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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 Hexxer over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Give a try to the Huawei Watch GT active or GT2. Poor App but good Hardware

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to usmaak

Just a reminder no watch can accurately count calories, it will never happen. Watches have no idea about how your body expends energy. Take any calorie number with a 10-20% high or low average. Having a chest strap is going to be hands down more accurate for HRM than your wrist however the calories will always be a guesstimate based on some algorithm someone sorted out.

Having the Active and Active 2, making sure the strap is tight on the wrist above the write bone during my workouts average around 130-140 HRM throughout the 30-40 minutes...ISH...big on the ISH..again, these aren't 100% accurate where a red LED with green may track better and the algorithms are a best guesstimate. Cals based on my 6'3 200lb frame in that HR, I'm pulling down 180ish cals per workout per the watch. Which only tells me how much I may have used, not the aftermath and recovery. Think about an actual stress test and how much is attached to that person and then look at your wrist in comparison.

There are recommendations to turn off the auto sense for movement on the Samsung watches, or at least the elliptical and rowing as it can skew the HR tracking. Samsung makes good hardware, and are OKAY with software, there will be glitches with any mass produced product but not updating the OS to be functional (Garmin) or even have an idea of what people want in a smart watch before pushing the venu as a "Smart watch" is just as bad as Samsung calling this watch "Active".

As for the Venu, they dropped the price to $299 everywhere which to me means the device isn't selling and the screen doesn't matter and after almost 60 days of using it, I agree, it's not a good product. I'm "happier" with the Active 2 based on the interface and Samsung support (clearly look at this forum) and approximate estimations of my exertion. I'm not expecting miracles for $300 or 400 or really even $500 (looking at you Apple).

It's all relative.

0 Hexxer over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

One of the greatest problem is garmin itself. Not reaction. Last FW ist one month old.

incredibly stuck-up by garmin. I will not pay for that.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Hexxer

what makes Garmin strong is the app, having a good hw is useless without a good sw

I was thinking about gt2 but it would be worst than venu with a buggy firmware

0 Hexxer over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Full ack. The App btw teh Website is great.
But im not willing to pay near 400€ for that.

Calories: estimation
Stress: estimation
Body battery: estimation

My body battery count down if i take a nap (garmin cant track naps)...if im 45 minutes in a traffic jam it goes up and i feel no stress.

The GPS tracks are as bad as into my "GT Active"

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I also wanted to try huawei or samsung, but do not support pay with the watch in my country. Those 2 watches don't use wear os and google pay. So the way for me is just garmin pay or fitbit pay.

0 alphasportstv over 5 years ago

Have had several Forerunners, Fenix, and VA (still have VA3). Had a Venu in Oct but it's soooo buggy it drove me nuts so I returned it. I thought I was buying a Garmin-compatible device with a nice Apple Watch screen, but the amoled on the Venu is oversaturated so even that's a weakness. Ended up back with an Apple Watch 5 which is perfectly compatible with Garmin Connect via the RunGap app. Battery is not great but irrelevant for me as I only use it for fitness. I still use the VA3 and Edge 520 too so I'm not going anywhere, but the Venu is a waste of time and I'm sure Garmin will never bother fixing its numerous major bugs, they'll just overwrite it with a Venu 2 and throw the rest of us under the bus as always. No more new Garmin products for me until they address their outsourced software problems and reinvent their corporate philosophy. Why a company with 90% of the fitness watch market can't build their own software dept I have no idea, greed I guess. Hope they get kicked in the teeth by their target market.

0 marco bologni over 5 years ago in reply to alphasportstv

The Venu is not suitable for fitness, it does not have a single sensor that works and the Gamin Connect is obsolete but, unfortunately, it is a gift from my wife, I am forced to use my trusty Polar and the advanced Polar Flow system for my training circuits and in the gym ... then, I have to put the Venu back on when I get home

Hahaha... It's crazy ...

0 Hexxer over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

In germany garmin pay is only for 2 - 4 unkown money banks.

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

Ofc no watch is 100% accurate. We always work with estimations regarding calories.

But over the last year i lost 20kilogramm with counting calories.

And i can tell you fitbit is always way too high for me. Samsung way too low cause they only use heartrate in workouts for calculating calories.

Vivosmart 4 is pretty much in the middle of them and is very close to what i used as my calorie burn average over the last year.

Ofc its only one part thats important for me. If they are way off they dont need to integrate such a feature cause its useless.