Garmin - Venu 4

I had the Venu 4 for exactly 10 days. They didn’t deduct any amount at all, I just paid the difference. If you don’t feel 100% satisfied with Venu, I’d recommend you go for a Fenix too, life’s too short for what-ifs. I know it’s twice the amount but you’ll probably keep it for a few years so it’s all worth it in the end. Venu is good option, don’t get me wrong, and it will do the work it needs to. BUT you’ll not really enjoy it

Tbh for my use there’s not a lot of additional features in the Fenix that weren’t there in the Venu. The sapphire vs gorilla glass is a big difference, so is the screen size. Venu has a more vibrant screen though. Battery life is similar. Presence of buttons on Fenix helps but it’s not a game changer. There’s no comparison in looks, this looks way better. Had Venu got a sapphire screen I probably wouldn’t have traded it. I think if you want a premium feel then Fenix is the way to go.

The system UI upgrades alone make it worth the upgrade. Everything is so much nicer and more modern

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! 

I switched from an Apple Watch Series 8 to Venu 4. I miss certain aspects of the Apple Watch but I have grown to really appreciate the garmin. Things I miss: - Apple Pay (Garmin pay doesn’t work well in Canada) - answering quick texts from my wrist - ping my phone feature (garmin has this but doesn’t work all the time) - fitness rings - integration with peloton app Things I love about the garmin: - golf gps built into watch (need separate app for AW) I am an avid golfer and any app thru AW would kill battery incredibly fast - battery life - looks far better - health metrics are amazing - sleep metrics are amazing For me the positive outweigh the negatives. I can see why people hate the garmin ecosystem, but after switching for past 2 months I am truly happy with my choice. I wore Apple Watch daily for previous 3 years and never wore it at night due to needing to charge it. -

The Venue 4 everyone was waiting for it you all seem disappointed but you want more metric and a flashlight you have it I think it's an incredible versatile watch I don't qualify it at all as Life style

Well after that it depends on what you are looking for in a watch, I was at Apple for years whether it was watches, phones, tablets etc. I think he's ripping us off a lot from year to year but hey it's my humble opinion now I switched to Garmin with the Epix Pro which I still have which I should sell I bought the Ven 4 in dhestetic thermal and lighter and all the features that I need see more after these true that the Apple Watch is better in terms of health but Garmin is doing not too bad today in terms of battery let's not even talk about it 😂😂😂with  I was in an ecosystem that wasn't too disgusting but today I decided to leave maybe one day I'll come back but not for the watches the Garmins have a less new design although I find the Venu 4 nice so I advise you to take all the pros and cons and make your own opinion on which ones you really need and the budget too

I have the same poor battery, I am at 44 hours and 8% - I charged to 100% when I took it out the box and eta was 12d...

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 have the smallest wrists and just got a 41 mm Venu 4. The fit is great, and it has pretty much the same running features as the FR 570 without the bulky look!

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.