Venu 2/2S vs Venu vs Venu Sq vs Vívoactive 4 | Garmin Fitness Watch Comparison
Is the New Venu 2/2S Sport Watch the Best Garmin Venu Yet?
We compare the Venu, Venu Sq, Vívoactive 4, and Venu 2/2S.
(2-day free shipping, free 60-day returns, no questions asked!)
When it comes to the best fitness tracker, the Garmin Vivoactive and Venu collection are solid nominations for multiple reasons. Touchscreen tracking on the go, phone-free music storage, advanced health monitoring, loads of sports modes—and then there's the overall design and sheer gorgeousness of a vibrant AMOLED screen—all make this Garmin sports watch incomparable.
And now the latest best smartwatches of the Venu family has arrived—the Venu 2/2S. With each new generation of watch, Garmin strives to improve on user-requested accuracy of their GPS, overall look, and features. How did they do with the Venu 2/2S?
We answer that question in the following Garmin fitness watches comparison: the Venu vs the Venu Sq vs the Venu 2/2S vs the Vívoactive 4/4S.
We go over the feature upgrades below.
Short on time? Skip to the Comparison Table Below.
Features in Common Across Garmin Venu, Venu Sq, and Venu 2/2S
Smartwatch
Features
Each Garmin fitness tracker in the Venu lineup keeps you connected, offering smart notification, safety and tracking, Garmin Pay™, and features music.
Fitness Tracking Features
The Venu, Venu Sq, and the Venu 2/2S sport watches include fitness tracking, preloaded workouts, built-in sports apps, Garmin Coach, and more for a smarter way to keep track of your fitness level and get a better time on that post-work run!
Health Tracking Features
All models in the Venu Garmin fitness watches have similar health monitoring features like Body Battery™, Pulse Ox, women's health, wrist-based heart monitoring, sleep tracking, and more!
How the New Venu 2 Series Stands Out
Display Size Options
Choose a larger screen size if you want it with the Venu 2 sport smartwatch that has a vibrant 1.3" AMOLED touchscreen!
New Features, Updated Technology
Venu 2/2S is loaded with updates and new features like Garmin's sensor to keep track of your heart rate, several new sports modes and 2 new widgets: Fitness Age and Health Snapshot!
More Music Storage!
Garmin's next-generation in the Venu lineup features music galore, giving you 150 more songs. Have a subscription to Spotify, Amazon, or Deezer? Download your playlists!
More Battery Life!
Get twice as much battery (in smartwatch mode) with the Venu 2 and Venu 2S models.
Smartwatch Display Comparison | Venu 2/2S vs Venu vs Venu Sq vs Vívoactive 4
Garmin has just released two models of the Venu 2. The Venu 2 and the Venu 2S are the same GPS smartwatch with one major difference, which is the screen size options between the two sport watches—allowing you to choose from two sizes and multiple colors.
In this section, we go over the display differences between all the Venu generations and models, as well as the Vívoactive 4 fitness smartwatch.
Venu Display: AMOLED display; 1.2" diameter
Venu Sq Display: LED display; 1.3" diagonal
Venu 2 Display: AMOLED display; 1.3" diameter
Venu 2S Display: AMOLED display; 1.1" diameter
Vívoactive 4 Display: sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP); 1.3" diameter
Vívoactive 4S Display: sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP); 1.1" diameter
When the Venu sport smartwatch came out in 2019, it was the first of their watches to have an AMOLED display. Then they created the more affordable Venu Sq, which has an LED display.
All Venu watches have color displays, but the Venu, Venu 2, and Venu 2S have an AMOLED screen, whereas the Venu Sq uses LCD.
AMOLED displays allow for more control over each pixel, resulting in richer blacks and power economy in darker watch faces. Viewing angles are better too, which is just one of the reasons this next-generation Garmin fitness tracker is marketed for active lifestyles.
With an LCD display, the only source of light is the backlight, resulting in flatter blacks and a more limited color range.
With higher resolution comes crisper, clearer displays. This along with the stunning AMOLED display allows for more information to be viewed at once without a big increase in power usage.
Here are the display resolutions for the Garmin Venu fitness watches, past and present, and the Vívoactive 4:
Venu: 390 x 390 pixels
Venu Sq : 240 x 240 pixels
Venu 2S: 360 x 360 pixels
Venu 2: 416 x 416 pixels
Vívoactive 4: 260 x 260 pixels
Vívoactive 4S: 218 x 218 pixels
Design Differences
Case Size
Like its predecessor, the Venu 2 series has a round case. The original Venu case was 43.2 x 43.2 x 12.4mm, while the updated Venu 2/2S series offers 2 options — a smaller (40.4 x 40.4 x 12.1 mm) and a larger (45.4 x 45.4 x 12.2 mm).
The Venu Sq has a square shape measuring 40.6 x 37.0 x 11.5 mm.
The Garmin Vívoactive 4/4S fitness watches also has a round case and nearly exact sizes compared to the Venu 2/2S — The smaller Vívoactive 4S (40.0 x 40.0 x 12.7 mm) and the larger Vívoactive 4(45.1 x 45.1 x 12.8 mm)
Materials
All the watch versions have cases that are made from reinforced polymer (plastic) and silicone bands. However, the Venu Sq's bezel is made from different material. The original Venu and its updated versions — the Venu 2/2S — and the Vívoactive 4 have stainless steel bezels, while the Venu Sq sports an anodized aluminum bezel. This has the advantage of making the Venu Sq lighter (37.6 g) and more affordable, but it doesn't have quite the premium look.
In this iteration of the Venu 2 series, the smaller Venu 2S offers a lighter version (38.2 g) comparable to the Venu Sq (37.6 g) , while the larger Venu 2 weighs in a 49 g. With the Venu 2 collection, you can get the same advanced features in the size that works best for you.
New and Improved Venu 2/2S Features
Previous Venu fitness tracking models — the Venu and the Venu Sq — have broadly similar smartwatch features. Both offer Bluetooth and ANT+ connectivity, so you can link to your phone and additional sensors like chest-strap heart rate monitors and footpods. However, the Venu supports Wi-Fi, allowing you to connect to your home network to easily upload music and data.
The Venu 2 series has everything these previous versions do ... and more!
More Music Storage
The original Venu allows you to store up to 500 songs for offline listening. But if you want that same option with the Venu Sq, you have to buy the more expensive Venu Sq Music model.
With the Venu 2 collection, Garmin has boosted your beats load to 650 songs. Plus, music and offline playlists can be downloaded through your subscription-based music go-tos like Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music.
Health and Fitness Tracking
All the Venu models come standard with advanced health and fitness tracking features, such as wrist-based heart rate monitoring, Pulse Ox, Body Battery™, stress tracking, sleep monitoring, women's health, hydration monitoring, pre-loaded workouts, Garmin Coach, built-in sports apps, and much more!
So what more could you ask for? How about, along with more music storage, several new sports modes, including HIIT, indoor climbing, hiking, and bouldering. They've also added two new widgets. Fitness Age, which was only available in the Garmin Connect app before, reinterprets your VO2 Max score in terms of age to make it more relatable. The Health Snapshot widget allows users to share vitals data with doctors and coaches.
Elevate Optical Heart Rate Sensor
The Venu 2/2S multisport watch has the latest heart rate sensor. Designed to give you the most accurate reading during exercise by filtering out signal noise, you can count on improved data from this upgrade. It is especially helpful for the sleep tracking function.
Sleep Score and Insights by Firstbeat AnalyticsTM
When it’s time to recharge, the Venu 2/2S advanced sleep monitoring tracks light, deep and REM sleep stages as well as movement, pulse ox and respiration. With new sleep score powered by Firstbeat Analytics users receive a score based on the quality and quantity of the previous night’s sleep.
Twice the Battery Life
The Venu 2/2S was has enhanced battery life with rapid recharging and battery saver mode (Venu 2: Up to 11 days in smartwatch mode; Venu 2S: Up to 10 days in smartwatch mode).
The Venu and Vívoactive 4/4S — The Same Smartwatches?
Aside from a few minor distinctions, the original Venu and the Víviactive 4 are nearly the same watch. Display, size, and battery life, are the only areas where the these two multisport watches do their own thing. The Venu was the first smartwatch Garmin offered with an AMOLED display while the Vivoactive 4 has a basic sunlight-visible, transflective display. It's interesting that the Vivoactive 4 offers a 1.3" size screen 45mm along with a smaller 1.1" model, also known as the Vivoactive 4S, like the Venu 2/2S do now.
As far as battery life, the Vivoactive 4 GPS watch outpaced the Venu with up to 8 days in Smartwatch mode, up to 6 hours in GPS mode with music, and up to 18 hours GPS mode without music (with slightly lower numbers for the Vivoactive 4S).
However, when it comes to battery life, the Venu 2 series is king (even over the Apple Watch 6). The Venu 2 gets up to 11 days of battery life in smartwatch mode, up to 12 days in battery saver smartwatch mode, up to 8 hours in GPS mode with music, and up to 22 hours GPS mode without music. The Venu 2 has up to 10 days in smartwatch mode, up to 11 days in battery saver smartwatch mode, up to 7 hours in GPS mode with music, and up to 19 hours GPS mode without music.
Basically, the Venu2/2S, with all its upgrades, is what a next-generation Vívoactive 4/4S would look like, except with a gorgeous AMOLED display.
The Venu Multisport Watch Collection Comparison Chart
| Garmin Venu 2 | Garmin Venu 2S | Garmin Venu Sq | Garmin Venu Sq Musi | |
|
Release |
2021 |
2021 |
2020 |
2020 |
|
Price |
Sold out
|
Sold out
|
Sold out
|
|
|
Models |
Silver Slate |
Rose Gold Light Gold |
Light Gold Orchid |
Slate Moss |
|
Screen |
|
|
|
|
|
Advanced |
|
|
|
|
|
Shared |
|
|
|
|
|
PlayBetter Offers |
|
|
|
|