Smartwatches aren’t just a fad anymore; used in a judicious manner, these tech-loaded devices relay back a wealth of health and wellness data to the wearer. Little wonder, these wrist gadgets (which now tell more than just time) are being embraced in a ferocious manner by the health-conscious lot. Mostly confined to home for the past two and a half months, this reviewer has been awed by Garmin Venu, a super-slim, non-clunky and a pleasingly-designed smartwatch, aimed at those who take ‘activity’ seriously. It is built to impress with enhanced health and wellness monitoring features and a pretty good battery life, bringing more convenience for the wearers in their daily use.
Priced at Rs 37,490, the Venu will add vibrant colours into the lives of users and make workouts more fun for them. It comes with quite a broad range of all-day health monitoring features like advanced sleep with Pulse Ox, new respiration tracking, abnormal heartrate alerts, menstrual cycle tracking, stress tracking with relax reminders, new hydration tracking, new breathwork activities and more.
The Venu features a 1.2-inch screen and is available in Granite Blue with Silver Hardware, Black with Slate Hardware, Light sand with Rose Gold Hardware and Black with Gold Hardware (our trial unit). It features an impressive battery life of upto five days in smartwatch mode, and up to six hours in GPS + music mode. I must highlight that the Venu is Garmin’s first ever smartwatch with a vibrant AMOLED screen and upto 5-day battery life in smartwatch mode; up to 6 hours in GPS mode with music. It comes equipped with a whooping 40 on-device animated workouts for strength training, cardio, yoga and pilates.
These easy-to-follow workouts demonstrate proper form and technique right on the user’s wrist. Needless to say, it’s a blessing for those who are home-bound and are unable to pay a visit to the gym. The robust suite of workout options includes preloaded workouts on the watch, preset workouts available to download from Garmin Connect, and “create your own” customisable workouts. The wrist-wear is compatible with Garmin Coach, free training plans that can be adapted to a runner’s goals and performance, and also comes with a complete virtual personal trainer for added motivation.
The Venu watch is made for daily wear with interchangeable bands providing great comfort to the user. The always-on, sunlight-readable Garmin Chroma Display technology also makes it easy to see it in any lighting. The watch not only tracks your physical movements but also keeps a tracks of your sleep with the advanced sleep monitoring that estimates the light, deep and REM stages of sleep. Upon awakening, users can review their sleep stats in Garmin Connect to see whether they are getting the quality sleep they need to feel rested and recharged the next day.
Some of the smart features include:
Notifications: Receive smart notifications for incoming calls, text messages, social media updates, calendar reminders and more. Android users can reply to text messages from the device.
Menstrual cycle tracking: The Garmin Connect app lets women track their cycle, log physical and emotional symptoms and learn about training and nutrition during each phase of their cycle. Users will be able to see period reminders, cycle details and symptoms logged for the day.
Safety and tracking: Incident detection (during select activities) and sending real-time location to emergency contacts.
Personalisation: Choose from a variety of gorgeous live watch faces, apps and widgets from the Garmin Connect IQ store app. Users can even upload their own photos and turn them into watch faces.
In summary, the Venu features an extensive range of all-day health monitoring features. You can easily download music to your watch for phone-free listening, record all the ways to move with more than 20 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps, get easy-to-follow, animated workouts right on your watch screen and more. The Garmin effort to assimilate tech into classic designs is a noble one. Get this GPS wearable for all-day health monitoring.
Estimated street price: Rs 37,490
