The Garmin Venu was a nice watch, with a very nice display. There was a Spotify app available in the Garmin app store that would play music off of the watch, but it would not allow for streaming over the Internet. The GPS worked great, and would usually acquire a signal within 30 seconds of going outside, and would then accurately track my route for the entire activity. The battery life was also excellent, as I would go out for long runs while listening to music, and still have over 50% of the battery left.
Unfortunately, there were some quirks that I had trouble dealing with. First of all, the device could not connect to hidden wireless networks. I found this ridiculous since every other consumer electronics device from the past 10 years in my house could. So in order to to establish Internet connectivity for the watch so that it could download my Spotify playlists, I had to reconfigure my wireless network. Thankfully though, most of the data exchanges (app installs, activity tracking, watch software updates) occur over the Bluetooth connection with the smart phone.
The user interface is also not intuitive, and I chalk this up to Garmin just recently getting into the touch display arena, where many of their previous models were button driven. Many times, I would find it difficult to find settings, and more than once I would end a workout activity accidentally that I was tracking on the watch when I was just trying to pause the activity to get a rock out of my shoe.
One of my biggest issues was the lack of audio notifications, and the excess of vibration notifications. Most winters, its cold running outside in January in New England. And since there are no audio notifications (time, pace, distance), you are forced to pull up your sleeve and look, and sometimes swipe around the watch face while you're moving. And then there were all the vibrations the watch was doing during an activity. Why was it vibrating? Did I just complete another mile? No, I just met my steps goal for the day. Why is the watch vibrating now? I don't know because there is this screen animation happening. Audio notifications are available in some Garmin models, but I was agitated yet again that a feature that was a basic feature in the WearOS watches wasn't available in all Garmin models.
Finally, the Garmin watches do not have a built in speaker. This forces you to wear ear pods, although I guess I could have also invested in a small portable speaker. When I am running outside, I don't like running with my ears covered. This allows me to hear the bubbling brooks in the woods, but also the quickly approaching cars on our narrow country roads. On the WearOS watch, I could listen to music on the watch speaker, and the watch would have audio notifications, all without having to wear ear phones.
I really liked this watch for the display, the battery life and GPS functionality. The watch also had WAY more features than I needed. It seemed like Garmin was marketing this watch model to me (lifestyle athlete... their word, not mine), compared to some of their higher end watches with built in mapping features and even more health sensors. But if you look at the full list of features that are touted for this watch, I doubt I would use a third of them. Unfortunately, the user interface, lack of audio notifications during activities and excess of vibration notifications during activities really soured me on this watch.
Verdict: Sent it back
