The second generation Garmin Venu 2 is a serious fitness watch that doubles as a smartwatch. It has a stylish circular face in two sizes, a bright AMOLED display, and plenty of sports and activity tracking options. Besides, it is compatible with both Android and iOS devices.
At $ 400, the Venu 2 is priced at the higher end of the spectrum and faces stiff competition from other watches that offer even smarter features. What sets the Venu 2 apart from the crowd are its health features and longer battery life. However, don’t expect it to be a true second screen for your phone.
To like
- At least five days of battery life
- Bright AMOLED display
- Detailed fitness metrics
- Stylistic look
I do not like it
- No speaker or microphone for calls
- Limited third party apps
A better looking sports watch
Unlike the original Venu, which came in one size, the Venu 2 now offers two: the 45mm Venu-2 or 40mm Venu-2S option that I tested for this review. Aside from the name and screen size, they have the same range of functions, but the 2S is at a disadvantage in terms of runtime because it has a smaller battery.
Cut the chatter
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The Venu 2 has an etched stainless steel bezel and silicone strap that is comfortable to wear all day and all night. The AMOLED display has three brightness levels and an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness. I found it easy to see my exercise metrics even in direct sunlight. The screen is more responsive to me than the original Venu, and once I broken down the muscle memory for each of the two side buttons, navigating the watch was a breeze. I also liked being able to customize many of the watch faces with colors or other fitness metrics like step count, or switching to a background that animates you to wake up when you lift it. This watch has an all-on display option that you can turn off to save battery life.
The screen is easy to see in bright outdoor situations.
Lexy Savvides / CNET
Everything about health and fitness
The Venu 2 can track more than 25 types of activity. In addition to your regular running, walking, and biking, the Venu 2 now offers indoor climbing, bouldering, hiking, and high-intensity exercise timers for styles like AMRAP (as many laps as possible) and Tabata, a type of interval training. Strength training now also shows you which muscle groups have been trained, which is great for beginners like me.
The new exercise profiles include HIIT, bouldering and hiking.
Lexy Savvides / CNET
You can also customize the exercise screens to show the metrics that are important to you before you start exercising to make this watch feel like your own. The Venu 2’s GPS received a signal within 5 to 10 seconds of being outdoors. The route followed during my run matched the route on my phone that I recorded independently.
I tested the heart rate readings using a traditional chest strap, which is considered the gold standard for athletes. The watch’s results were fairly consistent with the bracelet when it came to my resting heart rate, average heart rate, and minute-by-minute readings during low-intensity exercise. With a higher intensity workout like running, the Venu 2 was just as accurate as my chest strap. You can see the results in the graph below.
Heart rate measurement from the Venu 2S (purple line), plotted against a chest strap (blue line).
Lexy Savvides / CNET
It also provides other health and wellness metrics, including a body battery score that takes activity and sleep into account. It indicates whether you should be pushing and exercising your body or taking a day of rest. This is the same feature found on other Garmin wearables. New to the watch is a health snapshot, in which a 2-minute heart rate measurement is performed on the wrist to calculate stress, resting heart rate and breathing rate. It can also calculate your fitness age, an estimate of how fit you are compared to your real age. It depends on your activity intensity or your vigorous activity, your resting heart rate and your BMI or body fat percentage. Then there are tips on how to improve your score.
The Venu 2 records SpO2 (blood oxygenation) levels while you sleep, as a point reading, or throughout the day. It offers high and low heart rate warnings, but it lacks the EKG or electrocardiogram feature found in other smartwatches like the Fitbit Sense, Apple Watch Series 6 or Galaxy Watch 3.
Aside from your basic sleep tracking, the Venu also rates your night’s sleep based on a total of 100. I found that the Venu 2 was not accurately accounting for my awake times during the night, so I reached out to Garmin to find out why this can happen.
Beyond what you see on the watch, the Garmin Connect The app does a great job of explaining all of your health and fitness stats and displaying them in an intuitive way. The Venu 2 also offers menstrual cycle and pregnancy tracking.
Fitness first, intelligent functions second
The Venu 2 includes the basic smartwatch functions like mirroring notifications from your phone and viewing calls or text messages. In conjunction with an Android phone, you can also reply to text messages with pre-written replies. With Garmin Pay you can make contactless payments.
Music apps on the Venu 2 and 2S.
Lexy Savvides / CNET
You can also save up to 650 tracks from Spotify, Deezer or Amazon Music on the watch. However, the lack of the LTE option means you won’t be able to stream anything without your phone in tow. You’ll also need to take your phone with you to use Garmin’s Live Track, a security feature that sends your location to a friend or family member during a workout.
This watch also does not have a loudspeaker and microphone. If you’re mainly using it for its fitness functions, this might not be a deal breaker, but I do miss the hands-free voice control and the ability to take quick calls from my wrist. It’s a feature that similar priced competitors have had for several years. And the Garmin Connect IQ app (a separate, optional app that you need to download to your phone to get more apps and watch faces) doesn’t have as many third-party apps to choose from as many of its competitors.
Long-lasting battery for all your workouts
Fortunately, the Venu 2’s long battery life makes up for a lot of what it lacks in the smart features department. According to Garmin, you can use the Venu 2 in smartwatch mode (mirroring phone notifications) for 11 days or 10 days from the 2S.
Lexy Savvides / CNET
In real-world tests, I managed to use the Venu 2S for five days before I had to charge it. This included a daily 30-minute GPS workout, notifications, and sleep and SpO2 tracking at night. While I couldn’t test the larger Venu 2, I would expect the battery to last even longer. I will update this review when I can run a battery test on this watch. Expect battery life to drop to about two or two and a half days with the display on.
Almost a slam dunk
The Venu 2 may not be worth the upgrade if you already own an original Venu. However, if you’re new to Garmin and looking for a top-of-the-line fitness watch with basic smartwatch features, the Venu 2 might be for you.
