I spent good money on the tactix. It's great. I've beaten and abused it. It's a tank. Does all the smartphone nonsense and way way more. Lasts about 20~ days on a charge so I can actually get all the telemetry back when I sleep and it's useful.
I have both, ultra 4 and tactix. Love them like children so hard to pick one but when it comes to HR accuracy and health tracking nothing comes close to Apple Watch. Get Bevel app if you haven’t yet that way you will get everything you missed about Garmin with much better accuracy
You’ve said that cost isn’t a problem, and you like the look of the Tactix, I would suggest getting it.
To address your questions:
Round form factor, yes.
Watch faces, yes.
Battery life, yes. (Especially on the bigger diameter watches)
You can customise the information you want to see on the watch faces, it just has to be a face that has enough slots to accommodate the quantity of items you want.
Timer, there is one built in. It looks like there are others in the ConnectIQ app that you can load onto your watch also.
Text notifications, yes.
There is a sleep mode that includes DND so notifications are silenced.
OP has said he likes the look of the Tactix and is happy to throw money at it.
If he said he wanted to be frugal about it, I would have suggested a different watch.
It's all dependent on what you have the watch doing. I'm not familiar with the Venue since I have a Tactix, but I can choose what features are running and make a custom power profile for it. Mine has an estimate of 21 days without battery saver because I don't have it doing much besides heart rate and time. Garmin website shows the Venue having a battery life of 10 days in smartwatch mode, so a few days might be within reason for that model if you do a lot.
I've only really purchased their flagships (fenix, tactix, etc.; but not the MARQ line) and I love them. But I cannot make a fair comparison to lower tiered ones. I'm interested in reading from other users, however.
aznmistborn
