Garmin Venu 2 review: sports and style
The Venu 2 straddles the line between a lifestyle accessory and dedicated sport watch Jun 9, 2021, 10:30am EDT
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Share this story
In the great pantheon of gadgets we attach to our wrists, two categories have jumped to the front: smartwatches and sports watches. Smartwatches are sleek and more for the day-to-day, but they typically suffer horrible battery life. Sports watches are tougher, longer-lasting, and, well, sportier, but they tend to be big, bulky, and ugly. The Garmin Venu 2 is an attempt to close the gap between the two product categories and while it isn’t perfect, it’s the closest anyone has come yet.
We know this because we marked off a three-mile course with a measuring wheel and then ran it with the Amazfit Bip S and three other GPS- and HR-enabled devices: the Garmin Forerunner 735XT, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active, and the Fitbit Charge 4. We used a Wahoo Tickr X heart-rate monitor connected to a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt bike computer to get an accurate HR measurement, because wrist-based monitors are sometimes less accurate. To avoid signal interference, we ran with only two devices at a time.
The Amazfit Bip S doesn’t have many extra frills, but it’s reliable and accurate.