Smartwatches try to get us away from our smartphone screens, but ironically, a smartwatch's screen is one of the most important things about it. While plenty of materials have been used in smartwatch displays (including E-Ink, RIP Pebble), OLED and AMOLED panels have become ubiquitous on high-end wearables.

But Garmin, maker of some of the most comprehensive fitness wearables available, hasn't taken advantage of such screen technology until now. The $399 Garmin Venu is the first of the company's wearables to have an AMOLED display akin to that on the Apple Watch and some WearOS devices.

While it's an extension of the Vivoactive family, the Venu injects a premium feel that Garmin will clearly use to attract those who are drawn to competitors like the Apple Watch. However, just because the Venu looks lovely doesn't mean Garmin has found ways to use that pretty panel to the best of its abilities.

Look and feel

Unlike other Garmin wearables, the Venu only comes in one size—its case is about 43mm, making it feel a bit larger on my wrist than I was used to. I typically review and prefer the 's' models of Garmin's wearables, which tend to be 40mm in size.

I’m trying to find the rose stock face that was in the venu2 ads I have the venu2 but it was the face on the venu2s. Idk how to find it. I think some faces available on the Venu 2 are not available (or slightly different) on the Venu 2s and vice versa. Explore and download apps to personalize your Garmin with Connect IQ, our open platform for third-party developer apps. Toggle navigation. Sort by: App Type. All App Types Music. Summit Watch Face MarekSoso MarekSoso. You also don’t get the nice live watch faces that were introduced on the Venu. One of the more slightly chaotic experiences of using the Venu Sq is the UI. Like the Venu, Garmin has employed a. Personalize your watch with thousands of free watch faces, apps and widgets from our Connect IQ Store (when paired with your computer or compatible smartphone downloaded with the Connect IQ Store app) Go longer on a single charge with up to 6 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 14 hours in GPS mode; WHAT'S INCLUDED. Venu Sq smartwatch.

But even so, the Venu isn't heavy on my wrist at 46.3 grams, and anyone who has familiarity with Garmin devices will know how to use it. In addition to its touchscreen, it has two side buttons for accessing the workout menu, navigating back on the screen, and opening the tools and settings menus.

The 20mm watch bands are interchangeable, and its underside shows the optical heart rate monitor as well as its proprietary charging nodes (at this point, I've all but given up on wearables having more common charging ports. Any wearable worth its weight is somewhat water-resistant, and water and USB-C ports don't mix).

Garmin Venu Live Watch Faces Chart

AMOLED and live watch faces

Almost everything about the Venu is standard Garmin—except for the AMOLED display. The 1.2-inch, 390 x 390 round panel is just as high-quality as you would expect, with deep blacks and rich colors that the new watch faces show off nicely. The display doesn't extend all the way to the case edges, but rather there's a relatively slim black bezel that sits between those two elements. It's not as chunky as I've seen on other devices, so it didn't take away from my experience using the display, but just know that it's not an edge-to-edge panel.

Garmin's group of new watch faces look lovely on the AMOLED display, and some of them include live animations as well. If you choose a face with an animation, you'll see it every time you turn your wrist upward to check the time. Most are pretty abstract, like a wave of a textured pattern or glitter falling from the top of the face, but they are fun nonetheless. The animations aren't the most seamless, though—when the display turns on, going from black to full graphics, I saw a second or so of loading/stuttering in the pixels that show the animation.

Always-on mode

Like the Apple Watch Series 5, the Venu has an optional always-on mode that will keep the display running and visible even when your wrist is turned away from you. This makes it easier to glance down and check the time without actually turning your wrist upward to do so.

But the execution is different in the Venu than on the Apple Watch. At its core, it works almost the same, but users will see different things on each device. On the Apple Watch, you'll see the time and, depending on your device settings, information like the weather, the number of unread text messages, and more displayed through complications.

The Venu, by contrast, only shows the time when the screen is in always-on mode and turned downward, regardless of the complications on your selected watch face. Garmin's complications are not as rich as Apple's in the first place—limited information that's not related to the time, date, and your activity levels that can be displayed. Garmin does let you customize watch faces directly on the device, which is cool and convenient, but you can only include a maximum of three complications to any one watch face, and most of those info areas show fitness data like heart rate, number of steps taken, and more.

So you'll only be able to glance down to check the time on the Venu. The watch face also completely disappears, unlike on the Apple Watch where your selected watch face will invert colors or morph slightly so it consumes less power. Garmin didn't include such reconfiguration, so the display just defaults to a black background when the always-on screen isn't facing you. While that's a valid and simple solution to the problem of excess battery drain, it's not as visually interesting as Apple's solution to the same problem.

Garmin Venu Live Watch Faces Download

The display settings on the Venu let you do things like turn on or off always-on mode, adjust display brightness, and more. I particularly like the timeout setting, which you can change to adjust the amount of time after which you want the display to turn off when not in always-on mode. You can also set a specific display behavior while working out, so the Venu could have always-on mode turned off for regular use but on during workout mode. In that particular scenario, you'll always be able to see your workout stats with the display turned on while you're working out, but as soon as you finish that training session, the display will time out according to your preferred timeout setting.

One of my favorite features on Garmin wearables is the sleep mode that automatically turns on Do Not Disturb. During the Venu's initial setup in Garmin Connect, you're asked what time you normally go to bed and when you wake up. You're then asked if you want to receive alerts during this time, and if you choose no, the device will automatically enable Do Not Disturb mode when it assumes you're sleeping.

The always-on display will also follow this lead, automatically disabling during your sleep window. You may be surprised how many times wearables have woken me up because they didn't have such a feature, but Garmin devices never have this problem. I'm glad Garmin figured out a seamless way to integrate always-on mode so it doesn't disturb any wearer's slumber.

What the display does, and what we wished it did

My natural assumption was that the Garmin Venu, with a display that's close in quality to the Apple Watch and other smartwatches, would make use of that display with new graphics, animations, and other visual features. Garmin did this somewhat but didn't take things as far as I hoped it would. The new live watch faces with animations will likely be the way most users take advantage of the new screen the most, purely because the watch face is what you'll see on the device most of the time.

Exercise animations also look a bit nicer on the AMOLED display. These on-screen animations provide visual instructions on how to complete an exercise for cardio, yoga, pilates, and strength routines, making it easier for novices to learn moves while they work out. The animations have the same smoothness as they did on the Vivoactive 4s, but now these active, faceless humans appear more vibrant thanks to more colorful clothing. Animations on the Venu remind me most of animations on Fitbit's Versa 2, although I do like Garmin's execution better because they are more than just simple stick figures.

Connecting the Venu to your Spotify account will now show album art on the smartwatch's display, which is a nice touch. The Breathwork workout profile also uses color in a predictable way—a gradient of color slowly expands and contracts as you're instructed to breathe in and out.

Lots of room to improve

Otherwise, the UI of Garmin's wearable software is exactly the same as it is on devices without AMOLED displays. That's to say that the UI design doesn't lean heavily on graphics. The My Day widgets, accessible by swiping up from the bottom of the display, still only include small icons next to each data point. Heart rate, intensity minutes, and other time-tracked data are still shown as line graphs with scarce splashes of color throughout.

Garmin Fenix Watch Faces

The workout menu still uses small stick-figure icons to show each type of exercise, although now each icon is surrounded in a glow of color that you can customize to your liking. During a workout, you'll still have to swipe between data screens to see information, including heart rate, duration, pace, and more, and those screens are almost all black and white. Upon finishing a workout, the ending screen with a summary of your stats is also black with white text, the only bits of color being green and red semi-circles that indicate you should swipe down to save or swipe up to discard.

Even move reminders and goal alerts don't look very different from those on the Vivoactive 4s and other LCD-paneled devices. If anything, the existing animations look bolder and more fluid on the AMOLED display, but none have been completely redesigned to add exciting twists. Extra animation and color is sprinkled throughout, albeit sparsely, which is disappointing when you consider the technology the Venu has at its disposal.

It always seemed like Garmin's wearable software UI was constrained by hardware limitations, namely the LCD screens that were built for readability and battery efficiency, but I'm not sure that's the case anymore. It doesn't appear Garmin spent a lot of time figuring out what it could have the Venu do with its new screen that would make it stand out among the competition or just add to its value as a $399 smartwatch.

The reason may also lie in Garmin's desire to keep the Venu's battery life as good as it could possibly be. It's likely that many of the decisions that resulted in a fairly basic-looking UI for Garmin smartwatches help the devices last for multiple days on a single charge. Those decisions are helping the Venu do just that in this case and are complemented by the internal reconfigurations Garmin had to do to account for the power consumption that the AMOLED display would inevitably draw.

And I was impressed with the Venu's battery life. The smartwatch was down to 23% after a full 48 hours of use under these conditions:

• all-day and all-night wear, only removed to bathe
• always on display mode enabled
• screen brightness at 30%
• pulse ox on during sleep
• two one-hour workouts recorded
• all smartphone alerts delivered to the watch
• live watch face employed for about 38 hours

Clearly Garmin developed the technology inside the Venu to be as battery efficient as possible, and the company should be applauded for that. The Venu likely has the longest battery life of any smartwatch with an AMOLED display; Garmin estimates it will get up to five days in smartwatch mode, but I expect it could be more than that if you disable always-on display mode.

But even if most smartwatches with lovely displays have a lot of black, empty space on those panels, I'm hoping Garmin will give its software UI an overhaul in the future. Both the Apple Watch Series 5 and Samsung's Galaxy Watch Active 2 use color in more interesting ways and allow photos to liven up the display, too. Take, for example, watchOS' activity rings: they act as an easy visual aid that encourages daily goal completion, and they use color in ways that Garmin's UI doesn't even come close to. Samsung's Tizen uses color similarly with a heart-shaped icon that's divided into different colors to show how much of your daily calorie, steps, and other goals you've completed. Elements like these make a wearable UI more interesting as well as more interactive, and currently Garmin's UI doesn't have a lot of that.

A note about activity tracking

I've focused so much on the display in this review because the Venu does everything that the Garmin Vivoactive 4s does. All of the new fitness features found in the Vivoactive 4s are included on the Venu, and all of the Venu's exclusive features revolve around its display.

That being said, my experience using the Venu as a fitness watch was just as good as that with the Vivoactive 4s. Its heart rate monitor and GPS are accurate, and it has space for onboard music and NFC for Garmin Pay. I'm disappointed that Garmin didn't add onboard, color map views to the Venu because it would be convenient to see your run route mapped out on the Venu's big, bold display right after finishing a training session.

With arguably the most important part of the Venu's experience being the same as another Garmin wearable, the Venu's $399 price becomes a more interesting topic for discussion. Garmin clearly wants it to be an alternative to the $399 Apple Watch Series 5, and it could very well be a better device for those who want a more robust fitness watch (the Apple Watch is the best for most iPhone users with money to spend, but definitely not the best for everyone.)

But if you're choosing between the Venu and the Vivoactive 4s, you'll essentially pay $50 extra for the Venu's AMOLED display. A part of me is glad that it's only $50 more, but another part of me believes the Venu should be priced at $349 just like the rest of the Vivoactive 4 series. It takes more advanced (and likely more expensive) technology to get that AMOLED display onto the Venu, but when it's as underutilized as it is in this case, it will not add enough value for some to warrant the price bump.

A wasted opportunity but hope for the future

The most important thing about the Garmin Venu is that it exists—Garmin finally made a wearable with an AMOLED display that can stand up to other all-purpose smartwatches. It has been a long time coming, and I honestly was never sure if Garmin would make a device like that. It's exciting because that means we could see OLED and AMOLED displays come to other Garmin wearables in the future.

But the Venu suffers from first-device syndrome in that it's not as fully realized of an AMOLED smartwatch as it could have been. Now, it may have the hardware components to stand up to Apple Watches and Galaxy Watches, but the software component isn't at the same level as those competitors. Garmin's software is one reason why many athletes and fitness enthusiasts choose the company's wearables, so I don't foresee a major shift in overall strategy in the future.

However, I do believe Garmin can make its software more AMOLED-friendly by using more exciting graphics and animations while also maintaining the stellar battery life that the Venu currently has. Garmin wearables may never be as intuitive as Apple's or Samsung's because they aren't as closely tied to a smartphone OS, but the company can certainly make the experience of using a $399 smartwatch feel more appropriate. If users can get the exact same software experience on a $350 device as they can on a $399 device, most users (who are not display sticklers) will likely choose the more affordable option.

The Good

• Bold and bright AMOLED display.
• Music storage and NFC come standard.
• Comprehensive activity, sleep, and workout tracking.
• Optional all-day pulse ox.
• Great battery life, even in always-on display mode.

The Bad

• Only one case size.
• Limited live watch faces.
• On-screen animations not available for premade workouts.
• Garmin Connect downloads remain sluggish.
• No optional LTE.

Garmin Venu Sq Watch Faces

The Ugly

• Garmin's software doesn't make use of the AMOLED screen as much as it should.

These new displays are going to be more in line with other smart watches in the market today like an apple watch or samsung. But the great thing is: is that garmin’s been able to retain some pretty decent battery life out of both of these? So you’ll? Not only get a really capable fitness device, but you’ll also have a nice pretty display so it’s kind of like having your cake and eating it too. I already have in depth reviews of both of these devices in terms of how they perform in sports and fitness capacity. I’Ll have those linked down in the description below, but this video is more going over all the features of these devices, as well as some of the differences. So if this video does help you out at all, don’t be shy about hitting that like button down below. As it definitely helps the channel a lot – and i appreciate it – let’s start out with price, so the venue sq comes in two different versions: there’s going to be a version with music and a version without music, the version with music starts at 250 and the version Without music starts at 200, the venue this ranges from like 300 to 350, depending on what sales are going on, and i do have some affiliate links down in the description below where you can check out current pricing and those links. Don’T cost you anything additional, but they do help out the channel for the construction.

The venue has a stainless steel bezel, where the sq has an aluminum bezel. Both look pretty good, but in my opinion the venue does look just slightly more premium and that may have to do with that slightly neural texture on the bezel and the venue for size. The sq is just slightly narrower than the regular venue due to its square shape, and the sq also weighs just slightly less both use touch screens along with two physical buttons to interact with the device both are going to be water resistant down to 50 meters. Both use industry, standard 20, millimeter watch straps and both are protected by corning gorilla, glass, 3. and other than the shape. Another big hardware difference is the display where the original venue has a 1.2 inch amoled display and the sq has a 1.3 inch lcd screen. But overall the regular venue does appear to have more screen real estate and it does also have a higher resolution display. So it’ll be a bit brighter and also have deeper blacks, but i find the lcd display on the sq to be pretty good it’s, not quite as good as the amoled but it’s still brighter than garmin’s. Other transflective displays the nice thing about both the venue and the venue. Sq is that both have an always on display mode, but just note that this will have an impact on battery life which i’ll go over here in just a bit, but with both you can disable the always on display and just rely on the raised.

Wake gesture like what you’d find on an apple watch, sc series, 4 or series 3. Both have a fairly good amount of stock watch faces, but the watch faces on the regular venue definitely show off that bright and crispy amoled display a bit more than the watch faces on the sq and one more thing you’ll get with the regular venue are live. Watch faces that have a little animation when they’re activated with a gesture battery life on the sq is going to be slightly better for day to day use with the sq being able to get about five to six days and with the regular venue getting about four To five days and that’s going to be with the always on displays being disabled and if you were to enable the always on displays just take that down by about a day or two, but still pretty decent battery life in the gps department for tracking outdoor activities. The regular venue does have the upper hand here where the regular venue will be able to get up to 20 hours and the sq gets up to 14 hours and that’s gon na be without playing music. But if you are playing music, while tracking outdoor activity, they’re actually going to be very similar, the smartwatch features are going to be nearly identical between these two, where both have garmin pay. Both can sync your weather and calendar information for your phone. Both can also receive notifications from either an iphone or an android phone, and when you pair either of these with an android phone, you can actually reply to text messages using pre defined responses that you’ll set up in garmin connect and then with the venue and the Venue, sq music you’ll also be able to have offline music storage and playback using music streaming services like spotify deezer, as well as amazon, music, and then, if you don’t need that feature for some reason, you can actually save 50 bucks with the non music version of The venue sq and then both also do have the latest generation garmin elevate, heart rate sensor.

That also has an spo2 sensor for measuring blood oxygen saturation levels, so the heart rate performance will be very similar between these two devices. Another hardware difference is that the original venue has a gyroscope where the sqs do not so the gyroscope is intended to be able to improve the rep counting ability with a strength, training profile as well as stroke detection while swimming realistically. The rep counting is kind of hit and miss with any garmin device, no matter how expensive or how cheap it is. So i wouldn’t necessarily gloss over that detail all that much. However, a bigger difference is that the original venue has an altimeter where the sqs do not. But what difference does that actually make well mainly two things? The sq won’t be able to track your floors, climbed as a daily activity metric, since that needs an altimeter, but the other is that the sq won’t be able to show your real time elevation when you’re tracking an outdoor activity like your total ascent and descent. However, once you actually save your outdoor activity with the sq, it will actually show that elevation data and that’s going to be based off of gps rather than all tumor, since the sq lacks that and then for external sensors they’re, going to be identical, where you can Pair them, with heart rate, sensors, speed and cadence sensors vario lights for your radars, a whole bunch of stuff for safety and tracking both of them have live tracking, where you’ll be able to send a link to friends and loved ones.

So they can actually follow along. During your outdoor activity, both of them also do have instant detection for certain activities, and then both of them also do have get assistance where you’ll be able to send a link of your location to emergency contacts for widgets. Both of them have nearly the exact same set of widgets to choose from and i’ve gone ahead and added all the available widgets on both of them. Just so, you can see them all so here’s where you can see the daily activity tracking that each one can do, including the 24 7 heart rate, tracking body battery, stress, tracking calories, burned, intensity, minutes, women’s, health tracking, but the difference with the venue. Since it has an altimeter is that it can also track the floors – climbed, oh and then both of them do also have sleep tracking, which can utilize the spo2 sensor for measuring blood oxygen saturation levels. Zed 10fx drivers for mac. The workout profiles are similar between these two, but there are a few differences that i want to point out. So i’ll, first just go ahead and scroll through this list, but i’ll have a link in the description below where you can check out the entire list. The first difference is that the original venue has a floor climb profile where the sq has a stair stepper profile the floor climb profile. This will attract your actual floors, climbed if you’re in a stairwell just because you’re actually changing altitude, but with the sq with the stair stepper profile.

It won’t be able to collect that information since, while you’re on a stair mill or stepper you’re, actually in the same place, the entire time and you’re actually not changing altitude. The other big difference is going to be with the ski and snowboard profiles with the original venue. It uses the altimeter to determine when you’re going down the slope and then, when you’re ascending on the chair, lift and it automatically is able to track your runs without you having to do anything it’s actually pretty darn neat, and i have a video where i demonstrated. How this worked on the phoenix 5 plus and i’ll have that linked down in the description below and with the venue sq, although it does have those profiles, you’ll actually have to manually trigger your runs using the lab key, but it still is able to track all Your gps data, including speed and distance, and then another big difference, is that with the venue you’ll be able to get the animated workouts and with the sq you don’t have the animations, but both of them are still able to download workouts to the device and then Finally, let’s also go over the data pages and feels so with both of them. You can have a maximum of three data pages, but an advantage with the venue is that it can display up to four data fields per page, where the sq can only display up to three. But the other big difference that i was referring to earlier.

With the data fields is that with the original venue, since it does have the altimeter you’ll, be able to add elevation related data fields. So you can see that data in real time and again, even though the sq doesn’t track elevation data with an altimeter you’ll still be able to see this elevation data after you save your outdoor activity based off gps. So, as you can tell, these watches share a lot in common, but it comes down to three main things round versus square amoled versus lcd, as well as the altimeter. However, that altimeter it does actually translate into some more smaller differences. That may not be so apparent on the surface anyhow, if this video helped you out at all, if you liked the video make sure to hit that like button down below and also subscribe, the channel for plenty more sports tech videos that are coming soon.