Garmin Venu Sq (40 mm), GPS Smartwatch with All-day Health Monitoring and Fitness Features, Built-in Sports Apps and More, Square Design Smartwatch with up to 6 days battery life, Shadow Grey

The Garmin brand has traditionally focussed on fitness and navigation, so it's not a surprise that this watch has a fitness focus. However, it also functions well as a smart watch and is rich with features once you get used to it. I have the standard version (can't download music)Fitness:This watch tracks cycling and running well enough and the built in GPS means you don't have to take your phone if you don't want to.It's also pretty good at tracking strength training, and makes a pretty good guess at what exercises you are doing from my experience of using it. A rep counter, rest timer, and heart data has actually been really helpful to me for improving my workouts. You can enter weight into the watch after every set, or do it afterwards in the app if you want to track it. However, I don't think you can get the data back out of the app so it's less useful for tracking weight and I no longer bother entering the weight data.Sleep, blood oxygen, and stress data are there if you want them, they aren't something that I use.Smart watch:This phone works great for android notifications, allowing you to view and dismiss notifications in a way that works with your phone (so your phone will also mark them viewed or dismissed). This is a marked step up from the cheaper smart watches out there that don't integrate with your phones notifications, just replicate them. You can also block apps from showing on the watch but if you're like me, you'll want to use the app to block almost everything to avoid constant buzzes on your wrist.Unlike most other Garmin watches, the square display makes this great for reading text. The display is ok brightness but I tend to keep the brightness on low (and therefore create a problem for myself in summer). There is now a v2 that has an AMOLED screen which I'm quite jealous of.The Garmin Connect app is ok, it's a bit clunky but it generally works. I had one incident where the watch stopped syncing and I had to re-pair it with my phone, but it's only happened once in about a year. It's a bit annoying that the watch faces are in a different app as I understand they used to all be available in the main Garmin Connect app, but I just found one I liked and then uninstalled the watch face app.You do need to be prepared to do a bit of tinkering in the app to get the watch to behave exactly as you want, but it's actually deeply customisable. You can set your favourite exercises to track, choose what quick settings appear, select the screen order, choose which apps notify you etc. I found myself being able to do all these things easily enough without having to google it.Form factor:I have fairly skinny wrists for a man, but this watch doesn't look oversized. The strap is actually really comfortable for me, I thought I'd want to replace it quickly but actually have continued using it. I haven't suffered any rashes like some reviewers, and I like how it's non-slip without feeling clingy. And I love that if I did want a different strap, I could buy any standard strap out there rather than have to hunt for a special Garmin one.It looks ok, it's not exactly stylised but that's fine with me. It's sleek enough to wear in a professional environment. Sometimes people do mistake it for an Apple watch. The main thing for me is that it doesn't look like a huge chunky computer on my wrist, which it doesn't.The proprietary charging cable is annoying, both for its ridiculously short length but also for the fact that if you go away without it you can't charge it. Unlike USB and lightning cables, no newsagents are going to sell these for a few quid if you find yourself in need of a charge! No doubt the port is smaller than a USB-C one but I resent having to travel with lots of different cables. I use a longer third-party cable that I also bought from Amazon and leave the Garmin one in my travel wash bag so I don't forget it.Battery:Incredible. Garmin are the kings of smart watch battery life, and the Venu SQ is no exception. It also charges relatively fast. I don't track how long it lasts but whenever I do get a low battery notification I usually can't remember when I last charged it. Using GPS tracking will of course drain it faster.Overall I'm very happy with the watch and would recommend, particularly to Android users who can't buy an Apple watch, or to anyone wanting to step up from the Chinese semi-smart watches at the lowest price points in the market.

I've had this watch nearly a year now and it's still as good as the day I bought it.Easy to navigate, charges well and does everything I need to.The app can be a bit glitchy and sometimes I have to Google how to reset the notifications when they mess up but other than that I like it.The battery - I can easily get a week out of it, if I don't use the GPS. As soon as you start tracking workouts, using the GPS or other inbuilt functions - inevitably the battery drains quicker.I've had an apple watch, a Nokia watch, a cheaper brand I can't remember and a couple of fit bits and this is far superior in terms of build quality, value for money, battery life and ... You cannot "cheat" the step counter that I found you could on the Fitbit. Your steps are your steps.The only downside for me is that I walk a lot with my pram and when I push with both hands, it doesn't track my steps.Other than that it is the best smart watch I've ever had.

I owned several watches and this is my favourite. I owned a FitBit, a Polar Ignite an Apple Watch Series 3 and now this.This Garmin is a fitness tracker with some smart watch features. It does what a fitness tracker tends to do, i.e., track steps, heart rate, distance travelled and has GPS so you don’t need to bring the phone with you. It has some extra tracking features like stress tracking and period tracking. I am going to make a quick comparison with the other watches.Sleep tracking. For me the FitBit, Apple Watch and Polar Ignite all had better sleep tracking. The Garmin Venu SQ has issues with detecting when you wake up and when you fall asleep. There was a night where I got up for a few minutes and the Garmin did not register that as being awake. It might be a fit issue as sometimes it’s more accurate than others.So Garmin Venu Sq loses on the sleep tracking.Sport Tracking.It’s almost on par with the Ignite. You can view your training load with the Ignite (on the Polar website), whereas with the Garmin you can’t. Although it shows you your weekly average of activity, albeit it isn’t quite the same thing. Garmin has a few built-in walking/running/cycling challenges, akin to those of Strava, which the Ignite does not have. I haven’t used the coaching features on the watches so I can’t comment as I find them limiting and they are good for generic strength training or running. I follow my own programs.The Garmin app lets you make a note of exercises and reps, although if an exercise is missing you can’t add it to the app.The Garmin app notifies you with insights, like how many times you have hit your step goal, and it has a function to increase it automatically if you wish to. It also gives you badges for hitting activity milestones, which is more similar to what the Apple Watch does. They both attempt to gamify exercise somewhat whereas the Polar is serious business. The FitBit has activity and step tracking, but trying to view your routes is hidden behind a subscription. For the other Watches you don’t pay any extra for this.The Apple Watch default fitness app lets you track distance, steps, heart rate like the other watches and also offers trend insights. No built-in training load like this Garmin.Garmin Venu SW sport tracking is pretty good. It depends on what you look for in your sport tracking, but if training load is essential (without having to pay for third party apps), then the Ignite just inches ahead.“Health Tracking”I put it in quotes because all these watch companies add these features and then say they are not health features. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) tracking is done differently on all these devices.I prefer the Garmin and the Polar way. Polar tracks your HRV overnight and tells you if you are recovered the next day (together with sleep data). Garmin does it throughout the day, through a system called Body Battery. It uses HRV with other information to tell you whether you are stressed (physiologically or mentally) or whether you are resting during the day. It was able to detect when I was highly stressed after an argument and even sent me an alert in that case. It makes you aware of correlations between how you feel and what you did that might have caused it.For example, I had an ice cream fairly late in the evening. I thought I slept okay because I didn’t remember waking up but I didn’t feel rested. When I looked at the Body Battery I noticed that it wasn’t until 3/4 am that my body had actually started recovering. Given that I didn’t fall asleep any later than usual I wouldn’t have made the connection with the ice cream, but we ain’t having that in the evening anymore.HRV tracking on the FitBit requires subscription.HRV Tracking on the Apple Watch is not reliable. It tries to take readings when it sees you are relaxed or sleeping, an they are very short samples. With 3rd party apps and the use of Apple’s own Breathe app you can force readings and analyse them properly, but the Apple Watch at the moment is just a bit lacklustre in this department.So for HRV Polar and Garmin are a tie and the approach you have to HRV will be the deciding factor on who wins.Cycle tracking. They all do it quite well aside from the Ignite, which doesn’t have it at all. It’s quite a big omission for women, as it absolutely influences the way I train. It’s one of the main drivers of how I feel through the month. The Garmin also lets you add some extra notes, and not just some preset symptoms. so Garmin Venu Sq wins this one.Food TrackingFitBit wins this one as it has food tracking built in.Polar Ignite does not have it at all.Both Garmin Venu Sq and Apple Watch require and integrate with third party apps. The Venu however only works with MyFitnessPal.Pulse OximetryThe Apple Watch Series 3 and the Ignite don’t have it. The FitBit Versa 3 (which is of comparable price if I recall correctly) has it and so does this Garmin. That said, pulse ox on watches are unreliable, so you might as well not use it.Battery LifeFitBit and Garmin have similar battery life. Up to 5/6 days. The Ignite has around 3 1/2 and the Apple Watch Series 3 has 18 hours. I really love not having to charge my Garmin every day.Smart Watch FeaturesThe Apple Watch here wins by a mile. Many apps, granular control over notifications, Siri.Fitbit depends on what you buy, but even the cheap FitBits let you choose which app can send notifications to your phone. I haven’t seen the FitBit app store but I hear it has a limited amount of apps.Garmin Venu Sq has the ability to choose between phone notifications, message notifications and app notifications, but you can’t choose which apps. You can also turn off notifications during activity. It has access to a store but like the FitBit it has limited apps.The Ignite is only a sport watch. No apps and notifications are an all or nothing affair.ScreenI didn’t own a comparable FitBit so I can’t comment. The Apple Watch Screen is my favourite. The Garmin’s screen is decent but smaller. I really do not like the Ignite’s screen, it’s not very responsive.CONCLUSIONSo all in all, the Garmin Venu Sq is a jack of all trade watch that does most things decently and some quite well. The only other watch that has better flexibility is the Apple Watch Series 3, which is slightly more expensive and has worse battery life. If you don’t have an iPhone the Apple Watch is out of the equation.Given it’s all around capabilities, how good Body Battery is, how the app presents the information in a way that is easy to make correlations and the longer battery life, the Garmin Venu Sq is my choice at this price range and I recommend it. Whilst the FitBit has good “health” tracking capabilities you have to pay extra for things like HRV tracking, so again the Garmin wins here.