So the venue sq2 is part of garmins smartwatch focus, lineup of watches, where the venue series sports, bright and vibrant displays. They can try plenty of your health metrics and they also have plenty of different sports and fitness features. But maybe, more importantly, is that the venue series line of watches also get pretty great battery life, so in todays video ill be going over everything that you need to know about the new venue sq2, including what it can do as a smart watch, the health and Activity tracking features, as well as how accurate it is in tracking fitness and sports like running cycling as well as weight training, and if the information this video does help out at all, dont. Be shy about hitting that, like button down below its a small little thing that you can do that will help this video and the channel quite a bit, and i appreciate it so with the venue sq2 theyve kept the same design as the original, but arguably the Biggest change is that theyve updated the display where this new display is about 17 percent larger than the original, but not only that its now, an amoled display versus the lcd display found before the lcd display on the original venue was good, but the amoled display takes It up a notch and its the same type of display, thats found on their higher end venue, 2 and venue 2, plus, where its super bright, incredibly vibrant and its pretty great to look at and thats whether youre inside or youre outside, and the venue.
Sq2 also does have an optional, always on display mode, where it dims the display just slightly when its not active and youll get around the device using a combination of two physical buttons, along with a touchscreen and the touchscreen responsiveness, is pretty good, where its predictable. In most situations, when your hands are wet, the display can act a little bit funky from time to time but thats, something that can be expected for most touchscreens now amoled displays are awesome to look at, but one disadvantage to these types of displays is that they Tend to consume a lot of battery life, but garmins been able to work some magic with their venue series line of watches where they all get pretty decent battery life. So the venue sq2 this can get up to 11 days of battery life, using it as a smart watch, which is up from the six days on the original venue. Sq now battery life can vary quite a bit, though, depending on how many outdoor activities that you track as well as whether or not you enable the always on display mode. But for my testing over the last few weeks i was basically roughly getting about eight days out of it, and that was without using the always on display mode and tracking about a one hour, long outdoor activity per day. If i were to enable the always on display mode, i was getting more like two to three days out of it, so the always on display its awesome to look at, but it does consume quite a bit more battery life.
So just keep that in mind and then on the smartwatch side of things, youll be able to receive notifications, like texts, emails, social, app notifications and all that good stuff. With text. If youre on an iphone youll be able to receive the text, but you wont be able to reply, unfortunately, but that has to do with apple, not allowing text replies on anything other than an apple watch. However, if youre on an android phone, you will be able to reply with quick responses that you can also edit in the garmin connect smartphone app theyve, also improved the vibration alert where the venue sq2 now has stronger vibrations, but, along with that, theyve also made the Vibrations: quieter and then beyond that, you can also view weather information and then see upcoming events in your calendar now theres, actually, two different versions of the venue: sq2 theres, going to be a music version and then a non music version. The music version runs 2.99 and then the non music version runs to 49. and with the music version of the venue, sq2 youll be able to download and store up to 500 tracks from popular music services like spotify, amazon, music, as well as deezer for offline listening. Without you needing to have your phone with you, but even if you have the non music version of the venue sq2, you still cant control the music thats playing on your phone when its paired and then with both the music and non music versions of the venue.
Sq2 they also come with garmin pay for contactless payments and then on the health and activity tracking side of things. The venue sq2 can track your steps. It can track your calories as well as something called intensity minutes, and you can think of intensity minutes as the time spent doing vigorous activity. It can also track your heart rate 24 hours a day. It also has an spo2 sensor for tracking your blood oxygen saturation levels. It can track your stress levels, respiration rate. You can also track your hydration levels throughout the day and also has a feature called body battery and you can think of battery battery as basically your energy levels throughout the day and how well you recharge during sleep and the venue. Sq2 also does have garmin sleep tracking. That gives you a sleep score along with the time that you spent in bed, along with a breakout of your sleep stages like rem, deep sleep, light sleep as well as time awake. The venue sq 2 also comes with garmins new health snapshot feature. So what this feature does is it collects a lot of different health data points all at one time, so it collects your heart rate, heart rate, variability blood, oxygen, saturation level, respiration rate and stress. So its basically an easier way of getting a more well rounded picture of your health, rather than each of those metrics separately, and then on the safety and tracking side of things.
The venue sq2 also comes with an assistance feature where youll be able to send a message to an emergency contact with your location. So this could be especially useful in a situation where your fuel youre, uncomfortable or possibly in danger, where you can kind of subtly. Let one of your emergency contacts know of your location, and it also has a feature called instant detection for a few select outdoor activity profiles. And what this does is that it tries to detect, if youre, in something like an accident where youre moving along and then suddenly come to a stop and its not just like stopping at a stop light or something its more. When it detects like a sudden impact – and you stop moving so at that point – itll try to send an alert to your emergency contact with your location that an instant may have occurred and the venue sq2 also has a feature called live track. And what you can do here is send out a link to your contacts when you go to start an activity and what they can do is follow along your outdoor activity, and this can be both a fun thing where lets say, youre doing a race or something Like that, you could send a live track, link to some contacts. You can follow along your progress, but it also can be beneficial from a safety standpoint. If you want to let somebody know where you are during an outdoor activity.
Now one very important thing to note about these safety and tracking features, though, is that you will have to have your phone with you and in range for these features to work, because its going to use your phone cell connection to send out those alerts with your Location and then on the fitness and sports side of things. The venue sq2 can track tons of different types of activities from running both outside and inside outdoor and indoor cycling pool swimming plenty of gym profiles like strength, training, high intensity interval, training, the elliptical, stair machines, theres, also yoga and pilates profiles and theres. Even outdoor recreation profiles, like tennis, skiing, snowboarding, paddle boarding and golf, it does a lot and then, when it comes to how well the venue sq2 does in regards to tracking sports and activities, ive got some examples for you for running cycling as well as weight training. So for running, it did a great job here in this run, where the total distance was very close to the other devices. I was using as references and then on this road ride, again very good where the total distance and the rest of the data lined up. Well, now, total distances are one thing and the venue sq2 was always right in line with the other devices i was using as a references, but what was really impressive for me was the finer detail of the gps tracks. Now this part gets a little bit geeky, but i really wanted to point it out so heres that run that we just saw in long beach, and you can see that its basically right in line with the other devices and these devices have even more powerful gps.
But you can see that the venue sq2 did great. I want to point out this section right here as im winding my way through the downtown area. So what happens around really tall buildings like these is that you may not have a clear satellite signal and satellite signals can kind of bounce off these objects, creating some, not so great gps tracks, but can also throw off your final distance. But the venue sq 2 held its own and performed really well. There were a couple minor hiccups here and there, where it veered off the actual path slightly, but nothing drastic or anything like that. That would drastically throw off the final distance. So now lets talk about heart rate accuracy, so the venue sq2 comes with garmins latest and greatest elevate, heart rate sensor, which is an update to the original venue. Sq – and i found the sensor be quite accurate, with all the testing that ive done with other garment devices that use this sensor, like some of garmins higher end watches so starting off with some indoor cycling, which i find to be kind of a baseline when it Comes to hardware accuracy, the venue sq2 did great here even with some rapid change in the heart rate, compared to some external heart rate monitors. There were just a few spots where the heart rate varied by maybe just three to four beats per minute, but overall this is a very good result and then for running again, quite good results.
If i were to nitpick on this ramp up and heart rate right here, it took a few seconds to track the quick rise. But this is pretty typical for an optical heart rate sensor and you could see that with the other one thats in purple and then right here it had a little blip in a couple places where it wandered ever so slightly to the end. But overall this was great and then with road biking outside this starts to introduce a few more challenges for wrist based optical heart rate sensors, like vibrations from the handlebars, as well as bumps the road which can make the watch bounce around which these types of sensors Dont tend to like so much but again we see a solid result from the venue sq2 theres, a few spots where it took a couple moments to catch up to the ryzen heart rate and a couple wiggly spots at the tail end of the ride. But, overall, this is pretty much exactly what i want to see. However, there are some activities that are simply very challenging for wrist space optical heart rate, sensors to track accurately and the first one is going to be weight. Training, where youre going to be gripping onto the dumbbells and theres, also a lot of bearing arm movement and then the other mountain biking, where youre gripping onto the handlebars as well and theres. Also going to be a lot of rough terrain and heres.
Where you can see theres a bit more variance versus the other activities that we saw before, where it tracked, this first set high. But then it did get back in line for the rest of those sets. Then, on these bicep curls again tracked a little bit high. But then for the remainder of the workout, it did a good job, including the high intensity intervals at the end and then for mountain biking. We can see that on the first half of the ride, things were solid out of the venue sq2, but on the second half is where we see it wander a bit here and there. But what i want to show you is that these are on these sections, where i was going downhill over some rough terrain and basically the rougher to terrain the more the watch can bounce around which can throw off the sensor now, although it did veer off from Time to time, whats important is that it can recover from those errors and lock back onto heart rate, which it did for comparison here in blue im, showing another watch that i was wearing on my other wrist and it had the same sort of trend where the First, half of the ride was good, but the second half it experienced the same thing but wasnt as good at recovering. Overall, though, the heart rate accuracy of the venue sq2, is very reliable for stuff like running as well as road biking, and it did an okay job at stuff like weight training as well as mountain biking.
But you will see more variants with those types of activities. But the same thing can be said for basically any type of watch out there. The good news is, though, is that the venue sq2 can pair with external heart rate, monitors to get more reliable data for those types of activities and, in addition to being able to connect to external heart rate straps, you can also connect to other accessories like speed And cadence sensors recycling and a bunch more and by the way, if youre, looking for a recommendation for a good budget friendly external heart rate, strap, i did a video on a bunch of different options that ill have linked down the description below now. The menu sq2 doesnt have an altimeter like the higher end venue 2, and this is really only going to come into play with a few different things. So it wont be able to track your floors climb during the day. It doesnt have a floor, climb activity profile and you wont be able to see your total elevation gain during an activity but thats about it. So the venue sq 2 basically takes everything great from the original venue sq and adds a larger crispier and brighter amoled display an updated heart rate sensor, as well as a new gps chipset, which i found to be pretty impressive. And if youre curious about how the venue sq2 compares to the higher end venue, 2 and venue, 2 plus dont worry, i got you covered and that video is in the work so make sure to subscribe, to get a notification when that video comes out.
If you have any questions about the venue, sq2 that i didnt cover in this video make sure to leave those in the comment section down below and on your way down there.UGQ3_SNcX64
