Garmin never liked sitting on its laurels for too long and the American fitness wearable company is at it again: after announcing its newest running watch, the Garmin Forerunner 745, and the new Garmin HRM-Pro heart rate monitor, it surprised us all by also revealing the Garmin Venu Sq, an updated and squared version of the original Garmin Venu, announced roughly a year ago.
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In case it wasn't clear before, it is now more than obvious that Garmin is trying to dominate both the casual and the hardcore fitness wearable market, releasing new smartwatches back-to-back to rival the Apple Watch SE, the Fitbit Sense / Fitbit Versa 3 and so on. Even the new Withings ScanWatch is in danger due to the constant stream of Garmin releases.
Garmin Venu Sq: price, release date
Available now, the Garmin Venu Sq is priced at £179.99 / $199 | AU$349 and the Venu Sq Music Edition is priced at £224.99 / $249.99 / AU$429. The the Garmin Venu Sq is available to buy at Garmin and selected third party retailers.
The standard Garmin Venu Sq is available in orchid/metallic orchid, white/light gold, and shadow grey/slate colourways.
The Garmin Venu Sq Music Edition is offered in light sand/rose gold, navy/light gold, moss/slate and black/slate colours.
Garmin Venu Sq: features
Probably the best feature of the Garmin Venu Sq is its price: the standard edition is almost £100 cheaper than the new Apple Watch SE and a whopping £120 cheaper than the Fitbit Sense. It's also £20 cheaper than the Fitbit Versa 3. One might wonder: is the Garmin Venu Sq actually 'cheap'?
From what we can tell, the feature list looks promising enough. The Garmin Venu Sq series features a 1.3-inch rectangular Corning Gorilla Glass touchscreen display with a lightweight aluminium bezel and a 'comfortable' silicone band: so far so good. The original Venu has a smaller display (1.2", circular), yet it has a resolution of 390 x 390 pixels.
On the other hand, the Venu Sq has a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels which is significantly less pixel-dense than the rounded version. In comparison, the smaller version of the Apple Watch SE has a screen size of 1.57" and a resolution of 368 x 448 pixels.
The Garmin Venu Sq also ventures deeper into wellness with features that include advanced sleep tracking with Pulse Ox, respiration tracking, abnormal heart rate alerts (high and low), menstrual cycle tracking, stress tracking with relax reminders, hydration tracking and more. The watch also utilises Garmin's latest optical heart rate sensor, the Elevate V3, which samples heart rate multiple times per second, 24-hours a day.
Battery life is pretty good too: the Garmin Venu Sq can function 'up to' 6 days in smartwatch mode and up to 14 hours in GPS mode. Compare this with the Apple Watch SE's 18-hour 'all day' battery life.
• Buy the Garmin Venu Sq directly from Garmin
As well as all that, the Garmin Venu Sq also supports smart notification, incident detection (the watch sends real-time location to emergency contacts when you fall), Garmin Pay and you can also personalise the watch with a bazillion watch faces and apps through the Garmin Connect IQ store. The Garmin Venu Sq Music Edition also has built-in storage for music: if you have Spotify Premium subscription, you can load the songs onto the watch's memory and listen to them offline by pairing a Bluetooth headphone to the watch.
Garmin Venu Sq: image gallery
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