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Should I cancel my Amazon order for the Garmin Venu or just go ahead with it?

Brief history:

Just turned forty, trying to have kids. Work at a desk most of the time, gotten as bad as I from a health point of view that I need to get up and get moving. Want to start with setting targets, 10,000 steps at minimum, want to monitor my HR and SpO2. Am a CPAP user and want to establish if I'm getting enough O2 at night.

I want to get active, be an active person, devote at least an hour a day to some physical activity.

I read a lot online, checked out a ton of YouTube videos and the Venu seemed like it meets all my requirements while giving me space to grow into different more varied activities.

Then I joined this forum, and the negativity is scaring me. Folks here have quite a different point of view with regards to the Venu.

On top of that, someone here said Garmin is not going to be improving sleep monitoring based on what a Garmin rep said here.

Should I cancel my order or go ahead with the Venu?

What are the key issues I need to be aware of so I know if it meets my requirements or not?

Please do help as for me, this might be the most expensive watch I've purchased ever and I don't want to make a bad call on it.

Thanks in advance, hope I get some clarity before my Venu arrives tomorrow!

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0 3590507 over 3 years ago

Is it 100 % confirmed we do not get new features? If yes, and sleep tracking is important to you then don't keep it.
If you just want to have a nice lifestyle sport watch to go running, have animated workouts etc. it's a good watch.

Stiftung Warentest is a German consumer organisation and foundation and just tested smartwatches and Venu made it to #3.

So it's quite interesting. Media and reviews are quite positive but users are frustrated...

0 mcurtiss over 3 years ago

I would say go for it. I've had it for a year now and its mostly been everything I wanted. Yes, the sleep tracking is not that good. but I also tend to sleep my 8 hours anyway so I'm not sure I'm missing anything.

This forum is very negative, as are most support forums anyway; so I would take the negativity with a grain of salt

0 MalusLupus over 3 years ago in reply to 3590507

Yeah everything looked great. I run a business and find that out of say 100 orders we get, 80 are regulars and they love the product, 20 are new. Out of the 20 that are new, you may get a few 5 star ratings and then a couple 1 stars from people who are often just total idiots. We sell 200 ml of product at a certain price and someone actually gave us a 1 star saying the quantity wasn't enough. Best part is we actually give around 220 ml per container to err on the right side of our scales. What I'm seeing are the loudest voices and on the Internet the loudest tend to complain the most. I get that. Which is why I thought of seeing if there were any quiet folks here with positive things to say about the Venu.

The O2 stats at night are sort of important. REM and deep sleep not so much. Would the Venu get that sort of right?

0 MalusLupus over 3 years ago in reply to mcurtiss

Responded to this in a single reply above. Thank you kind sir for your inputs.

0 maxromanovsky over 3 years ago

Get yourself a newest Apple Watch 6. It's much better day-to-day smartwatch with health features. Spo2 - forget about accurate nightly measurements. Measure it on demand with Apple Watch. Venu is inferior from UX perspective. Apple Watch has more polished UI and better representation of general health metrics.

Also, forget about major features on existing Garmin devices. All updates are more of bug fixes, while with apple watch you get couple of years of mainline updates.

0 MalusLupus over 3 years ago in reply to maxromanovsky

Forgot to mention, I'm an Android user and not a fan of Apple in general as a company. Don't feel comfortable sending my money over to people with such poor ethical boundaries.

0 maxromanovsky over 3 years ago in reply to MalusLupus

Right... And Google is not evil, I know... en.wikipedia.org/.../Don't_be_evil

0 maxromanovsky over 3 years ago in reply to MalusLupus

Consider looking into FR 245. It has better sleep tracking AFAIK. Also, look at the other black friday deals: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/11/heads-up-for-us-folks-20-off-trainers-sports-tech-sale-stock-wont-last-long.html/

And look at amazon return policy. Typically you can try a watch and return (especially in an extended holiday season window). So order a few of them, and return the ones you don't like.

0 MalusLupus over 3 years ago in reply to maxromanovsky

Better of two evils maybe.

0 MalusLupus over 3 years ago in reply to maxromanovsky

Doesn't it have the same sensors?