Garmin Venu 2 GPS 43mm Smartwatch, AMOLED Touchscreen, All-day Advanced Health & Fitness Features, Music Storage, Wellness Smartwatch with up to 11 days battery life, Black

I have found thr Venu 2 excellent overall although some annoyance is the sleep tracking compared to my previous Fitbit charge 4. Charge 4 could work out when I went to sleep and when I woke up including if I went for a nap due to my fibromyalgia playing up so much whereas for the Venu 2 requires you to tell it when you go to sleep and wake up and doesn't track if you go for a nap which is disappointing but not a deal breaker by any regards. The sleep information it does do I have found to be highly detailed and provided many insights into my sleep patterns.Smart watch:The watch looks attractive and doesn't feel as heavy as I thought it would and provides easy to read notifications from apps, texts, emails and so on. I have found the watch easy to use and quickly got used to the menus. Not as perhaps discreet as the Fitbit charge 4 but looks more attractive and I even feel fits the part for any occasion that you would use it for.Fitness tracker:This is actually the main reason I brought it. So I do 5 days a week at the gym where I do 2 hours+ per day of exercising. The watch has been fantastic my fitness tracker with the sensors and it's calorie tracking especially the HR sensors compares to the charge 4, so I found it notices when I'm weight lifting and the HR will pick up the heart spikes or increased effort compared to the charge 4 which would be delayed before it noticed increased heart rate.I have used the workout program and created my own 5 day weight training routine which can easily be skipped or adjusted as you go along. I have found the tracking of my sets have been pretty accurate unless it's ny leg weight training then it doesn't detect any sets (since I keep it on my wrist only) but for the rest of the body it's good, when you finish a set you hit the bottom button (back button) which for my transitions over to rest on my workout program and asks how many sets you did (it shows how many sets it thinks you did but you can easily change this number if it's wrong) and you can adjust the weight of what you lifted such as if you decide to push higher or lower you can quickly adjust this information on the fly with the watch which has been fantastic go track my progress and improvements!The information it shows on the Garmin app once you've completed your workout is interesting but what I've found really helpful is the estimated sweat loss from my workouts and it suggests how much sweat you've lost and to drink that back, for me it recommends by default roughly 2.2-2.3l per day then after my workouts are complete it will recommend 2.7-2.9l per day to replace my sweat loss which is a nice way to stay hydrated.It's highly recommend from the forums that you keep your weight up to date per week as it's doing all it's calculations based on age, height and weight.I had to go and manually adjust my maximum heart rate on the watch as it was set to 220 so I did the standard 220 - my age and the watch recalculated all the different zones for heart rate. It also wants to know your resting heart rate and it can go based on your average but I waited to set that after 2+ weeks of use so it has a good amount of data to go off.. my resting heart rate is 61 BPM.There is v02 max which I have barely used or gotten into. I do not run marathons, nor do I run or outdoor cycle, just walks if I go out so I sadly don't have much knowledge of the v02 max.It has other functions like body battery which is determined from different factors like sleep to tell you how much energy you'll have for the day and your body age. The body age is to tell you what your physical age is with your fitness and the more you do the more your age lowers and becomes fitter. Since I've been working out over a month my body age has gone from 32 to 29 from all my exercising, my main thing slowing it down is my weight.Overall the sensors are fantastic for fitness, I'm sure there are better watchs out there that do more but for the price point I feel it's fantastic!Battery:The pulse ox which looks at your oxygen level (I use this at night only) uses around 6-7% per night and then exercising 5-10% each day due to my workout length. I get on average 7 days between charges which considering how much the watch is tracking of 10+ hours of workouts and 7 days of sleep and pulse ox I'm actually really impressed.Charging it back up is also really fast, I've not even needed an hour and it was fully charged after 7 days of use. The battery actually lasts the same as my charge 4 and that wasn't a smart watch with all the extra bells and whistles the Venu 2 has.Important!:If you get a third part strap it says 22mm will do however if you check forums people say a lot of the third party straps have problems staying connected to the watch, you need to buy 23mm quick release pins and use the 23mm pins on whatever third party strap you use so it fits firm and snug in the watch itself. Once I made that change my third party strap has never come off and remains completely secure.Thanks for reading my review.

Good watch. Light weight. Bright display, responsive enough. Build quality looks really tough and robust. I have installed a screen protector to avoid any scratches.I'm getting about 6 days battery life for my daily use for exercise without using GPS and i believe by just using the watch and not exercising everyday I could get 10 days. Sleep tracking is really accurate.I find the heartrate monitor very accurate when compared to the heartrate monitor on the Technogym threadmill I am using. I have used a Toobur fitness tracker, Ruinmen smartwatch and other cheap ones. It is clear that the Garmin Venu 2 is very accurate. Steps counting is accurate, distance covered on the threadmil is also accurate. Floors climbed is accurate. For the first use you will be told to enter the distance covered on the threadmill so that the watch can calculate the calories burnt. After that I find it accurate for later uses of the threadmill. For both distance and caloriesApart from this I am enjoying my watch. Comfort is good. I sleep with it without feeling any inconvenience. The size is Ok making it easy to read exercise data easily. I have a small wrist but it still looks OK. Has the looks of a dress watch so can be used for both exercise and when dressed.Garmin Pay is set up with my Monzo card and its working very well. Set up was very easy.Not yet assessed the body battery, says I need to run for 15 mins with GPS to obtain a new VO2 max. The current one is 46 since I got the watch.I use to use my Samsung galaxy A71 as my main step counter and fitness tracker as the other fitness trackers i had were not accurate. But now I'm happy to have a watch that allows me to leave my phone at home when doing exercise, dropping the arm band tied on my hand where i use to carry my phone. I like that can read all data from my watch without needing to go with my smartphone.One downside is: I don't know whether it is just my piece or a general issue but i noticed that I cannot control the volume of music when playing from Spotify from my watch unto my bluetooth headphone all other stuff like pause, skip are working. The volume control is there. You see the volume going up on the watch but there is no reaction on the headphone. For music playing from my phone however, I can skip, pause and play and and here I can control the volume. So for the moment I just manage the way I put on the headphone to control the level of sound on my ears. Possibly by changing the headphones the response will be OK. Not yet loaded MP3 on the phone so cannot tell how that will work out.One other thing that could be improved: I wish there were more button controls of exercise sessions for when my hands get sweaty and the touchscreen stops responding.Overall value for money: satisfied so far even though i've not yet used some features like Garmin coach.I'm back here in September 2025. Update on music volume control when playing from my watch. I got a new headphone and with the new headphones I can increase and decrease the volume from my watch, when playing music from my watch. I now update my review to 5 star.

Ok I've owned a lot of smart watches: Apple Watch 44mm Nike Cellular, Huawei Watch 2, Fitbit Versa, Fitbit Versa 2, FitBit Sense, Galaxy Watch 2 42mm, Fossil Sport, Fossil Gen 5. Overall the best out of all of these was the Apple Watch for sure but it came with some drawbacks like battery life.Starting with my use case: I want a good fitness tracker, good battery life, a nice screen and notifications on my wrist. I don't care about apps on my watch as long as it vibrates when I get a message or call I'm happy.The Garmin Venu 2 is perfect. I've owned it for over a week and I've only just had to charge it. Honestly I don't know how it's able to do everything it does and have that amount of battery life. 10 days with normal use is insane!!It's been great at counting steps and mapping my walks so far (need to increase the exercise routines). I love that I can save the animated workouts to my watch as well.It's comfortable, light weight and does everything I need it to do.Biggest question: do I rate it higher than the Apple watch? Yes with a but. I don't think I ever took full advantage of the Apple watch. It was great but I just don't care about apps at all. The only thing the Apple watch had over this is a more distinct vibration on my wrist.If this was to break I would buy another one because it's so amazing. Garmin have really shocked me with this watch!!Just buy one it's brilliant.