so what we have right here are the brand
new garmin venue 2
and 2s and just to make things clear
right up front
after testing this watch for a couple
weeks this definitely could be my
new everyday watch i really like the
garmin venue 2
and in this Article we have a lot to talk
about from accuracy testing to an
interface tour
and of course talking about the
internals and the physical design
of this device but before i get into why
i really like it
i want to start off like i said with
some of the basics let's take a look at
the physical design of the garmin venue
2s so the 2 and the 2s the first confusion point right there
the 2 is just the regular larger version the 45 millimeter and then the 2s
i assume s stands for small because it's just slightly smaller
there's really no differences in features or really anything about it
other than a subtle difference in the aesthetic of it and of course the difference in size now the different
size means you have a slightly smaller screen a slightly lighter device
and a slightly smaller battery but really that's the extent of that
so right here we have the garmin venue 2s and we're just going to look at this one for now and for the most part assume that
the venue 2 is essentially an identical device looking at the front you'll see that we have kind of a gold color stainless bezel around the display
the display is 1.1 inches and it is a really nice bright amoled display
as far as the screen to body ratio goes i think garmin did a really nice job of of making this look as aesthetically
pleasing as possible from the chamfered bezel and the stainless steel
to the little hour markings on the black
bezel there i think they did a good job and i know at this point it's 20 21
people might be wondering why we can't close that gap i believe
the main reason that we're having that black bezel around the screen
is for contactless nfc payments which obviously this device does have
more on that later in the video but the display overall is really bright very vibrant very responsive and of course it is a touch screen as well
so i really like the display i've had no problem seeing this in the brightest daylight or in the dimmest situations looking on
the right side you'll see that we have two buttons they don't rotate they don't do anything crazy not an ekg just just two buttons we don't have a microphone on here we don't have a speaker on here but overall a really nice simple lightweight design on the back you can see that the
silicone straps are really easy to take off and it's a really nice soft touch rubber on the inside but more of a hard textured rubber on the outside so nice aesthetic on the outside nice comfort on the inside i really like how these straps are designed of course on the back you can see we have our charging nodes right there so the wire just kind of snaps into place
and you can hang this from the wire it's
a nice powerful clip not too strong easy to pull off of course but if you have an outlet that's higher up you could just hang this there and you don't have to worry about setting your watch or balancing it on
anything in the middle you can see our
array of heart rate sensors and all
kinds of different stuff
we'll talk about the sensors in a second
but you can see a big cluster of a lot
of very impressive sensors there
otherwise this is five atmospheres water
resistant which means you can go
swimming with this maybe a little bit of
snorkeling
i wouldn't go diving with it of course
but water resistance i've had
no problem with this from my testing so
far now as far as colors go
you got some options you have four
options for the venue 2s and only two
options for the venue too
the venue 2 options both look really
similar the 2s
has some really nice looking options a
little bit more on the feminine side
probably
but still really really nice looking
devices and of course i'll leave a link
in the top of the description if you
guys want to go
and see what's actually in stock the
reason that we have this one right here
the venue 2s
is because it's so hard right now to
actually get the venue 2. these are just
flying off the shelves
and they're out of stock in pretty much
every store i've checked
so that's pretty much it for the
physical design of this device overall
very very comfortable watch
and aesthetically i think they did a
fantastic job here but let's talk a
little bit more about what's under the
hood
the internals of this watch are
obviously very important and the first
thing you want to know about
is the battery life now they claimed
you're going to get 10 days of battery
life in smart watch mode
which is basically what you're going to
be doing with this and if you have the
venue 2 you get an extra day so 11 days
because again it has a larger battery
but that wasn't quite what i was getting
now of course that's the claim if you're
just doing smart watch mode
i was running this pretty heavy i was
really putting a lot of demand on this
using it for at least 30 minutes a day
for gps on exercises
i also had 24-hour pulse ox monitoring
on sleep monitoring heart rate
monitoring
like i had everything pretty much maxed
out including the brightness as well
they're now still very comfortably
getting five to six days of battery life
so
as far as battery life goes i know it
didn't quite meet the full 10 days with
with my
strenuous use on here but still i was
really impressed with that
and it's already more than triple the
best apple watch you can buy
and honestly if you still struggle with
battery life this watch has quick
charging which is something i wish more
watches would adopt
and in just 10 minutes you can get an
entire day of battery
with this device so that means if you
just hop in the shower in the morning
get out
dry off and then unplug your watch
you're ready to go
for at least an entire day as i
mentioned before this also has
contactless payment so nfc on here is
really nice to have
garmin pay doesn't really integrate with
every card out there i found is a little
bit more limited
but all things considered once you find
a card that works with it it is very
easy to use
we also have bluetooth on here of course
to connect to your phone and we have
wi-fi as well
but bluetooth also connects to different
earbuds so if you want to go for a run
without your phone which is what i
really like to do you can have offline
music on here go for a run have earbuds
connected to your watch
and listen to spotify offline as long as
you have premium
and it's a feature that a lot of watches
don't have it's really a great feature
i love to see it on garmin watches and
speaking of running when it comes to
tracking with this watch we have a
plethora of sensors on board
including gps glonass and galileo so
those are the three
kind of positioning systems you're going
to be using there we also have the
garmin elevate wrist heart rate monitor
on the back
definitely more advanced than most other
on the market of course i'll get into a
full test in a second
we have a barometric altimeter a compass
a gyroscope accelerometer
thermometer ambient light sensor and of
course the pulse ox sensor
for blood oxygen saturation so a lot of
sensors on this watch
definitely geared more towards the
athlete anybody looking to be
more involved in their fitness or just
getting healthier in general
and when we get into the actual testing
as you guys can see right here
we'll start off with the gps honestly
this is the easiest one
i've probably ever done it's just it's
really accurate
every run i've done with this is like
right on the money getting exactly the
right distance
i will say that when you're running the
instantaneous speed
is usually complete garbage i would not
rely on that
but in the end looking at the final
length you went the average pace for
each
for each mile it's just a great it
really does a great job we have almost
no drunk wandering on this map and i was
impressed with that now when it comes to
heart rate monitoring
this is probably as good as you're going
to get right now with a wrist
optical heart rate sensor obviously if
you want the most accurate you're going
to get like a heart rate band like the
polar h10 for example
and when i compared them side to side
you'll see that for the most part the
garmin did a pretty good job it was
definitely really close but
keep in mind if you have there's a lot
of variables that could mess up an
optical heart rate sensor
if you have too much hair on your wrist
if you're if you're wearing it a little
bit too close to your wrist joint
if you're wearing long sleeves there's a
couple things that could mess that up
but all things considered
when you have this fitting correctly and
you go for a run or any workout
it tracks really really accurately so as
far as sensors go
i was more than impressed with the
accuracy of the garmin venue 2s
and it kind of sets it apart from a lot
of other fitness based
smart watches now as far as software
goes there's a ton of features on here
i'm going to get into in a second
but it syncs up really well with the
garmin connect app on your phone
with a ton of in-depth analytics on all
of your different workouts and just your
health in general
and that syncs up really well with
online you can go to garmin connect on
your browser on your desktop or your
laptop
and again there you can see really
really nice in-depth analytics of all of
your different workouts
to export that or do whatever you really
want all right now taking a look at the
interface the button on the top will
bring you into a workout
if you tap on the four squares you can
choose between a ton of different
workouts
as you can see a very smooth seamless
screen here and if we go into
say like yoga for example you can
actually swipe up and see a lot of
different workouts
so if we choose like yoga for runners
it'll give us an entire yoga workout and
when we start that
we'll press on the top right button and
it does have that haptic motor on there
no speaker but it does vibrate
and as if we swipe up from the top from
the bottom you can go down and see
a whole bunch of things including what
the position is actually supposed to
look like
and as you can see here it gives you
nice little animations throughout the
entire workout
if we press the bottom right button that
is our home button and our back button
and from the home screen if we swipe
from the right you'll see that we
actually have nothing there
not a great use of that but if we swipe
from the left you'll get a shortcut i
didn't set this up yet because i wanted
to show you guys
that that's where that would be and if
we swipe up or down it goes through a
loop of all your little widgets you can
set these in
the app on your phone but i really like
how these are more compact a little bit
smaller
and you can go into any one of these or
see multiple at the same time so it
shows you
like the music you're playing how many
notifications you have all kinds of
things and if i want to go and check out
like
for example my body battery or my heart
rate i could tap on that
it shows me a graph of my heart rate i
could swipe up and see the average heart
rate by
day and there's just a lot of analytics
for each individual widget
pressing the bottom button brings you
back and you can again dig into any one
of these
your sleep for example it'll show you
the sleep from last night give you a
sleep score
and it gives you some reasoning as to
why your sleep might not be good so this
was good sleep right here but if it
wasn't it would give me a little
notification
and tell me that maybe i rolled around
too much and so that's pretty much it
for the interface it's really really
simple
if we press and hold the bottom button
we can go into some settings here so we
can change the watch face
we can set like an alarm or a stopwatch
or a timer
or we can go into our history that's the
settings right there
if we tap and hold the top button it's
actually going to bring us into this
little cool
shortcut interface here we can go to
garmin pay spotify
location we can go and just set a timer
and you can preset whatever you want on
the outside
and of course these are all going to be
your quick settings you also get
notifications on this watch and if you
have an android you actually have quick
replies as well
and of course you can answer or reject
phone calls but without a speaker or a
microphone
it's not going to be actually answering
it on your watch now with that being
said guys
the watch overall pros and cons the pros
obviously the accuracy the comfort and
the aesthetics those are the big three
of why you would want this watch you're
getting a great battery life as well
and i found that a lot of things work
well like lift to wake works really well
i found that the touchscreen is
definitely responsive it's very bright
it's not the best out there but it's
definitely a major step up from
something like the garmin
venue sq from last year with the lcd
display
the amoled really does a great job but
of course not everything
is good about this there were some
drawbacks i found some of them included
the gps definitely takes a beat until
you're able to start running it'll say
wait for gps
sometimes for 30 seconds to a minute
depending on where you are
but that's kind of the cost of accuracy
other devices that just say start
running
won't be as accurate so i don't really
mind that but i found that the
instantaneous speed
is kind of trash it really doesn't do a
great job and so
i would pretty much just disregard that
the price
is a huge huge drawback this is costing
about 399
there might be sales it's very likely
there will be sales but at that price
you're talking about
i mean a mid-range phone an apple watch
like a lot of other devices can be
bought
for 399 bucks this of course is arguing
that it is different because it's so
much more accurate
much more fitness oriented it gives you
better analytics
but all things considered 399 bucks
is 399 bucks that's a drawback for this
device
we also have limited third-party apps we
don't have any kind of type of
rotating bezel rotating crown i really
wish we had that
and of course we don't have a microphone
or speaker so
it's not going to compete head-to-head
with the with the galaxy watch or the
apple watch
but of course it kind of has a different
approach and that brings me to the
conclusion on this one
smart watches in general are still kind
of trying to find their place in the
world they're trying to find their
purpose
but one purpose that is definitely a
real one is
for fitness there's an entire category
of sports watches
but a lot of people don't necessarily
want a big clunky sports watch with
a weird interface a lot of people want a
good smart watch
that is also a master of sport watch so
when you find that hybrid right in the
middle
you end up with things like the fitbit
sense the fitbit
versa 2 versus a 3 and of course the
garmin venue and in the entire realm
i think it's very easy to say that this
one is hands down my favorite
it is the most accurate the easiest to
use and
overall just definitely my favorite
device that kind of mashes up
the best of the smartwatch world the
fundamentals that i need
and the best of the fitness tracking so
whether that's offline spotify connected
to your earbuds
or a contactless payment to buy a
gatorade after a run
this device honestly might be my daily
watch that i'm wearing every single day
just because i really like tracking my
health and tracking it very accurately
so
is is gonna be my my main watch for the
entire year i'm not sure but i can say
that for now
i'm gonna be wearing this watch every
day you guys can leave a comment below
and let me know what you think of the
garmin venue 2 and venue 2s
obviously a really really high price but
do the features on here justify that
price point
and is this something you'd be
considering buying guys i want to hear
from you in the comments below if you
enjoyed this article THANK YOU
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