Garmin Venu 2 GPS 43mm Smartwatch, AMOLED Touchscreen, All-day Advanced Health & Fitness Features, Music Storage, Wellness Smartwatch with up to 11 days battery life, Black

Ok I've owned a lot of smart watches: Apple Watch 44mm Nike Cellular, Huawei Watch 2, Fitbit Versa, Fitbit Versa 2, FitBit Sense, Galaxy Watch 2 42mm, Fossil Sport, Fossil Gen 5. Overall the best out of all of these was the Apple Watch for sure but it came with some drawbacks like battery life.Starting with my use case: I want a good fitness tracker, good battery life, a nice screen and notifications on my wrist. I don't care about apps on my watch as long as it vibrates when I get a message or call I'm happy.The Garmin Venu 2 is perfect. I've owned it for over a week and I've only just had to charge it. Honestly I don't know how it's able to do everything it does and have that amount of battery life. 10 days with normal use is insane!!It's been great at counting steps and mapping my walks so far (need to increase the exercise routines). I love that I can save the animated workouts to my watch as well.It's comfortable, light weight and does everything I need it to do.Biggest question: do I rate it higher than the Apple watch? Yes with a but. I don't think I ever took full advantage of the Apple watch. It was great but I just don't care about apps at all. The only thing the Apple watch had over this is a more distinct vibration on my wrist.If this was to break I would buy another one because it's so amazing. Garmin have really shocked me with this watch!!Just buy one it's brilliant.

I've previously had the Garmin 225 and then 235, and this feels like a natural evolution and step up from those.I toyed with getting the 245, but the Venu 2 won out for me with the slightly more refined design. It looks classy on the wrist and bridges the gap between smart-watch and activity tracker really well in my opinion.Battery life on Garmins is always excellent, and this is no exception. Running or biking 3/4 times a week, I'm only ha ing to charge once a week, and feel like this could last forever.Very good UI - the range of activities is impressive, and feel I could benefit even more from getting cadence sensors for my spin bike (the watch encourages you to do this which is a nice touch).I've only used the on board music feature a couple of times, but think I'll start to do this more so I can ditch the phone.Only slight downside is a struggle getting Garmin pay working with my starling card - it's not the end of the world and I'm unlikely to ever need it, but it is worth knowing that the software for that element is slightly glitchy.Still, an excellent smart-watch/activity tracker hybrid, and fully deserving of its 5 stars here.

I've had this watch for around 4 weeks now and it is my first Garmin watch. Previously I have owned a Fitbit and Wear OS watch and if I'm honest I'm gutted it took me this long to discover Garmin watches - it is far superior in every way to those watches.Battery lifeI get 7 days from my watch between charges. This includes a couple of runs so the use of GPS on the watch. Charging is fast and goes from low % to 100% in less than an hour.Activity trackingStep tracking seems good and accurate and I've used the GPS on lots of runs now. So far very reliable and matches the GPS tracking on my phone so accurate too.Data and Garmin connect appProbably the best thing about this watch is the level of data and insight it gives in to your activity. It really is excellent and the level of info in the Garmin connect app is far superior even to activity tracking apps such as Strava.ScreenGreat quality and nice, clear, sharp display.My only negatives, and they are only minor:The app store feels a little clunky. You can't filter on Garmin apps for example so have to trawl through all the 3rd party apps to find them. I also wish they'd provide a screen protector with the watch - for £300 I think this should be a minimum particularly given the screen is curved and will be quite easy to scratch if you are not careful.Overall a great watch and definitely recommend.