Ranked second in H1 2020 among the world’s largest smartwatch vendors by revenue, Garmin failed to make last year’s overall top five for both smartwatch and wearable device shipments.
Sleek and robust designs and an impressive health monitoring arsenal
Just like the OG Venu, these second-gen smartwatches are focused on bringing the best of the fashion and fitness worlds together, blending an elegant circular design with one of the wearable industry’s undoubtedly greatest sets of activity tracking tools.
Naturally, the Garmin Venu 2S is the way to go for folks with smaller wrists, who might prefer a slightly thinner, lighter, and overall more compact device, but at 12.2mm in depth and a weight of 49 grams, the standard Venu 2 is not particularly bulky either.
Can the stellar battery life make up for the key missing features?
Although Garmin claims the Venu 2 Series comes with the “broadest range of 24/7 health monitoring” tools around, that’s… not exactly true. Or rather it might be technically true, but when it comes to potentially life-saving features so many customers seem to care about these days, there are at least two big ones missing.
The otherwise feature-packed Garmin Venu 2 lineup also offers no optional cellular support while obviously rocking a built-in GPS chip and allowing you to download and play music directly on your wrist via services like Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music.
The sharp and bright AMOLED display equipped with optional always-on capabilities is without a doubt one of the Venu 2’s standout features, but the battery life actually looks like one of the few things that could convince some people to choose one of these two round-faced bad boys over the competition.
If you thought the original Venu was impressive from that standpoint, keeping the lights on for up to five days on a single charge, the Venu 2 and 2S absolutely smoke their predecessor, standing tall at endurance ratings of up to 11 (!!!) and 10 days respectively in “smartwatch mode.”
