I think this is actually going to be my new everyday wear, which is a bold statement considering ive recently been switching between the apple watch 7 and the galaxy watch 4, classic two really fantastic watches, but you might be asking yourself right now mike hold on this. This looks a lot like the garmin venue 2 and the name even sounds similar. So what would be so different about this to make you wear this instead of the galaxy or apple watches? Well, thats were going to talk about in this video honestly theres. A lot of really interesting things here that garmin really improved, but lets start off with the physical design. Just talking about what this watch looks like, so you have a better idea of what were dealing with. The first thing is that this is a 43 millimeter body which i think is a pretty nice size, its right in between the 40 millimeter of the venue 2s and the 45 millimeter of the venue 2.. Strangely, this is called the plus, even though its smaller than the largest one, but regardless its a really lightweight watch that has a surprisingly high build quality as well like. I love the stainless steel back, a durable resin exterior and the stainless steel bezel in the front. As well and like i really want to emphasize that this is, i mean especially coming from the galaxy watch 4 classic. This is a substantially lighter watch like when im running you dont even know that its on your wrist or, if you wear this when youre sleeping and you roll around, like you, dont, feel anything on your wrist which, which i think is really a nice benefit here.
Additionally, as far as aesthetics go, i would say that this is probably one of my favorite looking smart watches. Ive always been a big fan of the galaxy watch, 4 classic with the rotating bezel. Unfortunately, this doesnt have a rotating bezel, but otherwise i think they did a great job of the overall appearance of this. A nice elegant, slim watch that i mean first of all, the round design im always a big fan of that. If you love apple, watches thats thats great, but but i still think that even people who love apple watches would admit that this is a nice looking watch on top of that they really did a good job with making the bezel almost invisible, not just having the Tick marks on the outside, but also like, even if you hold it in really bright light, its very, very difficult to see where the screen ends and where the the bezel actually begins. Additionally, this is the same 1.3 inch display. We saw on the larger venue 2, but now in a smaller body, which means that we have smaller bezels, which is great. This is still a 416 by 416 pixel amoled display and, like i said, it really gets very bright. Very vibrant has a lot of detail and you and you really dont notice the black bezel around there at all. Looking on the right side of the watch, we have three buttons ill talk more about what they do in our interface tour.
But looking on the left side of the watch, we actually have a speaker here and a microphone on the other side as well, and the speaker and microphone combo is a huge improvement over the previous venue models. This is easily the biggest change that came to this one and it really unlocks a lot like the garmin venue. Watches have always kind of been like the everyday smartwatch made by garmin and they were trying to somewhat compete with the apple watches and galaxy watches. But definitely more for the sports oriented crowd right and before they only had a beeper, they didnt have a microphone, and so while they you know they had apps, they had spotify. They did like a lot of smartwatchy things without the ability to take a phone call or use a voice assistant. They just never competed on the same stage like they were better at different things, but but now that they actually have the ability to answer phone calls make phone calls emergency sos with your with your microphone on here, you can do all types of things use your Voice assistant that i think really unlocks a lot and im really happy that garmin finally made the move to add that on this watch, and so i mean well talk a little bit more about like an actual microphone test and a speaker test in just a second. But this is still really good overall, like the display. The battery life is nine days on here, its one day less than the venue two, but considering how much smaller this design is, with the same size display thats more than impressive additionally of a 20 millimeter strap, which i think is the perfect size for this, and It has five atmospheres of water resistance now, as far as a speaker and microphone test goes well, lets see how this actually works on a phone call all right.
So this is a speaker test im just calling from another phone, and so this is what it would sound like if you answered a phone call using this smart watch. You know this is a microphone test using the garmin venue, 2 plus. So if i called you – and i was using this watch, this is what i would sound like and just as a quick side note, i actually have another watch from garmin right here, thatll be talking about in the next couple days. This is a really cool hybrid. If you want to see that definitely go down and click that subscribe button and the bell icon, so you dont miss that video and then flipping over the back. We have that nice stainless steel feels very, very smooth, very comfortable to wear. We have the four charging nodes on the bottom, its really the same charger as almost every garmin watch its something that it works. Fine, but i do wish that eventually, garmin would switch to qi charging. So you could charge on the back of a phone, but but nine day battery life means that you really dont have to do that. All that often anyway, then in the middle we have the same health array, same health sensor array, as we saw on the garmin venue, 2 and 2s, so well get into accuracy tracking right now, but essentially like its going to be really accurate thats. What garmin has always excelled with as far as wearable heart rate, sensors pulse ox stress? They do a really good job with all of that, so taking a look at the accuracy of the heart rate data, you can see that right here much like any other optical heart rate sensor.
It lagged a little bit in the very beginning, but once it caught up, it really was very, very accurate for the duration of the run, and you can see the two lines here. One of them is the garmin venue, 2 plus, and the other one is a known. Accurate, polar h10 heart rate strap, and you can see this did an incredible job for most of this run now looking at gps again, this is no surprise. Garmin did a really good job. They. This one is only using gps and glonass, but you could use galileo and gps instead and for me i found that this was perfectly accurate. Here you can see, there was very little wandering. I mean i swerved around the trail. A little bit, and sometimes it caught that, but for the most part this was almost dead on for exactly the right distance. As far as features go like i said we have local storage for spotify. We have bluetooth earbud connectivity, so you can run without your phone and listen to music on here. We also have a speaker on there. So if youre somewhere and you just forgot your earbuds and you really want to listen to a podcast or some kind of music like you can do that personally, i dont – i probably wouldnt, do that all that, often because the speaker, its not exceptional, like its tiny But it works for phone calls, and things like that. This also has nfc payments.
Its going to be using garmin pay, which garmin pay is, is decent. It doesnt have the largest library of cards compatibility out there, but you have your voice assistant on here and im going to do a quick demo here, but essentially its going to use whatever native voice assistant is on your phone, which i was very relieved when i Learned that, because originally i thought oh no, like garmin, better, not be making some type of their own voice assistant right. It feels like everybody does that and it never works out. Well, samsung, im talking to you whats the weather in oslo, most populous city of norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. Should i keep going. Of course we have find my phone. We have notifications with quick replies. We have emergency sos and garmin, of course, has their safety features on here that allow you to use the microphone and speaker to contact an emergency contact uh. So if you fall or something like that, you can make that phone call using your watch as long as your phone is somewhat nearby and, of course they get an alert with your location, the information they can live track where you are so, if you end up In an ambulance – and you go to the hospital, they can see exactly where you are every step of the way. Again, a really nice feature that garmin does because they know people are going to be wearing this watch and running or trail running trail biking like you, dont know where youre going to be or just walking on the sidewalk.
I guess too, but theres plenty of situations where it would be really reassuring to have that. Additionally, like i said the ability to make phone calls on here by dialing, as you can see right here or actually, but just by receiving phone calls, you can accept them on your watch, so you might be wondering like why would you actually replace your apple watch Or galaxy watch with this one, and i want to get into some of the things like the pros and cons here – well, theres, really, four, maybe five things that i like better about this watch than the other two, which is why im switching to this as my Everyday watch, the first thing is the weight. This being so much lighter than most other watches means that, like i said when youre running you dont even notice its there, its never clunky its, never rattling around your wrist. It barely moves, especially with this strap and when youre sleeping at night, you dont feel it like on your wrist. Doesnt hurt your wrist at all like. Secondly, this one is really undeniable. The battery life on here is substantially better than i mean if youre using a galaxy watch or an apple watch, theyre, fantastic watches and i love them, but but the the requirement to have to charge your watch every other day or even every day its just. It does get a little bit annoying to have to take it off every single day.
The third thing is the accuracy of the heart rate tracking and the gps like when i go on runs or if im biking like. I can be very confident that this is basically the best accuracy i can get for an everyday, smart watch and then really the fourth one. Is the health centric focus of the app the garmin app? That really gives you a lot of deep analytics into all types of different things and granted like apple health. Does this garmin or samsung does this as well, but but i really think garmins app is laid out in a really clean and organized way with their body battery and things like that. That just make it really easy for me to quickly digest how im doing this week and what my health is. Looking like, if im coming down with the cold, i can see like when. Maybe that started when my sleep was disturbed, like you really get a nice clean interface there and, of course, kind of the fifth one. Personally, this is very subjective. I like the way this watch looks a lot, as i mentioned earlier. Of course, the previous watches did all of that as well, but now i can finally make and receive phone calls on the garmin watch and use the voice assistant, which means that i can actually you know reasonably replace my apple watch or galaxy watch with this one. Now not everything is perfect, though, and i can see myself potentially switching back in a few months if i feel restricted by the two main issues that this watch actually faces and those are one the app support.
It really is not a whole lot and two. The interface additionally ill leave a link in the description, but the price is definitely a little bit aggressive a little bit higher than some of the competition out there. All things considered, so we have to chalk that up. As another drawback now lets get into an interface tour right here, this is what garmin definitely really needs to work on, in my opinion, to compete with the galaxy watches and apple watches out there as an everyday wear for non tech enthusiast and also for non fitness Enthusiasts just for everyday people who want to wear a watch every day, its going to be harder to recommend this, because the interface is a little bit more on the clunky side. If we look at it, you can see from the watch face if you touch and hold like nothing happens. If you swipe from the left or right again, nothing happens if you swipe up or down it, takes you through this loop. That shows you all these little widgets that are like your body battery your steps, your weather, like your calendar, whatever you want on here – and this is really nice. I always did like how garmin laid this out and they recently made it like a really nice condensed layout as well. So you can see everything other than that theres nothing! You can do from just touching and interfacing with the watch like that. Instead, we get to the three buttons so on the top button, if we press it once it brings us into our workouts again something that garmin, i think, does pretty well for workouts theres, also health snapshot to see a little bit more about how youre doing double Pressing doesnt really do anything and then press and hold well open our app drawer right now or kind of our.
Our quick like im, not sure exactly what they call this. But essentially you have about 10 different items here and you can choose what theyre going to be. This is really the only way you can access different apps on here and what i have is like: spotify ive got volume ive got phone, ive got garmin pay, ive got the brightness, my location, things like that. That are that are quick and accessible. Its kind of nice that you have this feature, but i wish that there was like a full, proper app drawer where you could see everything you had on this watch then going back if we press the middle button on the right. This is a shortcut that can open up really whatever a favorite control is, and if we press and hold that it opens our voice assistant now the bottom button, if we press it once like this is just the back button, the home button and from home nothing Happens, this is where i think it could have. It could have been opening an app drawer right here and if you press and hold this, it opens up some of your settings. You can go to like watch face and things like that. But if you go down theres settings again and then you get into another layer of settings and sometimes if you want to change the setting on something it can be a couple layers deep here so like i said, definitely not the best aspect of this watch.
It definitely is passable and you can get used to it, but it doesnt feel like a 2022 interface that is ready to go as an everyday watch. Garmins really been crushing it with their health and fitness tracking honestly for years, but theyre finally getting into everyday wearables, or at least theyre really trying to here and one of the biggest setbacks for a while was the lack of a microphone and lack of a speaker And this now has both of those as well as a long battery and a really solid design as well. But there is, like, i said, one missing element being the interface so thats my take on the garmin venue, 2 plus overall. I think this is a fantastic watch and if the interface actually holds me back well ill, let you guys know on twitter or on instagram.4UR-lCGsnhA
