Garmin announced a completely new watch series the Garmin Venu, and it has made quite the impact with its users. This is Garmin’s first GPS smartwatch with an AMOLED screen and comes with a plethora of health and fitness tracking features. The AMOLED screen is makes it easier to check your watch while working out/on the move with higher visual clarity and contrast. The Venu is available now for $649 RRP and comes in a variety of colours including black, black/gold, granite blue and light sand/rose gold.
Garmin Venu Key Features
- AMOLED Display: This display type has a higher contrast ratio and allows wider viewing angles alongside a vast range of colours.
- All Day Health Tracking - Wrist-based HRM sends data to your Garmin Connect health profile 24/7 to give you essential updates to your health and fitness stats.
- Wrist-Based Heart Rate Monitor - Track your heart rate through Garmin's powerful optical HRM. This HRM will track how hard you're working during the day and your workouts.
- Garmin Pay - Pay on the go, no need to bring your wallet on the run with Garmin's contactless payment system. Works with participating providers*
- GPS + GLONASS + GALILEO - With 3 Satellite networks the Garmin Venu will acquire positional data exceptionally fast. Perfect for accurately tracking your route, distance and location.
- Music - The Garmin Venu can store up to 500 songs on the watch itself from any of your favourite playlists. (Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music Supported)
- Safety Features - Share your live location to selected contacts and even send a message manually or automatically with built-in incident detection. This requires pairing with a smartphone.
- Animated Workout - Garmin's animated workout make it easy to follow animated strength, cardio, yoga workouts.
- Sensors - Barometric Altimeter, Compass, Gyroscope, Accelerometer
- Pulse Ox Sensor - Measures and Tracks your blood Oxygen saturation level. This can also help judge how well your sleeping by measuring how much oxygen your body is absorbing during a sleep cycle.
- Pre-loaded Sports Apps - This multi-sport GPS watch can track all your work out across a massive range of outdoor and indoor sports. Including walking, running, cycling, swimming, elliptical training, indoor rowing, golf and more
- Garmin Coach - Your own personal running coach on your wrist to help you train for your next marathon.
How Does it compare to the vivoactive 4 and vivomove 3
Hardware Design Comparison| Garmin venu | Vivoactive 4 | Vivomove 3 | |
| Battery Life | 5 Days | 8 Days | 5 Days |
| AMOLED/OLED Screen | ✔ | ||
| Waterproof Rating | 50m/5atm | 50m/5atm | 50m/5atm |
| Lens Type | Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3
|
Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 | Chemically Strengthened Glass |
| Sweat Resistant | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Touch Screen | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Replaceable Watchband | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Resolution | 390 x 390px | 260 x 260px | 64 x 132px |
| Screen Size | 30.4mm (diameter) | 33mm (diameter) | 9mmx18mm |
| Thickness | 12.4mm | 12.8mm | 1.1mm |
| Watch face Diameter | 43.2mm | 45.1mm | 39mm |
| Always on display | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Weight | 46.3g | 50.5g | 38.6g |
The Garmin Venu shines with its display resolution and AMOLED screen that set it apart from every other currently available Garmin smartwatch. In terms of other hardware factors, it sits on par with the vivoactive 4 and above the vivomove 3. The battery level is one area that isn't quite as powerful as the vivoactive 4 but, a day battery life is well above average.
Sensors Comparison
| Garmin venu | Vivoactive 4 | Vivomove 3 | |
| GPS | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Heart Rate Monitor | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Pulse Ox (Blood Oxygenation Measure) | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Barometer | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Accelerometer | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Compass | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Gyroscope | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Cadence Sensor | ✔ | ✔ |
The sensors packed with the Garmin Venu help to set it apart from many other smartwatch offers on the market. It comes with the standard sensors like the Barometric Altimeter, Compass, etc. In addition to these sensors though it comes with a couple of unique offerings like the Cadence sensor to help improve your cycling and the Pulse Ox sensor to measure your blood oxygen saturation. The Pulse Ox sensor is typically used for tracking your acclimation to a higher elevation. Still, it can also be used to check how well your sleeping by measuring how much oxygen is in your system.
Activity and Health Tracking Comparison| Garmin venu | Vivoactive 4 | Vivomove 3 | |
| Activity Report | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Sleep Tracking/Reports | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Tracks Distance | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Tracks Steps | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Measures Pace | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Calories Burned | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ (Garmin Mobile) |
| Automatically Detects Activity | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Tracks Elevation | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Route Tracker | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Weight Tracking | ✔ (Garmin Mobile) | ✔ (Garmin Mobile) | ✔ |
| Multi-Sport Mode | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Goal Tracking | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Golf Activity | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Water intake | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Tracks BMI | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Stroke Regonition/Counter | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
The Garmin Venu is a multisport GPS so, it's no surprise how many features it has preloaded for tracking your health and fitness stats. Read the table above to find out all the features that come preloaded and how it compares against the vivomove and vivoactive 4.
| Garmin venu | Vivoactive 4 | Vivomove 3 | |
| Syncs Wirelessly/Automatically | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Compatible with Android | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| WiFi Connection | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Supports NFC | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Notification Display | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Vibrating Alerts/Alarm | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Call Control | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Stopwatch/Timer | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Locates Your Phone | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Integrates with Social Media | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Exercise Diary | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Music Playback | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Onboard Music Storage | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Tracks BMI | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Live Tracking | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Compatible with external HRM | ✔ | ✔ |
Again the Venu and the vivoactive sit on par when comparing these features. The vivomove 3 doesn't quite have all the same features but, it was always designed to be a hybrid 'analogue' style watch and not a full GPS smartwatch.
Summary
Deciding between these three models should be fairly straightfoward after this guide. The vivomove 3 is a stylistic choice as it doesn't come with all the bells and whistles of the other watches but retains a classical style and feel. It's a little trickier between the vivoactive 4 and the venu as they're almost the exact same watch in terms of software. It really comes down to style, battery life and whether the brighter more vibrant AMOLED screen is enough to make up the price difference and shorter battery life.