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Why I broke up With my Venu

Former Member over 5 years ago

This is purely for informational purposes, and I'll answer questions if anyone has them.

What I liked about my Venu:
Battery Life - Lasted a long time, LONG...time
Durability - Handled abuse in and out of the gym
Comfortably - Didn't weigh you down and the ability to change the band is helpful.
HRM Tracking was decent once it got settled in.

What I ultimately made me return it
The OS, plain and simple is not for anyone looking for a "smart watch" at all. So many lags between screens and erratic decisions, anything not tracking my HRM was shady (sleep, steps..)
The screen was not utilized, get the vivoactive 4 and save $50 and get 1+ days more battery life, there's no need for the screen if it's not going to be used and lose 1-2 days of battery life.
Smart watch settings will never be where it will compete with current smartwatches who are trying to be fitness watches (Looking at you Samsung Active).
Erratic BT connections and Sync settings, why is it so slow and why couldn't it handle past 23ft of BT connection.
The buttons seemed backwards, back on the top? Weird.
Lack of community support, this forum, people have issues. I put in no less than 5 requests for additions and not even a confirmation it was received.

What did I go with?
Galaxy Active 2 LTE, not for cell, but for the 3 days of battery life, extra memory, smartphone integration, decent HRM when it's in place and the ability to integrate with many other features in my Samsung Note10 platform.

Does any of this matter, nope. As an avid fitness person and tech person by profession, I like control over my device and the lack of flexibility with the faces/OS and gritty setup makes it a pain to work with and for $400 it should be OOTB functional and intuitive.

Hope it helps.

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0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Samsung would be nice. Had a Galaxy Watch for a week.

But for anyone needing good calorie counts Samsung is absolutly useless. They dont even take heart rate into calculation outside of exercises.

Simple put. Samsung the better Smartwatch, Venu the better fitnesswatch.

But right now i wouldnt recommend the venu at all. To many Software bugs. Active calorie calculation totaly off compared to previous models and my own experience(1 year diet).

Freezes, lags and heart rate sensors going wild.

Garmin support in this forum is also a big letdown.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Samsung would be nice. Had a Galaxy Watch for a week.

But for anyone needing good calorie counts Samsung is absolutly useless. They dont even take heart rate into calculation outside of exercises.

Simple put. Samsung the better Smartwatch, Venu the better fitnesswatch.

But right now i wouldnt recommend the venu at all. To many Software bugs. Active calorie calculation totaly off compared to previous models and my own experience(1 year diet).

Freezes, lags and heart rate sensors going wild.

Garmin support in this forum is also a big letdown.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I considered the Samsung Active 2. However, looking at reviews, I wasn't willing to trust the heart rate accuracy or it's general usability as a fitness watch. I use my watch to referee events and wouldn't trust the Samsung interface during a match.

I'm happy with my Venu so far.

0 Hexxer over 5 years ago

Try a huawei watch GT (2). Great battery life with some tracking features.

If you like that - it can tracks naps like a boss. Things garmin will never do. It syncs and so on. The samsung sounds interessting, but the battery life and some other tings are crapt. The huawei have a lot of small problem - but, as an example, the Huawei Wtach GT coast 120€-140€ - and not 300

https://amzn.to/2rkxxg4

0 marco bologni over 5 years ago in reply to Hexxer

I agree, definitely Huawei is far better than Garmin.
I had the GT Watch, clear and beautiful graphics, stable, 15 days of battery, HR comparable to a heart rate monitor, perfect sleep measurement even with naps ... and it costs less than half, but Huawei does not have the gestonine from Web and the creation of training programs ... and also for this Garmin Connect is really obsolete ... the management of Polar Flow is the best.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I don't know if it helps, but my 30 min workouts consist of a mix of compound workouts (strength+cardio with no rest) really HITT 'kinda' but more just giant sets with cardio mixed in (burpees or whatnot) and I range from 180-250 up to 300 cals in that time with 125-160 ish HR. The trick was to tighten the strap down. Not trying to sway you at all, just my .02. I can elaborate if you have q's.

0 Hexxer over 5 years ago in reply to marco bologni

Correct. The Webfrontend is, sorry, the only good thing from the venu/VA4.
BUT, for 1/3 of the price its OK. Why should i wear a device who can do nothing realy good for an apple-watch price?

FYI: The Watch GT is a Google Wear device (google Wear ist crap IMHO). The Watch GT active and the Watch GT 2 are LiteOS Devices.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I don't understand the meaning of this forum, no one from Garmin is here to answer questions and people are left without clues.

I'm still in the 30 days return policy of amazon and altough I like very much the amoled display I'm really thinking about returning the watch.

At least someone from Garmin that says when a new firmware will be available could be useful. I'm really disapponted to be a beta tester having paid 300 euros.

0 usmaak over 5 years ago

I returned my Venu for many of the same reasons. It was too buggy and the heart rate sensor was very erratic and not at all accurate. I liked the screen but it was sad how Garmin dropped the ball on really using it. It is a Vivoactive 4 with a pretty screen. There is nothing wrong with the Vivoactive 4. It's just that Garmin could have done so much with the screen that they didn't. In the end, I couldn't justify spending this much money on something that just doesn't seem to work well.

Of course I am on a Samsung Galaxy Active 2 right now and that watch is a letdown as well. They call it a fitness watch, but it really isn't. It's a great smart watch with an amazing screen but it lags far behind in anything fitness related.

I don't think that they make the watch that I want. Who knows, maybe I'll be back on the Venu once I decide what to do with the Active 2. In order to keep the Active 2, I would need to accept that I am pretty much done with fitness tracking and I'm not sure that's what I want.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to usmaak

Interesting. Was considering the Active 2 as well. But i know from the Galaxy Watch that Samsung builds beautiful Smartwatches but Fitness Part and Health App sucks.

They still dont use heart rate for calculating calories which is a big let down as well for people like me who are counting them for weigth management.

Guess i stay with the vivosmart 4 until they all get their things together. Thought about a Forerunner 245 for a moment but dunno about that 5 big buttons and all day use...