The garmin venue sq is the smaller and cheaper sibling of the garmin venue, and it offers mostly the same features too. I’Ve been using the venue sq for a while and now i’m going to share my thoughts on this watch with you guys, Music, so the garmin venue sq has a rectangular design, which makes it a fitbit versa, 2 and an apple watch sc competitor. It is obviously garmin’s intention to get a piece of that cake with the venue sq after seeing how popular those two other products have been. I got the music edition, which cannot only control music on your phone, but you can download songs to the watch itself and use it as your mp3 player without needing a phone. The music edition cost 250 euros or dollars, while the non music edition cost 50 bucks. Less there is no other difference between the two. Both of them have the same. Garwin elevate, wrist heart rate, monitor a pulse ox sensor, a built in gps, a compass, an accelerometer. They both do body battery monitoring, stress, tracking respiration, tracking sleep monitoring, vo2 max and smart notifications as well and let’s not forget about garmin pay either, which is still not supported by my bank yet, but the feature is on board. Nonetheless, we will talk about all of these features in more detail in a minute, but let’s see the watch and its design for now. So the venue sq uses a 1.3 inches diagonal lcd touchscreen with 240 by 240 pixels and is protected by corning gorilla glass.
3.. The lcd screen could be a bit bigger and the bezels are too thick as well, but it still looks nice and sharp enough text is easy to read and it registers touches pretty well. However, it doesn’t have that vibrant quality as the amoled screen on the original venue. I guess that’s, one of the sacrifices garmin had to make in order to lower the price. The screen is usable in direct sunlight, but it cannot beat the translative displays. Garmin has been using for ages, it has an always on mode as well, but it will reduce battery life dramatically with the screen, always on the battery won’t last longer than two or three days. But if you turn it off, then you can get five or six days out of it. I have to add that i haven’t been training a lot recently, which means i use the gps less than usual, but still i was running once or twice a week and had three or four different workouts done in a week in average, so that’s how i managed To keep the battery life for five days, which is not bad but nothing special either. If you use the gps, you will get 14 hours of continuous use, but if you use it along with the music player as well, that will drain the battery in less than 6 hours. So keep that in mind. The case is made of fiber reinforced polymer, and that makes the watch very light.
It weighs only 37.6 grams and it is very comfortable to wear the silicone. Straps are standard 20 millimeter quick release traps, so you can easily get another one. If you feel like you need a different color or style, not that there is anything wrong with the ones that come with the watch as i found them very comfortable and snug. My only worry is the plastic buckle which might not last as long as if it was made of metal, but so far we are good. Talking about plastic brings us to the two buttons on the right hand, side with these two physical buttons it’s easier to control. The watch than if there was a touchscreen only so i’m happy to see that garmin kept the buttons of the venue, even if they opted for a cheap plastic. This time one short press on the top button takes you to the activity profiles and one long press brings up the quick controls menu, which is fully customizable. But if you want to enter the settings, you have to press and hold the button at the bottom. You can also start and stop an activity by pressing the top button, but everything else is basically controlled by the touchscreen. The menu system will look familiar if you ever use the garmin watch before you will feel at home after a minute or two. The watch face. Can be customized, there are preloaded options on the watch and you can download more from the connect iq store as well from the home screen.
You can swipe up or down to see your widgets. These widgets are helpful if you want to have a quick glance at your health stats, your recent activities or, if you want to check the weather, forecast and your calendar quickly, you can also go into each widget by simply tapping on the screen. If you want to have a more detailed view of your data, if you go into the settings, you will see plenty of features and customizing options. First, you can set up your activity profiles, you can add favorite ones and remove the ones you never use or simply just reorder them. If you like, each activity profile can be further customized. You can set up your data screens, your alerts, your gpsus and some others. Then there are the widgets which you can easily manage again by adding and removing them from the list and changing their order as well. The controls menu gives you the option to have nine different features instantly available, regardless of where you are in the menu, and it is fully customizable too. There is the shortcut feature which gives you quick access to one selected function by swiping right on the screen. I put the music player there, but you have a list of functions you can choose from with the shortcut and the quick controls menu. You can access basically everything easily, even during a workout, which is a must have feature for me, as i like to have a timer or the music player at hand, if needed.
The garmin venue sq has a built in heart rate, monitor and the pus oximeter on the back of the watch. You can set up abnormal heart rate alerts and you can choose if you want the puzzle wax sensor to track your blood oxygen saturation all day or only at night. When you sleep, i would recommend using it only at night because it can drain the battery quicker. If you use it all day long, the heart rate monitor is mostly accurate and it can even be used under water, which is a nice feature to have. The watch, however, can only track your pool swims the open water swim tracking is not available on garmin’s lifestyle watches, as this feature is reserved for the higher end multi sport watches, but the pool swim tracking is useful as long as you have swimming pools open where You live. I was lucky to have a few swims before we went into lockdown again and i have to say that i was impressed by how closely it tracked my heart rate compared to the data coming from my chest. Heart rate monitor, it was only off by a few beats per minute here and there and the average values were pretty close too. The same can be said about running. I was running on both a treadmill and outside a couple of times to see how it stacks up against my forerunner 745 connected to the chest, wrap and the results were pretty good.
The two graphs are very similar with only a few spikes and dips, but in general these results are very convincing. I found the same with the gps. Satellite tracking was more or less identical to that of the forerunner 745, which i found very accurate in my review. Therefore, i consider it a good reference point for such comparisons. The other day, while running on the prom, the 745 delivered a bit more accurate tracking data, but for less than half the price. The venue sq is still good and precise enough. In my opinion, if you want more data from your workouts, you can connect multiple external sensors to the venue. Sq such as heart rate, monitors, speed and cadence, sensors, a foot pod and even lights and radars for your bike. Power meters are not supported, though, if you want to use the music feature, you will have to connect a pair of bluetooth headphones for music playback. You can use your spotify amazon, music or deezer account to download playlist or podcast, but you can upload your own mp3s to the watch as well. The music player works well with all the basic controls, including play pause, skip forward and backward different, shuffle and repeat modes, and there are volume controls as well. The sound quality is not the best but it’s good enough for a run or workout for sure you can also get all kind of smart notifications displayed on the watch. As long as it’s connected to your phone, you can specify what sort of notifications you want to see during or not during an activity.
You can turn on incident detection, which will send an alert to your emergency contacts. In case you have a bike crash or if you collapse during running or walking, if you enable the live track feature, then your loved ones or your coach can keep an eye on you. While you are cycling or running outside onto the activities. There is plenty of profiles for you to choose from running cycling both indoors and outdoors, pool, swim, strength, yoga and lots more, including custom ones during strength, training. The rep count works surprisingly well, and you can even edit the details of your workout in the garmin connect app. So it can be a powerful tool if you want to track how your performance improves in the gym. You can download and create full structured workouts, using the connect app the same way as you could on the venue. There is one difference compared to the big brother though, namely, that is the venue. Sq is missing. The on screen exercise animations. The venue has for the yoga and the strength profiles. Moving on, you can add a custom pool length to your pool swims for more accurate distance measurements and it works quite well, and the venue sq also tracks your heart rate when swimming, but we already touched on that. So there are plenty of sport related features, and there is even more stats and data you can get from the watch. First of all, your heart rate, including your resting heart rate, which tends to measure a bit lower than what the actual value is, but it’s close enough, and there is the blood oxygen saturation thanks to the built in pulse ox sensor.
Other health stats, such as stress levels and body battery, are also available. The body battery monitoring keeps impressing me, regardless of which garmin watch i use, as my actual perceived energy levels, always reflect what i can see on the charts in the garmin connect app if i’m sick stressed or simply exhausted. That shows a big deep in energy levels and after a good, night’s sleep or a day of work and resting a bit it climbs up to hundred percent, which means i’m rested and ready to push myself again. I love this feature a lot. Another new favorite of mine is the respiration rate monitoring and the related breeding exercise feature which gives you a different breeding techniques to choose from. If you want to sit back and relax for a minute or two can be quite helpful in these troubling times on to more performance, oriented data, you can get an estimated vo2 max value as well, but i would take it with a pinch of salt and wouldn’t Base my training around it, as it is only a rough estimation of your actual vo2max value. However, heart rate zones and alerts can come in handy if you base your endurance, training on heart rate zones, but you won’t get extra data such as ground time balance or vertical oscillation from using an external heart rate, monitor as advanced running dynamics, are not supported, but This watch is not for the hardcore runners anyway, and the data you get is plenty enough to keep track of your improvement and workouts.
So what else can be said about the garmin venue? Sq i’m sure there are a few details i forgot to mention, but that just shows how capable this little watch is for 250 euros or dollars. It does almost everything that watches way above 300. Bucks can do, and it does all those things pretty well heart rate and satellite tracking are usually spot on. The health and performance stats are very useful and accurate. There are a vast amount of activity profiles with loads of customization options, not mentioning the long list of smart features which will satisfy most users. If you are looking for a fitbit or an apple watch alternative, then the garmin, when you ask you, should be on the top of your list. It sits right in between the two in terms of price and does almost everything as well or better than the other. Two but i’m working on a comparison, video of these three smartwatches, so i don’t want to spoil anything now. You will have to wait for that video to see the actual differences and similarities between the three so stay tuned for that, but that’s it for today. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up, and if you subscribe to the channel as well, that would simply be awesome.2HFUBtWLFZg
