Garmin is one of the best-known brand for high-end smartwatches that pack a punch when it comes to advance health and fitness tracking features which goes way beyond those standard ones that we normally see among budget or mid-range smartwatches.
The fairly recent Garmin Venu 2S is an expansion of the company’s robust portfolio of premium health-centric smartwatches that aims to keep you in the best of health through it’s extensive list of all-day monitoring features, as well as wide selection of workout and sport modes.
Thanks to Garmin Singapore, we’re given an opportunity to test out the new Venu 2S for slightly more than two weeks. Without further ado, let’s check out five of our favorite features in the new Garmin Venu 2S!
1) Sporty & Trendy Design
Sporting a 40mm graphite watch case topped with a slate-colored stainless steel bezel, the Garmin Venu 2S is no doubt a sporty and trendy-looking smartwatch which bears some resemblance to the first generation’s Garmin Venu.
The review unit that we received also comes along with a matching graphite-colored silicon strap for a more understated outlook that goes well with pretty much any sport attire or smart casual.
It’s watch case made of fiber-reinforced polymer felt sturdy enough to take a couple of knocks (just in case that happen) despite being a lightweight material which allows the watch to weigh just 38.2 grams.
To further improves the durability of the watch, it also carries a 5 ATM rating for water resistance which basically means that it’s capable of withstanding light drizzle, and could even be brought along for certain water activities like pool swim.
As mentioned earlier, the Garmin Venu 2S sports a high-quality 18mm silicon strap which is comfortable to wear throughout the day, and doesn’t appear to cause any discomfort during my workout or even when I worn it to sleep.
The strap itself can also be easily removed (via it’s quick release mechanism) and swapped with any official or third-party straps whenever you fancy for a change.
2) Sharp & Vibrant Display
The Garmin Venu 2S features a 1.1” AMOLED display that offers enough sharpness and vibrancy for a pleasurable viewing experience. Similarly, the screen also has sufficient peak brightness to ensure it remains visible even under harsh sunlight whenever you’re out for a run in the afternoon.
Just like any other smartwatches with an AMOLED display, the Garmin Venu 2S comes with an Always-On Display (AOD) feature with multiple watch faces for you to pick from.
What’s interesting is that you actually have an option to set your own ”sleep window” which will automatically disables the AOD and gesture (raise-to-wake) features once the clock hits the specified time. This is a really nice setting that saves you the hassle of turning off the AOD feature every night.
Last but not the least, it’s also worth pointing out that the display is also reinforced with an additional layer of Gorilla Glass 3 atop to protect the screen against accidental drops or scratches.
3) An Extensive Suite Of Health Trackers
Moving on to it’s health tracking department, that’s where the Garmin Venu 2S shines most. Here, we aren’t talking about all those typical health trackers like around-the-clock health rate monitoring and sleep tracking, but rather exclusive features such as the Health Snapshot, Body Battery Energy Monitoring and etc.
These features in my opinion, are things which allows the Garmin Venu 2S to stand out of the crowd. Let’s take the Health Snapshot as an example. It is an intuitive feature that allows the Venu 2S to measure five key metrics including heart rate, heart rate variability, SpO2 reading, stress level as well as respiration all at once, hence painting a better picture of your overall health.
Similarly, the Body Battery Energy Monitoring is also another noteworthy feature that gives you an estimation of the amount of energy reserves you have throughout the day by analyzing several health metrics like heart rate variability, stress, and activity.
This results in a value between 1 – 100 which indicates your energy level at that point of time. Using this information, you can better decide whether to do a workout or to take a rest instead.
Though I’m honestly quite skeptical about the accuracy of this feature at the beginning, but it kind of align well with how ”energetic” I’m personally feeling at that point of time.
Also, it did showed up with a lower energy level whenever I stay up late into the night or after a long day of work. Therefore, I can’t deny that it’s pretty accurate in this aspect, and it’s definitely a useful feature for you to plan or manage your day’s activities if you’re intending to keep a good balance of activity and recovery.
Features aside, the readings taken for the respective health metrics like heart rate and SpO2 are also pretty much inline with those taken by the other high-end smartwatches like Huawei Watch GT2 Pro (Review).
4) Your Personal Trainer On The Go
The Garmin Venu 2S scores well in the health tracking aspect, but did even better when it comes to the fitness side of things.
For activity tracking, the watch is pre-loaded with 25 different GPS and indoor sports apps which cover all the mainstream ones including walking, running, cycling, swimming, cardio and etc.
All crucial data like the duration of workout, amount of calories burnt, total distance travelled, as well as your workout route are all logged and synced over to the Garmin Connect app where they are properly organized for easier viewing.
Moving on, the Garmin Venu 2S is also pre-loaded with a handful of animated on-screen workout that guide you through each of the individual steps for the workout through written instructions as well as animation. If you find the pre-loaded animated workouts limited, more can be easily downloaded via the Garmin Connect app as well.
What’s actually new on the Garmin Venu 2S however, is a feature called muscles map that shows you the respective muscle groups which will be trained whenever you do a strength workout. This is a pretty neat feature that may come in handy whenever you’re planning your workout especially for an amateur gym-goer like me.
5) Superior Battery Life
The Garmin Venu 2S offers one of the best battery life among all the smartwatches we’d tested thus far. It can easily gives you more than a day’s of usage if you used GPS intensively for your activity trackings.
Otherwise, you can expect to squeeze out up to 10 days of usage under the smartwatch mode which is really impressive. Also, it’s worth noting that a mere 10 minutes charge is also good enough to support a day’s usage under the smartwatch mode.
Verdict
The Garmin Venu 2S is one of the most exciting fitness-centric smartwatch in the market with plenty to love about, from it’s sporty design on the outside to it’s feature packed internals. It’s a must-have smartwatch for all workout and sport enthusiasts out there.
For those who’re interested, the Garmin Venu 2S is priced at just S$599 in Singapore, and will be available for purchase through Garmin Official Store in both Shopee and Lazada.
