GarminVenu 2, GPS Smartwatch with Advanced Health Monitoring and Fitness Features, Slate Bezel with Black Case and Silicone Band , 27.9 mm

I had a Samsung Gear S3 for 3 years before buying this watch. The S3 was a good watch, but so many of the fitness functions were flawed. It had poor GPS tracking so my runs would come out with shortened distances, and even though it had weights and other workouts, I couldn't build a full workout program.After watching many video reviews, I decided to switch to the Garmin Venu 2. The build quality is great and the watch is actually a little slimmer and lighter than the Samsung. I found that Garmin had several different coaching programs so I started one for a 5k. I've been working through it for 2 months now and I'm really enjoying it. It does a great job of pushing me hard enough, but giving me recovery time to get stronger. I haven't been able to run this well in a long time so it's really a great feeling. On top of that, I built my own custom 3 day split for weights. When starting a weight workout, it shows my first exercise, amount of weight, and how many sets and reps. It counts the reps as best it can although some movements don't involve your watch arm so it will be off. You click a button to end the set and it starts the rest countdown that you set up in your program while also giving you a simple menu to adjust the amount of reps and the amount of weight that you did on that set. Tracking the rest time is awesome and keeps me from getting distracted and off pace. It's a fantastic companion for weight lifting and I'm really enjoying having it.The battery life is simply awesome. I'm tracking either weights or a run almost every day and I'm getting 9 days of battery life between charges. My Samsung watch started at about 3 days of battery life and has decreased over time to about a day and a half. It does have a proprietary plug so I have to be careful not to lose the cord. USB C would have been nice, but Garmin has been using this plug for a long time so it is easy to find replacements online.I've paired wireless headphones to the watch (Samsung Buds) and I listen to Spotify. They work great and don't have any drop outs.I'm a big fan of having a lot of complications on my watch face so I can get a lot of information with a quick glance. The default watch faces were just okay, but Garmin has a store with more options. I'm currently using a free one called "Clear and Powerful" and I'm obsessed with it. It has a nice clean style while still providing a ton of data (in addition to the time I have date, sunrise/sunset, steps, floors, battery, altitude, temp, and moon cycle).Sleep tracking is great and very accurate. It is useful information and they pair it with a body battery meter that shows how rested and ready for workouts you should be. There are lots of other graphs and tracking that it does for heartbeat, oxygen, and breaths per minute. It's all well laid out and not overwhelming.There are a few small drawbacks. There's no speaker or microphone on the watch so you can't take calls directly from it. You also can't activate an assistant. Besides those specific areas, the watch shows me all of my notifications and I can see and use canned replies to texts. I almost always want to use my phone for any real replies so this is fine for my needs. I did have a few times in the past when I took a call on the Samsung watch. It was convenient, but again, not a deal breaker for me to not have it as I'll answer the call on the Buds or on the phone itself. The watch will still show who is calling and allow me to decline or answer from the watch.So over all, a really great watch. The smart watch features are enough to cover making sure you don't miss calls, texts, and notifications, and provide a lot of data on the watch face. The battery life is amazing and it's really nice to know I could go on a trip and not even have to worry about charging it for the entire time. The running coach is very good and the weights workout creator is easy to use, but very rich in features. Anyone serious about fitness should take a strong look at this watch.

I bought this as an upgrade from a more basic Garmin activity monitor, and so far I'm quite pleased. The screen is pleasant, the interface is easy to navigate, and it works nicely with the speed and cadence sensors on my bikes. In terms of the data it collects, that makes it a good back-up to my Edge bike computer. It also functions well as a wrist-based HRM broadcasting via ANT+, which is nice for things like commuting where I don't want to put on full Lycra kit and a chest strap HRM, but I'd still like to have the data.Day-to-day, the sleep monitoring seems to work well, and as always Garmin's "body battery" feature is surprisingly good. I do wish sleep monitoring understood the idea of a nap; it picks one period of sleep per 24-hour day, and that's all that counts. So if you sleep six hours, get up and do stuff for a couple hours, then sleep four more, your averages are going to look like you under-slept.Battery life in basic wearable mode is impressive, with the watch reporting nearly two weeks of life at a full charge. The problem comes in when you engage GPS and ANT+. An hour of that a day takes battery life down substantially. Worse, it doesn't adjust battery life estimates when those features are turned on, nor does it learn that, say, you habitually engage those features for about an hour a day and factor that into the estimate it gives for when you next need to charge. And it is a big difference - last weekend I was showing two days of battery life remaining when I left on a bike ride, and figured that enough charge for two days had to be enough for 4-5 hours of biking. The watch died about 30 miles into a 50 mile ride. Not a big deal in this case since I was also recording on my Edge 830, but a striking illustration of how much more power the watch consumes during activity recording.

My husband got this watch for golf and fitness/health tracking. At first, he got the vivoactive4. Great features, but screen resolution was not what he was expecting. Went from a Garmin Approach S40 which had the same type of screen. Returned the Vivoactive4 and got the Venu2 since it was essentially the same watch with better screen tech per reviews.Upon getting it, it was exactly what he was looking for in terms of screen resolution and display graphics. Took it out to the golf course and worked just as expected. Wish it had hole map he said, but you get what you pay for and he was more than happy. Didn’t want to shell out the extra $400-500 for the approach S70. The Venu2 Has the basic features for golf he needed and wanted.Health and fitness tracking. It works the way he wanted. Tracks heart rate, stress, pulse, ox, sleep, etc. If you care about screen resolution, you’ll want the venu2 or something with an AMOLED type screen. If you don’t care as much about the display and just want the same features, then Vivoactive4 is a great choice at a lower price. He said the display is well worth the extra cost compared though.