Garmin today announced the release of its Venu2 smartwatch. With an AMOLED display, GPS module, and improve health analytics provided via Firstbeat, the Venu 2 appears to be a serious contender in the smartwatch segment.
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Venu 2 Key Features
Here are the key features of the new Venu 2 smartwatch.
- The Smartwatch houses the new Elevate 4.0 heart rate sensor
- 11-day battery life between charges
- Improved Sleep monitoring and analytics platform provided by Firstbeat
- Body Battery and Stress tracking
- Blood Oxygen level monitoring
- 75 guided workouts
- Sleep monitoring with a focus on quality
- Animated on-screen workouts
- Heart rate monitoring with support for Heart rate zones based training
- Health Snapshot feature
Garmin is providing two variants of the Venu 2
- The 45mm Venu 2 for larger wrists and a smaller 40 mm, Venu 2S with 18mm strap.
- Both the models look similar in appearance and feature an AMOLED display. The watch offers a 5ATM water resistance rating.
The product literature specifies 11-day battery life for the larger 45 mm Venu 2 and n estimated 10-day battery life for its smaller model, the Venu 2S.
Garmin overhauled some key aspects of its health-tracking offerings with the new Venu 2
The sleep tracking functionality now uses powerful Firstbeat analytics to help with better monitoring and greater accuracy.
The new Fitness Age feature can be used as a powerful motivation tool.
The score is determined by taking into account your age, activity, resting heart rate, and body fat percentage.
Instead of just using VO2 max or HRV on its own, the composite Fitness Age metric can be used by regular users who like monitoring a single metric for ease.
The Health Snapshot feature allows users to record a snapshot of their health metrics at any given time so that they can review it later. Garmin is positioning this as a premium feature on the new Venu.
The health monitoring is backed by the company’s latest optical heart rate monitor called the Elevate 4.0. The sensor includes the SpO2 monitoring feature to track blood oxygen levels.
Pricing and Availability
The new Venu 2 is priced at $399 and is available to be purchased at the Garmin website now. The pricing appears to be on the high side here given the pricing for the Apple Watch or the Samsung Galaxy Watch.
This model is not the high-end rugged unit that appeals to hardcore athletes to command a premium price point nor is this exactly an entry-level smartwatch.
The availability of the new health tracking features along with Garmin’s Connect ecosystem is definitely going to induce many entry-level Garmin users to upgrade to the new Venu 2 variants.
