Garmin Venu 2S Gray

After years of sports (especially running) with ever-growing smartphones in a bracelet, it was time for a sports watch. After a long hesitation between the Venu 2 and Vivoactive 4, the choice finally fell on the Venu.

Now I'm tech savvy, but for a first ever sports watch it didn't take long to get the hang of it. Some functions are well 'hidden' because you only get to them by holding down a certain button, but there are only 2 large, physical buttons on the right side of the watch, the rest of the control is via the OLED screen. The bottom button usually serves as a cancel button, the top one for starting an activity or confirming. It only takes you a few minutes to configure and set up the sports watch to your own taste (think of displaying meters/kilometers instead of feet/miles, favorite activities, etc.). Unfortunately, you do need a smartphone for this on which you first have to download the Garmin Connect App, which requires an awful lot of permission, and will keep asking you to the annoying point when you don't grant it. I thought this was a drawback.

One of the spearheads for which I ultimately chose this model is the internal storage capacity, so that you no longer have to carry the smartphone around for your own music. Apps such as Amazon Music and Spotify can be used, but I just want to connect the sports watch to the computer via the USB cable and be able to put my MP3 files on it myself. That all works fine. The only drawback is that the music player on the sports watch works with a few predefined categories, and you seem to have little influence on which category your MP3 files are classified under. For me, everything came under "Other", placed at the very bottom of the list.

The sports watch keeps track of a lot of useful information, including heart rate, oxygen content, stress level, steps, calories, etc. It is possible to view a detailed view per subject, whether or not limited to the sports watch itself. You can then view this data and the history in detail in the smartphone app. The watch also keeps track of the specific statistics that you want to keep track of for certain workouts. I mainly use it for running, and all the data you need can be found: distance, pace, route, times, et cetera. These are automatically transferred to a third-party app like Strava as soon as the smartphone is back in range.

I have now been wearing the watch day in and day out all week and I hardly feel it. It is comfortable and does not irritate. Even at night I keep it on because it also records your sleep pattern and also assigns an analysis and score to it. After a week of intensive use, I have only been able to discover 2 minor flaws. The first is that it takes a very long time to start an activity until there is a GPS connection. Inside you can almost forget that anyway, you really have to go outside if you want to get a connection at all. Every time I have to wait between 10 and 20 seconds until the GPS signal is found and I can actually start running.

The other downside is that "Gestures" still seem to need a bit of fine-tuning. The watch will automatically go into sleep mode (provided you turn this off, but this will again be at the expense of battery life), and will become active again as soon as you 'turn' it to your face. This sometimes doesn't seem to work, so you often have to make this movement again excessively.

The battery life is estimated by Garmin at 11 days, but this seems very optimistic to me. Not that this is bad, by the way, because after 5 days of use, during which 3 times an hour was run while music was played (with Samsung Airbuds), I still have over 30% left. Charging via the USB cable is lightning fast.

All in all very satisfied with the watch and although it is a considerable investment, the money is well worth it.

As a successor to the Vivoactive 3, I ordered the Venu two weeks ago. Great item but with limited battery life. Thanks to coolblue I was happy to exchange for the Venu 2! I chose the Venu 2s, the small version. With my wrist circumference of 17.5 cm, I think it looks a bit more chic than the 5 mm larger version. I have to say, it fits just right. I have 1 switch when I wear it loose. and 3 switches in 'sport' position. So just big enough. I would have liked the strap 1 cm longer, but I am also at the max what they indicate. I hope my wrists don't grow in the summer.

The software is a bit newer than the Venu 1. Especially that they have said goodbye to all widgets but have simply put everything together in an orderly fashion is really brilliant. The screen is easy to read in the sun and also indoors. The 'wake' function is clearly better than with the Venu 1, the screen sometimes didn't want to turn when you turned it towards you, that's really no longer an issue here.

I have several smartwatches, but mainly with an emphasis on the smart part as well as in the form of Wear OS and Tizen (samsung). Since I wanted more concrete and extensive health monitoring for daily use and during the 4 sports sessions per week, I chose the VeNu2. This is the ideal combination for sports, daily monitoring and smartwatch. For pure running, however, I would rather opt for a forerunner. The battery life is more than optimal, charging takes about 30 minutes and you can continue for a few days. I don't use the music link at the moment so I can't judge that. The integration and transfer of data with Garmin connect is effortless and requires no additional actions. In connect you can get even more extensive reports than on the watch itself (but on the watch itself these are already very clear and contain all important data)

I am VERY happy with the purchase and the ease of use of this unit.