Garmin - Venu 2

Very small wrists here... I had a venu for years and I loved it. However, I wanted a better battery and more data for running. I went with the forerunner 965 and have no regrets. I was worried it would be too large. It's not. I say go for the forerunner in white. It's the most feminine.

I have a Venu 2 and mostly do peloton cycling and yoga/strenght classes. Finally we have some basic integration and can only dream that one day garmin would release a garmin watch for peloton users (seems more useful than the marvel watches). In the meantime should I consider upgrading to the venu 4 for better sleep and health metrics?

My partner and i have venu watches for health and fitness monitoring, we also had a stronger use case for health. Ours don't have the ekg function, but do provide the sleep tracking, hrv/stress scores as body battery, and the spo2. On that - the battery does drain easily if you have that on 24/7, at least on our watches! 

Just did this. From the series 8 once the battery couldn’t last a day. Ended up going higher to the forerunner (thanks REI 90 day returns) bc the trade offs of losing some of the apple integrations wasn’t enough gained on the venu The activities list is really limited. And its integration with Strava sucked a bit more than the Apple Watch. I could at least pick specific activities through Strava app on my watch if they didn’t come built in on apple activities, but you can’t edit the data fields on that. I wanted both. I only got about 4 days of battery, not super worth it IMO. Just enough I wouldn’t have ti charge it daily but not enough that I wasn’t frequently like “oh, I’m kinda low on battery” No unlocking each other, (phone and watch) or my MacBook for work. I miss it auto doing that the most Media players kinda suck Biggest is custom notifications on my watch vs my phone. I had to basically go in and do an overhaul so it wasn’t constantly pinging me with useless notifications I had silenced on my watch but not my phone Activities pages were limited. They were limited on the Apple Watch too but I was hoping for an upgrade here. I upgraded to the forerunner 970. Big jump. But it has a LOT more data points readily available. It’s more of what I was looking for.

The venu’s activities were extremely limited. It had the basics but that was it. Specifically it didn’t have trail running or backcountry skiing for me, basically my two biggest sports. I’m not sure about tennis. I bet it did tho. So that was probably the biggest reason. Second was the activities data page was limited, only 4 max data points. For backcountry skiing I like knowing distance, current elevation, total ascent, time, and heart rate. For trail running, the same plus pace. So that and I didn’t think I needed the navigation, but Sunday, the day I decided I really should upgrade, I got soooo off course. My bike Garmin would have told me way sooner that I was off course and that’s all I wanted.

One more thing I thought of this morning OP. Since upgrading to the forerunner, I’ve noticed the stress tracking/training elements are far superior. Mentioning it bc you mentioned the stress tracking specifically. I can’t remember if the Venu had a morning AND nightly report, but the training readiness, training status, running tolerance on the forerunner is so nice to have. You might be able to get that through the venu or the connect app, but I didn’t find it easily. But you should def look into this before purchasing. After I bought it I found out the venu is supposed to be more of a “lifestyle” watch. That makes me feel like it’s for the people who want to say they have a Garmin without the bulkiness of one? I think it’s a lower tiered watch with more smart watch integrations like Siri, but I felt it didn’t even do that well. If you’re in the US, I bought my venu through REI because of their return policy and partnership with Garmin. I think you have 90 days to decide if you like it? After not even 2 weeks I think is when I realized I wanted a higher level Garmin and just straight exchanged it for the forerunner 970.

I would personally always take a Forerunner over the Venu series, as I am pretty serious about my fitness. I don't really care much about smart watch features, just need a bare minimum. And the venu series seems to take tradeoffs with fitness features to accommodate the increase in smart features.

I wouldn’t be afraid of buying a Garmin watch for open water or pool swims. I have a first generation instinct since the summer of 2020. I’ve worn it everyday no matter what. If you don’t like the look of the instinct, I would look at either the Fenix, Enduro. The forerunner has a bezel but it’s not as raised I feel. Really any of their watches that includes the feature of a raised bezel I gravitate towards. For me, anyways, watches that don’t have that feature end up with a cracked screen like the venu and the vivoactive with the rounded edge of glass hasn’t lasted for me which is why I prefer that raised bezel. Garmin has always been good and replaced them for me in the past but once the warranty is done, there’s no more replacement. Hope this is helpful and keep going.

I used to swear by fitbit. My mileage and pace was RIGHT where I wanted it to be. Then I was due for a new watch and chose garmin. My pace was off by about a minute per mile and my fitbit was about half a mile off per mile. It frustrated me immensely. I assumed it was a watch issue. It was a me issue. I only use garmin. I used a pre-owned garmin venu 2 forn2 years since I had never used a garmin. I bought a new venu 3 and looove it!

I've just switched from a Garmin Venu 2 a couple of days ago and I love it so far. The best surprise has been that I'm 48 hours in from a first full charge and still at 22% battery. Plus Fitbit premium for free.

I'm 5'2'' I have the Venu2S and it's a perfect size for my small wrists. This is a feat considering every round smart watch I've used so far has had both a strap that was too long, and a watch body that was too large. It comes in a gold and rose gold model, as well as a cream and black option, and is quite inexpensive as far as Garmins come. It supports vo2 max but not lactate threshold (but that can also be calculated manually or using an online calculator by plugging in the run data from your watch).

Not lactate metrics but it does have vo2max. I can see it on my garmin connect app.

Honestly your best bet would be a Venu or an instinct, Venu is Garmin's health and fitness while instinct is there more traditional "G-Shock" style (best way I can describe it) watch, they don't really do the fitness tracker it's mostly all smartwatches. I have the Venu 4 coming from an instinct 2 solar. The vivo moves might also fit you well but they are older in comparison. If you are set on not having a smartwatch you may have to look into another brand, hope this helps, if you have any questions about the Venu or instinct let me know!