Garmin Venu 4 Review: A stylish but costly upgrade

Price When Reviewed

$549.99

Best Prices Today: Garmin Venu 4

On the lookout for a smartwatch that puts style and fitness tracking front and centre? Sounds like you might need the Garmin Venu 4.

The first Garmin watch I ever owned was the original Garmin Venu which came out all the way back in pre-pandemic times, and I loved my time with it. Even though I recall encountering a few moments of slowdown and the odd glitch when it came to offline music playback, it was still a great watch to use and set a great precedent as being one of the very first Garmin smartwatches to feature an AMOLED display.

That trend has only continued as Garmin as slowly moved away from its old school memory-in-pixel style panels and embraced AMOLED almost across the board, but that does mean that the Venu series’ original key feature no longer stands out quite as much, so I was eager to see how the Venu 4 might reel people in under this new landscape.

After spending a few weeks with the watch, I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised but there was a big hiccup that I did not anticipate.

Design & Build

• 41mm and 45mm options available
• More durable stainless steel chassis
• One of the most stylish smartwatches around

One of the key aspects that always separates the Venu series from the slightly more affordable Vivoactive range is that the former would generally have a bit more going for it as a fashionable accessory. Much like the way that Huawei has reinvented its Watch GT series in recent years, Venu watches are designed to be worn out to dinner and not just at the gym.

The Venu 3 did a good job of keeping up that tradition but one thing that irritated me was that the most eye-catching options were limited to the smaller 41mm model, which had a total of six colourways, while the larger 45mm version only had three. Thankfully, Garmin has seen fit to fix the imbalance this time around by having four unique options available for each model, and the 45mm ‘Silver with Silver Grey Silicone Band’ pick that I’ve been wearing over the course of this review is easily one of the nicest looking watches I’ve tested all year.

The watch band has a wonderfully understated aesthetic, and when combined with the rather alluring silver border around the display, it reminds me of the Withings Scanwatch 2 which, at a distance, can be completely mistaken for an analogue wearable. I’ll admit, it probably felt a little too fancy for the gym, but I have very much enjoyed wearing it throughout the majority of any given day.

Even with the attention paid to its style however, Garmin has made sure not to forget about the Venu 4’s durability as the bezel and case are now comprised of stainless steel (the latter was plastic on the Venu 3). In the time that I’ve been using the watch, it hasn’t picked up any noticeable scratches, nor have I seen any general wear and tear after several pool swims and other workouts.

Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that the Venu 4 now has one less physical button than the Venu 3, doing away with the central right-facing shortcut button. Given that the input was only around for a generation, and you can set shortcuts to a long-press of either of the two remaining buttons, I can’t say that I miss it all that much.

One aspect I am torn on however is the thickness of the Venu 4. At 12mm thick, the watch isn’t exactly chunky, but compared to the 7.9mm Garmin Venu X1 or even the 9.7mm Apple Watch Series 11, it does feel like an uptick on where the market has shifted to. Still, it’s a reasonable trade-off for the battery gains that you get from the added real estate, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss just how sleek the Venu X1 is by comparison.

Screen & Audio

• Brighter AMOLED display is very easy to read
• Colours pop on watch faces and menus
• Built-in speaker gets the job done for podcasts

Just like how the build quality has been given a subtle upgrade to make it more durable, it’s a similar situation with the display this time around. Instead of increasing the size, which did happen in the jump from the Venu 2 to the Venu 3, Garmin has opted for an uplift in the realm of screen brightness, and it’s beautiful.

Although Garmin has been coy about what the exact specifications are (and there’s some conflicting data out there), I will say that I have had no trouble with reading the Venu 4’s display at all hours of the day. Whether that be a quick glance at the slightly dimmer, always-on display whilst working at my desk, or actually interacting with the watch outdoors and against direct sunlight, I’ve never needed to squint to read what’s there.

Working in tandem with the AMOLED panel is Garmin’s intuitive use of colour. Not too dissimilar to how Apple approaches its watchOS UI, Garmin keeps much of the screen in the dark, whether that be in navigating its menus or looking at your chosen watch face, but as a result, the sections that do have colour are really able to pop in an engaging way.

If you forget to bring your earbuds with you, or you need to take a quick call on your watch whilst your phone is buried at the bottom of your gym bag, the Venu 4’s built-in speaker can do the job in a pinch. It certainly does a good job at elevating vocals, which works rather well during podcast playback, but I don’t think I’ll be using it to listen to music anytime soon.

Playing Charlotte by Kittie (a staple in my running playlists), so much of the guitars just gets lost in the soundscape, so you’re far better off bringing a pair of ANC earbuds if you’re at the gym, or some bone conduction headphones for when you’re running out and about.

Software & Features

• Just the right amount of smart features
• Morning and evening reports are brilliant
• The watch froze a few times during testing

Having bounced around now between the latest smartwatches from Apple, Samsung and Huawei in recent months, I’ve come to appreciate the approach to smart features that Garmin has settled on, particularly after the UI update that was first introduced on the Garmin Fenix 8.

While it’s true that you’re not going to get access to third-party apps like Outlook or Calm, what you do get are the features that make sense. You have offline music playback via Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music, as well as the ability to pick up some shopping or a post-run drink thanks to Garmin Pay.

This sits on top of more basic features like seeing your calendar on your wrist, and incoming phone notifications, and while it’s definitely scaled back, it works for what Garmin watches are all about – keeping your focus on your fitness.

You do have the option to use voice commands, either within Garmin’s software or by activating Siri/Google Gemini, depending on the phone you have, but it is a bit clunky, and aside from using it to set timers, I didn’t really gel with the feature. What I absolutely adore are the Evening and Morning Reports that appear on the watch.

These helpful summaries let you know right away whether or not you’re fully rested, see upcoming items on your schedule and even get a glance at the weather. These check-ins have been so helpful, particularly as I’ve been struggling to balance work and sleep recently, and it’s helped me to get back on track. Even though it would be a tad derivative, I would love it if Apple and Samsung could create their own interpretation of this feature.

Outside of software, the big addition this year is the physical torch, which is built into the body of the Venu 4 itself. The X1 was the first Venu watch to be given this feature, but as it’s typically been reserved for more expensive devices, I’m genuinely surprised to see it here. Still, it’s a great feature that makes everything from taking the bins out at night to seeing the track during a morning run a bit easier.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, however. In no less than four strength training workouts, when I’ve had heart rate tracking activated alongside offline music playback, the Venu 4 has frozen on me at about the 20/30-minute mark, on average.

Unfortunately, it seems as though I’m not the only person to encounter similar issues, but I will say that the watch never froze up during other types of workouts, and my workout data was thankfully saved every time I booted it back up again. Whatever it is that’s happening, I only hope that Garmin can fix it soon enough.

Fitness & Health Tracking

• A wider array of sports to track
• Dual-band GPS capabilities
• Solid heart rate tracking

If you’ve already had a look on Garmin’s website, then you may have noticed that the Venu 4 has a not insubstantial price increase on the Venu 3. In the UK, it’s £70 more expensive than the previous generation, and a whopping $100 more in the US.

The addition of the LED torch, not to mention the brighter display and more durable build, does accommodate for part of that uptick, but the rest of it can be attributed to the expansion of the Venu 4’s capabilities as a fitness tracker.

This time around, you can now track over 80 different types of workouts (it was just over 30 on the Venu 3). I tend to keep my routine to strength training at the gym and running at my local park, but if your preferred way of exercising includes ice hockey, pickleball or even a bit of motocross, then you have the ability to track it on this watch.

While this might not be a preferred upgrade for some, I do think that it does a decent job of elevating the Venu range above the Vivoactive watches and some of the more affordable Garmin Forerunner wearables, as the Venu 4 is now a good go-between amongst the entire Garmin range, and the only one that really takes fashion seriously.

You now get dual-band GPS too, which provides more stable route tracking, which is always helpful for diving into the metrics of your running/cycling performance and knowing where you can improve. Taking the watch on my usual route, it did an amazing job of registering the path that I was on without ever losing signal, and it only took an average of seven seconds to establish a connection.

Much like with the competing Whoop strap, you can now keep track of your daily habits via Lifestyle Logging. This is great for keeping tabs on crucial aspects of your diet like the amount of coffee or tea you might drink on any given day, or the amount of alcohol you’ve consumed over the course of a week, but the feature needs to take some of the simplicity out of Whoop’s playbook before it can reach its full potential.

At present, it’s hidden behind several menus in the Garmin Connect app, and you aren’t given as many preset behaviours compared to Whoop, but you can manually type them in if needed.

One thing that I still love is Garmin’s Body Battery, and I’ve only come to appreciate it even more while using the Venu 4. Over the course of this review, I’ve had quite a heavy workload and a lot of personal planning going on with a baby on the way, and on one particularly busy day, I decided to take a bit of time for myself and play on my Switch 2 for half an hour.

That brief moment of pause actually increased my body battery and reminded me of how important rest can be to your body’s capacity to function. No other brand has given me quite that level of insight.

On the heart rate front, the Venu 4 did an outstanding job of collecting data when compared with a chest-worn Garmin HRM 600. When both devices were used during a treadmill run and an elliptical workout, there was only ever a discrepancy of 1BPM in the average and peak results collected, which is as low as it can be.

Battery Life & Charging

• Up to 12-days of battery life
• Roughly six days of use with the always-on display
• A full charge takes just over an hour and a half

If there was one area that I would have liked to see improved on the Garmin Venu X1, it was the battery life, but thankfully – mostly due to its thicker chassis – this isn’t a problem with the Venu 4.

When making sure that the always-on display isn’t toggled, Garmin claims that you can get up to 12-days of use (10-days on the 41mm model) with the Venu 4 which, it should be pointed out, is just slightly less than the 14-day stint provided by the 45mm Venu 3. As someone who loves to have the always-on display running, however, I went in the other direction to see how the watch would fare under a bit of pressure.

With the mode toggled, installing a few updates, downloading Spotify playlists and tracking a handful of workouts, I was able to get the Venu 4 to last for six days on a single charge.

With that context, I can definitely envision hitting that 12-day claim under certain use cases, and in either sense, it’s still vastly superior to the 1-2 battery life currently provided by Apple and Samsung’s latest mainline watches.

Charging isn’t too long an affair, as I was able to claw back 19% after just 15 minutes (enough for a day) and a massive 60% after 40 minutes. A full 100% charge required just over one hour and 32 minutes, but as you don’t need to charge the watch that often, it’s hardly a major issue.

Just like with the company’s previous watches, the Venu 4 uses Garmin’s established proprietary charger.

Price & Availability

There are two size options for the Garmin Venu 4 (41mm and 45mm) but there is no difference in the starting price for either at £469.99/$549.99. If you opt for a version of the Garmin Venu 4 that comes with a leather watch strap then that price jumps to £519.99/$599.99.

The watch is now available in all major territories via Garmin’s website and through Amazon. There are a total of eight colourways, four for each size. The 41mm model has Silver with Periwinkle Silicone Band, Lunar Gold with Bone Silicone Band, Slate with Black Silicone Band and Lunar Gold with Bone Silicone Band and Light Sand Leather Band.

The 45mm model features a similar set of options including Slate with Black Silicone Band, Silver with Silver Grey Silicone Band, Silver with Citron Silicone Band and Slate with Black Silicone Band and Brown Leather Band.

Regardless of which one you go for, the Venu 4 is now more expensive (especially in the US) than the Garmin Venu 3 which had a starting price of £449.99/$449.99. At this rate, all of the major current-gen smartwatches including the Apple Watch Series 11, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 and the Pixel Watch 4 are cheaper.

In this context, the Garmin Venu 4 is best seen as a go-between for anyone who wants a longer battery and more fitness tracking features but without spending the premium-level cash required for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 or the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra.

Should you buy the Garmin Venu 4?

With a revitalised adherence to eye-catching style, and a greater array of fitness tracking features, the Garmin Venu 4 has given the company’s mid-range wearable a distinct identity once more, the problem is that it comes with a hefty price increase as a result.

If you’re working with a sizeable budget, then the higher price tag won’t be an issue, and at that point I can easily recommend buying the Venu 4 over competing watches like the Apple Watch Series 11 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 if you value having better fitness tracking and a longer battery life to go with it. For those who can’t afford it, Garmin is still selling the Venu 3 which remains a great option in its own right.

The glitches that I encountered during my time with the Venu 4 do have me worried, but they don’t appear to be the average experience for most users. I only hope that Garmin can devise a fix for the few who are seeing them.

Check out our round-up of the best smartwatches to see what the Garmin Venu 4 is up against.

Specs

• 41mm and 45mm models
• 46/56g
• 1.2/1.4-inch display
• AMOLED
• Stainless steel chassis
• Up to 10/12-day battery life
• Dual-band GPS
• 5ATM water resistance
• 8GB internal storage
• Works with iPhone and Android