Garmin Venu Sq 2 review: One of the best health and…

Garmin Venu Sq 2 review: One of the best health and fitness smartwatches you can buy for less than €300

Garmin’s Irish distributor recently told me that the firm’s Venu range is its biggest seller in Ireland, ahead of its flagship multisport watches Fenix 7 and Epix Second Gen.

The latest model in the line is Garmin Venu Sq 2, one of the company’s most affordable fully featured GPS watches.

Design and build

Venu Sq 2 comes with a bright and colourful 1.41in OLED screen which has Gorilla Glass 3 protection.

The display curves around the sides a little and is surrounded by an aluminium band.

The rest of the watch case is made from plastic, and it uses interchangeable 20mm straps. There is a silicon strap included in the box.

The touchscreen display is how you navigate and control most menus and functions but there are two physical buttons on the right; one for confirmation and one for going back.

Venu Sq 2 key features

The Sq in the name stands for square, and it is this feature which sets it apart visually from the slightly more expensive, round-shaped, Venu 2.

Another distinction is that Venu Sq 2 has no altimeter on board, so it can’t count the number of stairs you climb each day, and there are no audible alerts.

But the wearable is still among the best you can get at this price point for exercise tracking. Its GPS and heart-rate accuracy are superb, as is Garmin’s software.

There are 32 health and fitness tracking modes built in and they are all executed well and often include more features than fitness modes on competitors' devices.

You get Garmin’s Golf mode too, which lets you download maps of courses around the world.

Sleep tracking is of the same standard as more expensive Garmin devices. It records the duration, gives you a sleep score, and breaks your night down into stages of deep, light, REM and awake.

Battery life

Battery stamina is impressive: you can get up to 11 days endurance in smartwatch mode, and up to 26 hours with all GPS features switched on.

These estimates are assuming you use the default gesture mode display, which means the screen is off unless you lift your wrist to see the watch face.

But battery endurance drops to about three days if you use the always-on display.

Other features

The GPS chipset is the same as the one inside the flagship Fenix 7.

And the watch weighs just 39g with the strap attached, so it is light and comfortable enough to wear around the clock.

The watch can receive notifications from your phone and has access to Garmin’s Connect IQ app store which has lots of additional watch faces.

The range of third-party apps is not as extensive as with an Apple Watch, but you can get apps such as Komoot.

The watch supports re-broadcasting your heart rate as both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart, which means you can use the heart rate sensor in the watch with other apps such as Peloton.

Venu Sq 2 has NFC so you can pay for goods using Garmin Pay but be mindful that less banks support this than Google Pay and Apple Pay.

I reviewed the standard model, but there is a Music edition of Venu Sq 2 which costs €30 extra and includes 3GB storage space for up to 500 songs which can be downloaded from a streaming service or transferred from your laptop.

Venu Sq 2 verdict

This is one of the best health and fitness smartwatches you can buy for less than €300. Its sports features, heart rate monitoring and GPS tracking are all superb and its battery life trounces the likes of Samsung Galaxy 5. And I love its bright and colourful display.

But if you have invested in the Apple ecosystem, then the firm’s 2022 Watch SE (€299.99) is arguably a smarter watch in terms of third-party app support if you can accept the poorer battery life as a trade-off.