Garmin Venu 2 Plus: Essential upgrades to a widely known watch

The Venu 2 Plus from Garmin is an incremental improve from its predecessor — the Venu 2 — however among the adjustments which have been made are an attention-grabbing transfer by Garmin. This could now be thought of a full-fledged smartwatch. A easy change like including a speaker, a microphone and a few new options, and all of a sudden you’ve gotten a watch that individuals will need to use. There has by no means been any doubt concerning the well being options of a Garmin watch, however what has held folks again is normally the truth that they want a tool for health after which a separate system as a telephone companion with smarts. The Venu 2 Plus now addresses that fairly properly.

In bodily look, the Venu 2 Plus is just a bit smaller in measurement than the sooner Venu 2 with the display measurement remaining the identical. Curiously, it’s out there solely in a single measurement however there are three color variants — silver, slate and a cream gold — all three in chrome steel. Straps are normal 20mm with many out there each from Garmin in addition to third-party suppliers. The watch is gentle and comfy to put on. I solely took it off for a bathe and stored it on the remainder of the time for the 2 weeks that I used it.

Core well being performance is about the identical as different watches from Garmin. A lot of choices for exercises — Stroll, Run, Cycle, Swim, Yoga, HIIT and the listing simply goes on and on. Some further options equivalent to Sleep Monitoring and Hydration have seen enhancements. Physique Battery, Well being Snapshot and Stress have additionally been improved, and are very helpful indicators. I like the truth that the well being targets are a steady transferring goal the Venu 2 Plus retains tweaking as you progress alongside.

The most important change although is absolutely the addition of the microphone and speaker. This now lets you not solely make calls from the watch, but in addition hearken to music and use a voice assistant. For the reason that Venu 2 Plus doesn’t have LTE/mobile options, each calling and assistant use the telephone and redirect the audio as wanted.

On a Samsung telephone, you’ve gotten the selection of Bixby or Google Assistant, and on an iPhone you’ll be able to merely use Siri. There’s nothing particular on the watch to offer help; simply connectivity with the telephone which is kind of seamless and easy to setup and use.

The accompanying Garmin Join app supplies extra particulars than most individuals can deal with. Nice insights, graphs and really detailed info on each phase being tracked. That is one thing that’s unmatched for Garmin.

One factor that Garmin does have to work on is the interface of the Venu 2 Plus watch. Whereas it has improved, it will possibly nonetheless be complicated. There’s now a brand new button on the watch however navigating continues to be not intuitive. A protracted press versus a brief press can change what the button does and having to recollect what does what just isn’t simple. The app retailer Join IQ does have some apps, together with Spotify, which work brilliantly in offline mode however it’s nonetheless restricted.

Battery-life is claimed to be 9 days, however with a single exercise a day and regular utilization, I managed to get solely about 4 days at a time from the Venu 2 Plus. Nonetheless rather a lot higher than among the competitors.

The Venu 2 Plus is a good smartwatch for regular customers who are usually not athletes and need to monitor each well being and health and but have some smarts from the watch. At ₹46,990 it’s a bit costly however total options, well being monitoring and now the smartness greater than make up for it.