To access your wallet, long-hold the upper right button, and tap the wallet cards icon, then enter your pin code in:. Thus, I know I have to go to a different chain that does accept them. As always, no two watches are on the same wrist as to not interfere with each other. Extra watches are either worn elsewhere on the body like a running pack or bike handlebars , or sometimes hand-carried. No better way to throw a watch under a bus than throw it on the track for a slate of intervals.
In this case, I actually started away from the track about 1. First up, the heart rate chart. As you can see, the Wahoo RIVAL in purple apparently decided that Sunday evening was a poor time for any sort of exercise, and totally gave up on trying to track my heart rate.
Though, you can see the Whoop strap devaluing the workout intervals by some 10bpm on every interval — thus throwing off all its training load metrics. Warm-day, steady-state run, relatively soft terrain. Should have been a shoe-in. Yet oddly, the Venu 2 actually struggled at the beginning of the workout for mins. Interestingly, this is the only case of this happening I have — and ironically, for it to happen on an easy run is sorta quirky. My track workouts and interval workouts were all fine.
Of course, as you can see, after that point it snapped to the rest just fine. Aside from the first seconds at low-intensity while getting stuff settled on the bike, the units were virtually identical across the board. The middle of this two hour ride was me filming some stuff on the side of the road, so ignore that chunk of time.
Ok, I changed the colors on the below zoomed in graph, because there were duplicate colors in the chart with all the sensors. But, what you can see here is that Venu 2 gets off to a rough start for some reason. However, after that, it pretty much locks in place. I rarely see this kind of accuracy there.
You see one more brief dip after a stop-light where it takes a second to get locked back-on, but not horrible. In fact, the general pattern here seems to be that when I stop, things go a bit skew for a short duration before resuming back to happy-land. At least if you need more precise data than the above illustrates. Indoor cycling and running seem perfectly fine though. Now, switching gears to look at GPS tracks, well start with that track workout I did , where I started away from the track and then ran to it.
Now the running track bit is interesting. Whereas the Venu 2, being oblivious to this nifty technology, actually tracked my route correctly up to the top, and then back down into the track. For the most part, the track throughout the forest is best exemplified in this one screenshot. The Venu 2 was slightly offset on some, but spot-on on others. Whereas the Apple Watch was being…well…old school Apple Watch again.
Mario-karting corners here I come! Also, as noted I saw a few cases where in the first few mins of a workout it was a bit wobbly, but then usually sorted itself out pretty quickly. From a GPS standpoint, no issues at all of any real concern — and on-par with other units at or higher to it in price point such as the Garmin FR You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.
Note that many smartwatches — but especially the Apple and Samsung watches have cases where 3rd party can be used to fill gaps. But figuring out which apps are here today and gone tomorrow is tricky, and ultimately, companies are selling their offering with the features they have at certain price points, so anything beyond that requires either time or money or both to bridge those gaps.
That probably favors Garmin in fitness features, but inversely disadvantages them in non-fitness features. In any event, use this as a starting point on the devices themselves:. The Venu 2 is a modest upgrade in features, but a far more refined upgrade in the user interface and how clean the Venu series experience is. But back then it was as if they just took a Vivoactive watch and stuffed it into the new display without actually takin advantage of it. Is there still room for improvement?
As far as actual features and tech, those are stronger too. The optical sensor seems slightly better to me, but the PulseOx is clearly far better. The Body Battery algorithms are improved, and the sleep tracking finally being the more advanced variant is great. Battery life is solid also. About my only real complaints are that in non-always-on mode gesture mode , the gesture recognition is still not in the same league as an Apple Watch.
Both my wife and I found that even with always-on mode, in running on a bright sunny day, that the 1-second delay when you raised your writs till it went full brightness was at times annoying. And for her, for non-workout life, the gesture wake was almost unusable though, she comes from a heavy always-on display watch preference. Still, the Venu 2 is a nice overall upgrade from the original Venu. Hopefully you found this review useful. If you're shopping for the Garmin Venu 2 or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below!
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Even more, if you use Backcountry. Seriously, this will change your life. One for the office, one for your bedside, another for your bag, and one for your dog's house. Just in case. This speed sensor is unique in that it can record offline sans-watch , making it perfect for a commuter bike quietly recording your rides. It's become my go-to speed sensor. And of course — you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter!
Thanks for reading! And lastly, if you felt this review was useful — I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Your email address will not be published.
Required fields are marked. If you would like a profile picture, simply register at Gravatar , which works here on DCR and across the web. Subscribe me to the newsletter. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can click here to Subscribe without commenting. I sometimes pause my activity on long hikes for lunch breaks and the likes to prevent recording GPS drift.
Ray seems to say you can Save and then Resume. The three options when you pause an activity are:. I agree, a Resume later would be handy, and in fact, would probably use it later today for a hr round-trip ride to the beach, with a few hour gap at the beach. The Venu 2 is supposed to be the first watch with CIQ4 support and then we have this tweet link to twitter. Is Fenix 6 and Enduro just waiting for a software update or did Garmin happen to have a bit of bad luck in tweeting department?
My understanding is this is effectively the first CIQ4 device that has all features and display capabilities. The System number is a new and for my money gratuitously confusing way to divide devices by capability coarsely.
The features for greater than 3. Or maybe there are goodies coming — but the original presentations at the online developer conference last year left me with the strong impression that nothing current would be able to support the whole Super Apps side of things. Again, the dev conference hinted that some aspects of that might require hardware with better multitasking capabilities, and the documentation talks about the new apps needing to handle kill messages when idle to free resources for running apps — this is much more flexible than the existing one app one foreground widget two CIQ fields limits.
So it might just not be possible. Agreed, I was excited to hear this was CIQ 4. And this just has the same widgets. Super apps can have one executable that acts as either a widget or an app, rather than there being no such thing as a widget any more. Or whether you can run two apps at the same time. Super Apps API level 4. Have you tried the amoled display on your bike mouted at the handlebars? Do you have to shake the handlebars?
I think, in bright sunlight, if you can not take your hands off the handlebars due to traffic conditions, etc. Update on the commute home test: No, putting it on the handlebars is totally useless. So about seconds later, the screen powered off. Is that correct? That would indicate the radar integration might be useless as well, would it not?
The last thing you want to do when car is nearing you from the rear is take one hand off the handlebars in order to see your radar. Still half-baked. Wait for the Venu 3, maybe? Actually, ironically, the radar integration is great for me. But I obviously do wear it on my wrist. However, I do see what you mean. I did a couple years back on a century as my older Edge at the time was not fully charged when I woke up to go. Interestingly, a buddy had his die during the century for the same reason.
My did not but nonetheless I had a backup in my Fenix 3hr which goes hours longer than the ever did. I think, if the connected radar sensor is detecting a car, it will set the brightness to high level automatically for that alarm. Being a true child of the 60s, I listened to music so loud I lost the range of hearing needed for the Varia radar tone in my Garmin Edge, so a watch with vibration would be hugely helpful — to alert me to look down at my Garmin Edge as cars approach.
Sorry to always ask the same for each new watch released, but, does this one display phone notifications containing asian languages OK, or does Garmin still expects me to fly to Japan to buy the APAC version if I want to read my japanese WhatsApp messages on the device?
There is at least reason to hope that the Venu 2 will also support this. At present, on the unit I have, the only language choices are non-Asian character ones.
Thanks for the review. Version 5. Frustrating since, other than working sleep tracking, no Chinese character support was my biggest complaint with the device. Ray, do you know if the new sleep tracking is coming to some older devices Venu, VA4 etc…?
My question as well. Just switched from VA3 to VA4. Not a huge difference from 3 to 4, but not sure I want the size of the F6. Device would of course be much more expensive.
It seems balancing battery life for the more advanced users is a key challenge. What are they willing to sacrifice for pretty screen or how much more will they pay? I was going to ask the same question. I wish you could as I have no way of seeing the sleep score for a certain day except today. Hi Ray, do you know if those updated FirstBeat algorithms will be offered for other watches namely Fenix 6 via a software update? For example, you mentioned that has them, but it still uses the Elevate 3 HR sensor, so the algorithms are not limited by hardware.
For the FR, I was referring there to the differences between the Body Battery algorithm in the Venu 2 versus the FR, and how the sleep upates impact that. They can be limited by the quality of daa from the sensor. Added it into the Garmin Venu 2 database entry, and thus, I now need to tweak others. As I said below in more detail, needing a third party app to do so brings with it major limitations so is very different from native support.
I really like running power on my coros pace 2 and dont want to lose that feature, but would be fine with using an additional sensor.
If you want to run with power on the Venu 2, you need to use a 3rd party app like Stryd. I see absolutely no reason to read something like them discontinuing Vivoactive into this. What I could imagine is that the Vivoactive simply skips a cycle because so little has changed between Vn1 and Vn2 outside of Amoled-specific features and that the VA5 will be a contemporary of Vivo 3 but then also released with a few weeks or months between them, and likely also Vn before VA because Vn is more of a showpiece compared to the rather understated VA.
Is there still a 2 ConnectIQ data field limit? By now, the watches have gained so much more processing power, but still only 2? Interesting to hear your thoughts on CIQ4 capability of the F6x as per the tweet that Henrik linked above. Just a Garmin error? It comes with Pool Swim but no Open Water mode, correct? For that price point I would expect to see Open Water Swim too.
However, I think we discussed a while back that there were several iterations to that by Sony and that Garmin maybe used them. Perhaps they are not too worthy of note as they are only slightly modified versions to version CXDGF. Can you ask if the Venu 2 uses one of these new chips? On the other hand, the GPS antenna on the watch is not that good, so it does not offer enough advantages.
Thanks again for another great review! I am in to upgrade my FR and was just to order an apple watch 6. This watch looks really cool. I abandoned the latest Apple Watch as a cycling watch in exchange for a brand new Venu just returned it to Amazon, Venu 2 comes Saturday, thank goodness.
I use a watch as a backup to my Garmin the older Edge For two reasons. Has stronger cycling support. Has sleep tracking. Shows me notifications. Basically useless. But with my back, I honestly almost never run, so who cares. One of the features I like in the original Venu is the 4 hour history showing highest and lowest HR. It would be more helpful if that showed the last 8 hours instead.
Did this change on the Venu2? I used my FR only for running, not using a watch the rest of the time. The Venu 2 is a bit too expensive, and lacks the specific running features on device intervals and sound alerts which I used on my 9 year old device, how hard could it be to support these? Do you think these capabiltities will make it to the Venu 2? I may get over the price, the lack of features not so much especially at this price.
Is there a historical trend view for HRV? Is that coming? Up until the moment a device goes public, GCM will only show the code-name, and typically just a genric watch icon that you see there. Since I take my screenshots usually the day before a product goes live, sometimes the code-name is in there.
I got the original Venu for a cheap price I do like the better screen for my eyes. However I noticed a quirk and was wondering if you noticed it. When I have pacing as a data field it rounds the pace to the nearest 5 secs. If Im running 7;52 it will be it seemed to do this on avg pace too.
Instant pace is rounded to nearest 5 sec, any other pace fields lap average, etc are to the second. The typical setup used in races or long intervals is instant pace and current interval pace, those two together provide an easy way of tracking. Actually, I misspoke. That almost makes the lap pace totally usable and it something that I have never experience in other Garmin watched.
Lap pace should just be an avg pace for a set time. For folks that are interested, my full user interface tour video is now available here: link to youtube. I basically walk through all the new features slowly one and a time, with lots of explainer behind it. Of course I bought the Venu 1 just last month, specifically for sleep tracking and checking oxygen levels… goes with the rest of my year I guess…. No Oreo comparison pictures. But are the algoritms only improved on this new Venu?
Is the scratch resistance improved at all on the v2 of the venu? I have the first one and its been great for what I need but something they did with this amoled screen has it crazy susceptible to scratches.
Hi, replying to an old comment here, but I have the Venu 2 and am generally hard on watches and the screen is basically scratch free. So I am very happy on that front.
I have not owned the original Venu to compare it to. Nice review, thank you. One question: is it possible to pause your runs in this version? I mean manual pause, not the auto-pause feature which I found mostly useless. The lack of the manual pause function while running was the main reason why I sold my first generation Venu. Thank you. Yup, I always manual pause. It appears the pulse ox readings, gps tracking, and heart rate readings are improved.
Also, did you use auto-pause on a run or ride and did it function correctly? Any other bugs not mentioned?
Raise to wake is better than before, but still not as good as Apple. Otherwise, all the issues I encountered are outlined above in the review in the various sections from HR quirks to gesture issues, etc….
No power meter support! Come on Garmin this is just playing unethical marketing games. If a person just wanted to have one Edge device and one gps watch, it would be nice if the watch could handle power meter support in case you needed to use the watch on occasion if the Edge were dead, etc.
Clearly the watch can support it. However, your point is not lost. Therefore, they must compete in other areas. Yes, they are somewhat better in the sports area but not enough, in my opinion, to sway many runners away from the Apple watch.
They need to go all in and add power meter support, etc. Plus, why have two tiers of amoled devices. Garmin has too many tiers in their fitness devices anyway. I want it for live tracking and incident detection with notification.
Maybe some caked text messages I can set beforehand along with a preset amount. One example I would give is that the sleep tracking of the original Venu is widely criticized by users on their forums, but instead of fixing it they released a new version of the watch you need to buy in order to get the fix. I think lte makes perfect sense with incident detection. I dont carry my phone when i am out jogging, but i might be gone for If something happens it would be nice for my watch to have lte so my spouse could know and come help.
Is there a plan for any of the new UI changes or features to come to the original Venu like other firmware upgrades with other watches like the Fenix? Hope we are receiving the Forerunner as next release, or either the back rumored Descent MK2S Smaller version Broke my a month ago and keeping for the new release to come.
MK2S would be great as can have one devise for my trainings and diving activities. Hi Ray, could you shoot and show a picture next to a Garmin Lily?
I know 2 completely different devices but I am curious on the size difference. Thank you in advance.
Thank you for the review. Do you guys know if Garmin finally upgraded their WiFi chip in Venu2? WiFi chips in F6, FR only connects to Great review as always Ray, but an image of yours caught my eye in the sleep tracking selection. You have posted an image of a graph showing your sleep score, how have you done that? Is that only available in IOS? I emailed Garmin months ago asking when we would be able to view that data in connect and never got an answer. I seem to have been ignored, does that mean no one knows how to view their sleep score history in Garmin Connect?
I think I answered it in a few other comments. Hang tight…. Spotify support 4. NFC payment 5. Nice display 6. A couple of questions: 1. How would you distinguish a fitness watch vs a smart watch?
Both in terms of years of support and new software features? Good breakdown of what matters, help to narrow down recommendations. A few things: 1. That being said, expect 1. If you are set on the display then go with the Venu. If you can find a good deal, look at the the , Fenix 6, or based on your requirements, I think the VA4 or Venu is the cheapest way to get what you want.
What you are really paying for is the better battery life. If you are moving to Apple, get an apple watch. If you want an android, get a garmin. Apple watch has iMessage, and is definitely the smartest watch. But, the garmin just works as Ray would say with Android. Can quick reply to texts, and customize notifications, you lose all of that when you switch to iPhone unless you have an apple watch. Said another way, if you want a smart watch, you will be disappointed with a garmin.
If you want a fitness watch you will be disappointed with an apple watch. But having to remove your watch once a week beats every day. Thanks for the feedback, you are actually right, spO2 is not relevant so much, not sure why I wrote that….
In terms of priorities, I want a fitness watch more than I want a smart watch right now. I suppose a little friction to the social media accessibility would allow me to use the fitness features more? Figure out if I want to buy a Fenix or eq. To piggy back on what Andrew said, and to address your question of what distinguishes a fitness watch vs a smart watch, with the caveat that this is merely my opinion:. Fitness watch — strong emphasis on exercise, workouts, etc. With the new Fitness service they are getting closer, but Garmin focuses on exercise, sleep, and the metrics around that.
Smart watch — emphasis on doing things that could otherwise be done on your phone, without taking it out of your pocket. Apple Podcasts app ratings flip after the company starts prompting users Or, why app scores aren't always trustworthy. A newsletter a day keeps the FOMO at bay. Just enter your email and we'll take care of the rest: Subscribe Please enter a valid email address. Apple reportedly tells workers they're allowed to discuss conditions and pay The statement comes despite employee claiming labor violations.
Bouman , Why Apple changed its mind on Right to Repair Apple is giving the people what they want, while also trying to avoid government regulation.
Bonifacic , 4 hours ago. Bonifacic , 6 hours ago. A newsletter a day keeps the FOMO at bay. Just enter your email and we'll take care of the rest: Subscribe Please enter a valid email address. Analogue's Pocket handheld starts shipping on December 13th Most orders should arrive by the end of the year.
Bonifacic , 8 hours ago. Netflix renews 'Arcane' for a second season The 'League of Legends' show has been a success. Fingas , To give you extra flexibility in these uncertain times, we are currently waiving the flight change fee for changes made up to 14 days before departure. For changes less than 14 days before departure, we are also currently reducing our peak season fee so that our off-peak fee applies even during peak season. Other change fees may apply for changes made after the current fee waiver has ended.
Standard terms and conditions apply to all changes. If the new fare is higher you will be required to pay the fare difference.
No credit is given if the new fare is lower.
0コメント