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Why I broke up With my Venu

Former Member
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.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    Error

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

    Trying a 245music right now and so far im pretty satisfied with it.

    Stable, no crashes, no blinking hr, no Hr bugs so far. 

    Feels way more comfortable on the wrist then the Venu. Ofc more fitness orientated and the look is more sporty then premium but i like it.

    U have to get used to the buttons and the mip display. But overall everyone who doesnt care to much about smart functions and is more into fitness should consider this over the Venu. At least right now.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

    I near bevor buying it but i just stop it. 

    Price - no barometric sensor, no naps and the same crap sleep detection as well. 
    Im out of garmin . I ordered a Amazfir GTS. Just a try, 1/3 price of garmin and a funny christmas gift. 

    Duno when garmin just find back on track. But im not willing pay for that. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

    I agree. I own a Fitbit Versa, a Samsung GWA2, Garmin VA4 and Venu, and, most recently, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3. While Samsung makes a slick smartwatch, their Samsung Health app is a walled city when it comes to exporting/syncing data with other apps, and the fitness tracking abilities of the Samsung watches themselves are a huge letdown. (Another gripe: no web app? WTF?)

    For the last year or so, my cycle is this: After wearing the Garmin and being totally satisfied with the fitness tracking and the data syncing with my Strava and Endomondo accounts, but desiring a bit more "smartwatch-ness", I put on one of the Samsung watches to give them a try for a week or so. After my fitness routines of biking, working out, etc, I become totally frustrated with the poor fitness tracking of the watches. I put them down and put on one of my Garmins again for the next three weeks.

    So, while I toy with the others, I always gravitate back to the Garmins.

    For me, the Venu strikes a nice balance with its beautiful screen and its Garmin ecosystem. Additionally, the integration with Spotify on the Garmins is far, far better than on the Samsungs--which totally blows my mind.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    What about now? I am interested buy one of those Venu watches... I'm looking for a watch that I can use when I am doing sports also when I am in the office and durable. I have had a Samsung Vivo Active 2 (piece of crap), Huaweii GT2 pro (really nice, but with serious suncy issues) and Fitbit Charge 2, 3, 4 and Ionic (not durable). This thread is really iluminating... 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Pedro Leiva

    I've had mine a little over a year.  Is it perfect? - no, but a year later I am glad I bought it.  I use my for an hour's exercise each day connected to my bike's speed sensor (on a Trainer) and transmitting my heart rate to Connect on my Android phone.  I charge it twice a week, at the same two times, but could probably extend it to twice in 8 or 9 days if I wanted to.  I wear it almost 100% of the time.

    Yes, I wish it had some of the features mentioned here, but the sleep tracking works pretty well for me.  I may look at a more expensive (Garmin) watch in the future to get more features, but I really love the AMOLED screen.

    I use a Garmin Edge 1030 on my long rides on Saturday - the only time I don't wear my watch.

    You can see, I don't really have anything to say to help you make a decision, but I can at least tell you I am glad I bought it and would buy it again "in a heartbeat" 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Pedro Leiva

    Garmin is promoting Venu with Spotify but it hasn't worked in months. The reviews of Spotify app are about 90 % one star saying that the music sync doesn't work. I have the same issue. Nothing that a user can do seem to fix it and Garmin has chosen to be silent about it. So if you want Spotify you should consider something else than Garmin.

    Otherwise my opinion of Venu is that the fitness side is one of the more accurate (except sleep tracking) on the market. The letdown is that the watch UI is straight from the 90s and sometimes quite laggy. Looks ugly and is inconsistent. The amoled screen looks nice but the UI doesn't take any advantage of that at all. The screen could just as well be monochrome and the UI would look the same. Third party watchfaces look really nice on Venu's screen but most of them are really laggy. I suspect that the hardware is under powered. Even Garmin's own watchfaces available in Connect IQ app store are terribly laggy.

    Garmin is also pretty good at messing up the software in their updates. Updates do come frequently but they basically never include any new features or visible improvements. They just fix the bugs they created in the previous firmware update.

    In summary, I would say that the fitness features are very good and accurate but the UI somewhat ruins the user experience. One plus, though, is that the bluetooth connection to my phone has always been very reliable.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Pedro Leiva

    I don't know about before because i got my venu 10 days ago and i'm really happy about it.

    Coming from fitbit sense that i didn't like at all. Many useless things and many not relible, in my opinion.

    Then i got a vivoactive 4 but i can't accept a screen of that type...i know many likes it but it's not for me.Tried for 3 weeks and then switched to the venu.

    Battery is really good("always on" active, spo2(i know the accuracy is not the best but i like to have it) active during night, 3 hours of gps and after 48 hours i still had 20% of battery).

    I like the "always on" on the watch because i like to see the time whenever i want and that's not possible with vivoactive 4 or similar watches(when it gets a bit dark you can't see anything anymore until you don't wake it up).

    Sleep tracking is far from being accurate but it's not something that i need at all. Hours of sleep are recorded correctly if you go to bed to sleep and not to read books or play with the phone for hours. Otherwise it could record that you're sleeping when you're not but it happened few times also with fitbit sense(if the heart rate goes down and you're not moving i can understand why many watches can consider you're sleeping). I still think it's not so bad as i read on some reviews/comments on the web. For example, i set my normal sleeping hours from 10pm to 6.20am but if i go earlier or later the recording will start correctly. The spo2 recording starts at 10pm also if i'm not sleeping but the sleeping time recording starts correctly.

    Did few runs and the gps is really nice(not looking at centimeters) and same goes for the heart rate.

    For HIIT workouts i didn't test the venu HR because i had bad experiences with both fitbit sense and the va4 and i get that wrist sensors can be bad when wrist movements are involved. I'm using an external optical sensor placed on my arm.

    I read that many complained about the software and UI but i don't dislike it.

    When i need a quick check on HR i don't have any issue but for in depth analysis i prefer to do it on the phone or on the web app.

    Until today didn't have any issue for the sync with Android.

    Dimensions are perfect...i know it's only a bit smaller than the va4 but i find it a lot more comfortable.