Garmin has always made excellent fitness-focused watches, but now it is enhancing its smart watch games with Venu 2 Plus and Vivomove Sport at CES 2022. Venu 2 Plus has a speaker and microphone, so you can answer calls on your wrist and use your phone’s voice assistant, while Vivomove Sport combines smart watches and traditional watches with a real ticking hand on top of the touch screen. The early Venu 2 was already an excellent wearable device with a comprehensive fitness tracking function, and won the CNET Editors’ Choice Award in 2021.
But the main disadvantage is that it cannot compete head-on with other wearable devices such as Apple Watch Series 7, Galaxy Watch 4 and Fitbit Sense lacks speakers and microphones. Venu 2 Plus has a similar appearance to Venu 2. It is equipped with a bright round AMOLED display that is easy to see in broad daylight. But it now has an additional button that allows you to interact with the voice assistant with a long press. You can also assign shortcuts or favorites to a single press.
Another external difference between last year’s Venu 2 series and Venu 2 Plus is that the new watch is only 43 mm in size, while the Venu 2 and 2S are 45 mm and 40 mm respectively. Like Fitbit watches, Venu 2 Plus and Vivomove Sport are compatible with iOS and Android, which is different from the iPhone-only Apple Watch and the now Android-only Galaxy Watch 4.
The speakers and microphone on Venu 2 Plus are more helpful than I thought
You can quickly call Siri on iOS or Google Assistant or Bixby on Android, and you can send quick text messages at the push of a button. I really don’t like taking out my phone while exercising outdoors, so it’s really helpful for the watch to reliably send text messages or make quick calls. The quality of the speakers is clear. So far, I have found that it is easy to hear the caller’s voice outside.
Different from some wearable devices such as Apple Watch
You will not be able to start a workout with voice on Venu 2 Plus. It is really just an intermediary who acts as your voice assistant and hears the response on your wrist. But Garmin’s navigation system is easy to learn, and you can start exercising with just two presses anyway, so I don’t mind at all.
The battery life is as long as 9 days, which is much longer than that of Apple Watch Series 7 and Galaxy Watch 4, which can barely last up to two days. Most other features are the same as Venu 2 and 2S, which means built-in GPS, sleep tracking, blood oxygen monitoring, and extensive fitness and exercise tracking modes.
In addition to the watch’s use of networked GPS, it shares many health and fitness features with Vivomove Sport, so you need to carry your phone with you to track distance and pace during outdoor exercise. Indeed, the biggest attraction of Vivomove Sport is the cool integration of the ticking watch hands. In most cases, it looks like an ordinary watch, but when you need to interact with it, the pointer moves to display the touch screen.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Garmin battery