This is one of garmin’s latest releases for this time of year and it’s, usually the time for making some refreshes and updates to their watches. They recently also came up with the garmin forerunner 745, which updates their previous 735 and really just brings it in line with all of the other new releases that they have. I got the venue sq, maybe two weeks ago and i’ve been using it 24. 7. Since then, except for some workouts, which i will explain in a little bit before we go on to that, though, let me just tell you the basics of what the venue sq is about, so you might remember that garmin came out with a watch called the venue. I think it was last year or the year before that i featured it on my blog as well, and it had a round bezel around face and the venue sq has a square or slightly rectangular face with some rounded bezels, but that’s. Not the only difference between these two watches, the venue sq’s main differences versus the venue is number one. This play is lcd. It’S, not amoled, like the venue is um. It also has some very lightweight construction, so you might see a bit more aluminum and plastic versus steel, which was used in the venue, but what this does for the venue sq is that, because it’s just lcd, the battery life goes on for much longer than the Venue does and it’s really really light on the wrist as well.
Another major difference is that it doesn’t have an altimeter and a gyroscope, so it doesn’t count the number of floors, you’ve climbed, for instance – and it also relies on gps info to measure the altitude climbed during an activity, and i will go into that later. Also as well, lastly, the venue sq actually comes in both music and non music editions. The non music edition is about 3 000 pesos cheaper than the music edition versus the venue, which you could only get one edition and it automatically by default, had uh internal storage for music. So the venue sq retails for about 14 495 pesos for the music edition and 11 595 passes for the non music edition versus the venue which retails at 21, 995, so that’s a pretty sizable difference and uh. When we get into the features of the watch, you can determine for yourself whether or not that price difference is the deal maker or deal breaker when it comes to buying the venue sq versus the regular venue. Venue. Sq, of course, has almost all of the features that come standard in garmin gps, smart watches. It has, of course, all the health tracking features that i’ve grown to become dependent on in the garmin watches such as wrist heart rate, oxygen saturation, spo2 body batteries, stress measurement levels, sleep, tracking activity, tracking and all that it also has preset workout apps preloaded from garmin. It also has preset workouts from garmin connect if you activate garmin coach and tell it what you’re training for it will also load the workouts into your watch so that you can follow them every day and you can even create your own workouts within garmin connect.
So you can actually load your favorite high intensity interval, workouts onto the watch and as you’re doing the training as you’re doing the session. The watch can just tell you which move is next: the workouts that come from garmin itself. They do have very nice visuals uh, which you can look at on the watch. If you need some confirmation that your form is correct, so there are a few uh websites and blogs and vlogs that you can take a look at to see the really in depth. Um exploration of the watch for me personally, just as a you know a person who prefers using garmin. I just used it in the normal way that i’ve been accustomed to using garmin watches. So i use it to track my sleep to track my heart rate to track my training sessions for the day, my stress, which is seen in the body battery levels. The watch arrived at a perfect time in my life, actually because we were able to use the pool again here at my condo complex after three months of not being able to do so. So i was able to take it um for swims as well, and so you know that really helps give me some basis for comparison versus my forerunner 945.. So let’s start off with some of the great features that i discovered while using this watch number one. Is the screen display it’s very clear, despite being just lcd um, the the glass is also uh, pretty scratch resistant because i’ve been banging my wrist around all over the house and uh.
It still hasn’t sustained any scratches on it. So that’s great for the corning gorilla glass 3 that it’s made out of it’s it’s, definitely very, very lightweight on the wrist, which makes it a kind of like a dream to go to bed with uh, as opposed to some bulkier watches, which feel very strange. When you’re trying to get ready and to go to sleep and you’re trying to get comfortable this one just doesn’t feel like there’s anything on the wrist. I also have to say that its design is so super stylish and it’s it’s really so me, i love especially. This rose gold colorway. It goes with a lot of the palettes of the clothes that i wear and it’s not very obtrusive and obtrusively sporty versus other watches that i’ve worn in the past. So it goes perfectly with my smart casual stuff, my girly casual stuff, some dresses and all that. Another thing that i noticed – and i only noticed it with the yoga – is that this watch actually shows your stress level and respiration rate while you’re doing the exercise. So you can actually see your stress level go down, so it definitely gives off an aura of i’m, not just a running gps smartwatch. I actually will stay with you throughout whatever workout you’re doing today, whether it’s, yoga or cardio or weights, or anything like that. So it’s definitely a good everyday smart watch, gps, smart watch that you can take with you, especially if you don’t, need the heavy duty.
Competition features that you might be able to find on other garmin, smart watches like the 4945 or any of the phoenix models. Another pro this is actually a very full featured watch um. It can detect a lot of different sensors, so i was able to pair it with my third party heart rate sensor, my third party speed and cadence sensor. My old garmin speed sensor, all those things uh. They paired very nicely, and, and so whenever i was doing any zwift workouts, this watch actually picked up all of the sensor: data and processed it and saved it, and so it doesn’t have any major differences with other gps smart watches from garmin. If there were some pros that i discovered there are also some cons that they’re not necessarily deal breakers, but they do give me pause in recommending the venue sq just to about anyone and that’s because number one it doesn’t have a multi sport mode. The venue, the original venue didn’t, have a multi sport mode um. One of my teammates from my triathlon team attempted to cure that by loading um. A watch face that allowed her to toggle between sport modes from swim to bike, to run but it’s still kind of. Like it’s a third party solution, which means that it’s just not native to the watch os, i did mention that i use this watch for 24 7 activity tracking, but i haven’t been using it for certain workouts and that’s, because in the swimming it doesn’t have a Drill mode so, for instance, you’re doing a certain drill that doesn’t require you to use your arms.
The watch will not track the distance it. It kind of um relies on the accelerometer to the internal accelerometer, to tell it if you’re moving forward and if you’re not moving your arm forward like this, the accelerometer doesn’t log, anything, and so you might have done a 100 meter kick set and because you weren’t Moving your arm, the watch just doesn’t lock that as having any meters whatsoever, so it’s kind of frustrating if you’re, really logging the distance and the amount of time you took in covering that distance. But if you’re just using the watch to track your laps. The amount of time you spent in the pool doing laps then it still tracks it pretty handily and it still does have the rest interval feature. So if you’re hanging by the pool side um taking a few breaths before your next effort, then it will separate the rest time from the interval time now. Here’S something that i discovered and i discovered it during a run session or at the start of a run session. So it was kind of annoying and it’s, because, while this watch has an internal music setting, it has internal music storage and you can use some subscription services such as spotify on this watch as well, while you’re inside an activity it doesn’t have any music control features. First, you pair your earphones to the watch and then you’re able to listen to music. But then, if at any point during the session, for instance, you wan na change the track, you wan na skip ahead or you wan na go back or you wan na adjust the volume you can’t do that.
While the session is ongoing and the only way that you’ll be able to make any changes to how your music is playing in your ears is to end the session save the session or in some instances you might accidentally discard it because of the swipe up or Swipe down interface, when saving and that’s the only time you’ll be able to access the music controls, which is kind of frustrating um i’ve mitigated that to some point by using one of these, this is a an aftershocks, a trex aftershocks, bone, conduction, earphone and the reason I’M saying this is because this actually does have its own controls start stop on off volume, up volume down, and so, if you find during the middle of your workout, that the volume in your music playing from this watch is too low, then you can boost the Music up or if it’s too high, you can bring the music down. Unfortunately, you can’t really skip forward or back using this interface still, which is very strange, because i know that if you hold um or if you punch the plus sign on this earphone, twice click you can skip ahead to the next um to the next track. But i wasn’t able to do that, while this was connected to this watch so there’s a little bit of an interoperability issue when i used the venue sq with uh these aren’t air pods. These are real me. These are the real me’s that i reviewed in an earlier video, so basically to pair them.
You’D have to open and then long press this before you get the watch to search for them and then once the watch identifies them, you can pair them together, but here’s. Where that might fall apart, while you’re doing your workout and that’s, if these buds aren’t fully charged, then one of the buds might drop out during the workout, and then that causes an automatic pause in most music playing apps um and then you can’t get to the Music control to play the music again in the earbud that’s, still working or, for instance, this one, this this real nice um. If you remove one of the earbuds from your ear, while it’s playing music, it automatically pauses things and then, when you put the earbuds back in the ear, they’ll start playing again, but sometimes that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, even if you put the bud back in your ear, the music doesn’t play again and normally on my 945, when that happens, i’m able to long press one of the side buttons to get to the music controls and play the music by pressing a button. But with a venue, sq can’t do that so here’s. Another con is that because it has no altimeter and no gyroscope i’ve, actually gotten weird altitude readings on my runs around this complex, like um one of my processing platforms, where i upload my run data, it actually flagged the file that i uploaded, because the altitude didn’t Make sense so um yeah.
This is not for people who are hardcore skyrunners, because those people really like having accuracy in the altitude recorded during their activities. But if it doesn’t really concern you, if you’re not really doing stair challenges or altitude challenges, it’s immaterial. So i would probably recommend the venue sq for somebody who wants to start out within the garmin ecosystem, so the entire garmin range of stuff, that’s managed by garmin connect because garmin connect as a platform is it’s really great at crunching. All of the data that your device tracks so yeah um for somebody who wants to have a smartwatch, so you can get your notifications on it, but the smartwatch has an internal gps and you can track all your workouts on it. It has all of these sensors that are built in such as heart rates. Sp02 it’s. Definitely a great deal it’s cheaper than the original venue and it’s cheaper than a forerunner, so um. If you’re trying to decide between a venue sq and a foreigner, 245 music, um yeah, it could be a toss up. It’S, really just a matter of whether or not you’re interested in more accurate altitude, um readings or, if you’re interested in tracking floors climbed. But if not yeah the venue sq has all that you need the venno sq is what i would recommend if you’re on a budget but you’re still looking for a watch with an internal gps and yeah. The the great thing about the venue sq is that there is a non music version which is so cheap it’s, like 11 595.
That’s, the price of one of the old activity, trackers that i used to have but it’s more full featured, and it has an internal Gps so again the venue sq retails for 14, 495 pesos or 11 595 pesos for the non music edition that translates to about 300 dollars for the um for the music edition and just a little over 200 dollars for the non music edition. Not bad. Hey. All right guys that’s it for now. Thank you so much for watching. If you like this video, if you found it particularly informative about the venue sq, please give it a thumbs up. Don’T forget to subscribe. If you haven’t, yet you can contact me on all of my social media or in the comments box below, if you have anything to say about this video, if you want anything covered or discussed in some future videos, please do let me know. Thank you.Tp2a9MmYaaU
