reply and thats due to apples lockdown on their own ecosystem. But there is another advantage on the smartwatch end of things on the galaxy, watchforce and thats. The availability of an lte option, which allows you to stay connected with calls and text without having to have your phone on you, and currently there isnt a cellular model of the venue 2 available. However, the venue 2 does have some safety and tracking features, including something called instant detection which can attempt to detect when youve lets say crashing your bike and what it can do is send out an alert to emergency contacts that you set up in garmin connect and Then, in addition, theres also a get assistance option which you can trigger manually, which also sends on alert to those emergency contacts, in the case that you need help that youre in a situation where you dont feel safe.
But these two features do require you to have your phone with you and, while were talking about connectivity both of these have wi fi and they also both have bluetooth. So you can pair them to bluetooth headphones to listen to music and with both devices theres. A good amount of options for offline music storage and playback with music streaming services, so with the venue 2. It currently has support for spotify, deezer and amazon music and, with the watch 4 its a little bit more flexible in this department due to the fact that it does have wear os integration, where theres also apps for youtube music and a few others and im pretty Sure more music services will be added to both of these devices in the future, but thats currently whats available right now and i think theres, actually a pretty good amount of options for both of these devices. Theres. Also another interesting advantage with the galaxy watch for since it runs, wear os and thats the fact that it has google maps on the watch itself, which the venue 2 doesnt, have any maps so now onto the health and fitness features. So both of these have gps. For tracking speed and distance for outdoor activities, both of them have barometric altimeters for tracking elevation gain both have heart rate sensors and then both of them also do have spo2 sensors for measuring your blood oxygen saturation levels in regards to the spo2 accuracy for measuring blood Oxygen and saturation levels both are within the same ballpark, but i do find the venue 2 to be a bit closer to a medical grade.
Fingertip blood oxygen sensor, but there are a couple features that the watch 4 does have that arent available on the venue 2, and these are going to be body composition, measurements ecg, as well as blood pressure monitoring with the body composition, measurements. This is sort of a neat feature where youll be able to get stuff, like your body fat percentage, using the same sort of technology that you find in body, composition, scales and my initial results with this werent. All that great with the numbers that were changing drastically by the minute, but i have seen improvements with this over some firmware updates and then with ecg and blood pressure monitoring. The big thing to take away here is that these features are only available. If you have a samsung android phone, if these arent going to be available on a regular android phone, and not only that the blood pressure monitoring is only available, if you have a non us version of the galaxy watch, 4., both have sleep tracking. They both did a good job in tracking the time i went to bed as well as woke up and on this nights sleep. The numbers lined up very well between these two devices, although the sleep score that they provided was a little off. But on this night id probably say that i had a sleep score of about 50. So splitting the difference between the two – i suppose in terms of the sleep stages pretty similar again, but the venue 2 did give me a bit more credit for deep sleep and the galaxy watch 4 also has snore detection, which requires you to have your phone next To your bed to record the actual snoring, instead, they snored for about 8 minutes.
The google sleep monitor that. I have also has snore detection and said i snored for about 2 minutes, and it was right around the same time. The galaxy watch 4 detected as well, but funny enough it was just more heavy breathing than actual snoring according to the audio recorded on my phone. So when it comes to what type of activities these watches can track for these sport profiles, the venue 2 has stuff like walking and running for outdoors and indoors cycling, both outdoors and indoors, pool swimming gym profiles like strength, training and high intensity interval, training, hiking yoga. As well as gym equipment like elliptical, the stair, stepper and rowing machines and then theres outdoor recreation profiles like stand up, paddle boarding, golf skiing and snowboarding and then with the galaxy watch fours. It has a very similar list of the common activity profiles, but it also does have an open water swimming profile, and then it has a bunch of these additional profiles that you can add. So most of these profiles are individual exercises that are part of a larger exercise routine, but you may notice it doesnt come with a lot of the outdoor recreational profiles that are found on the venue too. Now those are the stock workout profiles that come standard on the watch for with samsung health, but you can extend the functionality of the watch for since it does have access to the google play store so like you can get stuff like skiing and golf apps, and It is great that you can extend the functionality of the watch for with some of those third party apps.
But one thing to consider is that all that stuff is just kind of baked into the venue too straight out of the box and youll be managing all that data in just one place. So it is great that you can replicate some of the functionality on the watch for with those third party apps, but you may be managing multiple apps so with the smartwatch features. Id have to say that the galaxy watch 4 does have the lead. If you own an android phone of course, but on the fitness end of things, theres kind of no way to really sugarcoat this, but the venue 2 will be a better option when it comes to a sports and fitness device. And it mainly comes down to the accuracy of the heart rate sensor as well as gps, so for gps accuracy in regards to the total distance for an outdoor workout on this road right. Here i did with both devices. All of them were pretty similar, but the galaxy watch 4 recorded just slightly less distance than the venue 2, as well as the other devices. Nothing drastic by any means. But it was a little bit noticeable and then, when we take a look at the gps tracks in detail, you can see the galaxy watch 4 and the venue 2 do a pretty good job on these straight sections of open road. But where it starts to differ is on corners and curves, where the watch 4 has a tendency of cutting corners a little and if you cut enough corners, youll come up with a little bit shorter, total distance and then heres.
Another ride that i just did today on on this ride, theres a little bit more discrepancy in the total distance, and this ride was through a lot of winding bike paths. So the venue 2 track is in a light blue again, and you can see it it lines up basically perfectly with the other test devices and with the watch 4 you can see its not so great on nearly every corner where it either overshoots or cuts the Corner and again, all that adds up to a smidge, less total distance, especially on longer activities in the whole scheme of things. Gps accuracy is probably going to be okay on both these devices for most folks out there, but when it comes to hardware accuracy, this is kind of a different story, so heres the heart rate data from that first road ride and, as you can see its not So pretty for the watch, for so it actually started out okay for the first four minutes, but then it completely lost heart rate altogether. Only to find it again here where i stopped, but when i got started again it spiked a bit then got lost again once again, though, when i stopped it reacquired heart rate to only spike, and then it didnt track heart rate for the remainder of the ride And for the venue 2, you can see that its not perfect by any means, but it never wanders that far off from the accurate heart rate thats being collected from the chest and arm heart rate monitors.
So what i did was go out for another ride today. Just to see if it was just some sort of really bad luck the other day and well slightly better, i suppose, but still kind of unacceptable. For my opinion, where, on occasion it picked up heart rate, but there were just large portions of the ride where it didnt get heart rate at all and with the venue 2, it did have a few minor spikes here and there and a little blip here. But for the most part, its still in line with the other heart rate sensors. So what about running well? Definitely better, but you can see this portion right here where it read high for a while. In all fairness, the venue 2 did have a spike right here, but what you can see that it recovers quickly and then gets back on track. The issue that i see with the galaxy watch 4 heart rate sensor, is that its pretty inconsistent, where sometimes i do get some decent readings, but then theres times that i get some fluctuations and it has a hard time recovering for them and then sometimes it doesnt Collect heart rate data at all. For me, oh and if youre curious about the distances that the watch is estimated for that four mile treadmill run, then you two was a smidge high and the watch 4 was over a mile off now. One thing that can make these better is that if you compare these with external heart rate, sensors and the good news is that you can pair these, both with heart rate sensors.
But the bad news is that the native samsung health app on the galaxy watch 4. It actually doesnt have the support. You can only pair external heart rate straps with compatible third party apps like google fit, but with the venue 2 you can pair heart rate straps. You can pair speed and capa sensors foot pods temperature sensors, as well as garmin vario radar and lights and were getting on the home stretch now, but in terms of training feedback, both these devices will provide a vo2 max score for running, but with the venue 2. Also does have a feature called body battery, which gives you a general indication of your energy levels throughout the day, based on your sleep and activity level. And lastly, i also wanted to go over the accompanying smartphone apps that youll need with these devices. So with the watch for youll need both the samsung gear app, as well as the samsung health, app youll manage the watch and firmware through the samsung gear app and then samsung health is used for your health and fitness data. And then, if you have a samsung phone, youll also need the samsung health, monitor app to record your ecg and measure blood pressure and then, with the menu too theres. Really only one app thats required and thats going to be garmin connect where youll manage the watch and youll also be able to access all your health wellness and fitness data all just in one app so for the actual accompanying smartphone apps garmin probably has the advantage Here with garmin connect where youll manage the watch and all your data just in one place, but on the other hand, the watch 4 does have the capability of leveraging all those apps that are available on the google play store for wear os and with the venue.
2, it does have an app store sort of thing called connect iq where it has different apps watch faces and data fields that you can add to your watch. So these are two very different smart watches and choosing between these two is going to come down to what youre, specifically looking for in a watch. So first off, if you have an iphone, you cant consider the watch 4 just because its only compatible with android phones. However, if you do have an android phone, it provides a pretty great smart watch. Experience like the ability to take calls on the watch itself. Those robust text replies as well as the option to do those things without a phone if you purchase the lte version, but if youre more sports and fitness focus and you dont care as much about that call and text functionality, the venue 2 will serve you better. In this department, with better gps and harder accuracy, as well as better battery life anyhow ill have links down in the description below where you can purchase any of these devices and those are going to be affiliate links that do help support the channel. Without costing you anything additional and if you didnt find the information, this video useful dont be shy about, hitting that like button down below and also subscribing to the channel for plenty more in depth.nJ9yn2e2lsY
