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Garmin Venu X1: One-minute review
When you think of the best Garmin watches, you consider thick, G-Shock-style rugged journey watches, not a modern full-screen bezelless smartwatch that sits slim in your wrist. The Garmin Venu X1 bucks the pattern, providing a whole redesign, and it’s enjoyable to familiarize yourself with the Garmin expertise in what looks like an entire new manner.
Personally, I cherished it. I’ll focus on the design and show, which of Garmin’s regular suite of metrics and options it will get, and the way it performs, intimately under, however it’s an eminently usable watch that has in a short time change into a fixture in my regular rotation. The slender nature of the watch and curved stainless-steel backing hugs the wrist and makes it snug, and that beautiful full-color AMOLED show is ideal for viewing maps.
The battery life is a concern in comparison to more typical Garmins, however: if you’re used to a two-week battery, the always-on display will crush the Garmin Venu X1’s longevity down to just a few days. However, without the always-on display you’ll get a week (far more than even the best Apple Watch), even with a number of battery-sucking hour-long GPS exercises.
The opposite slight concern is the redesigned operating system. The record of widgets (or ‘glances’ in Garmin converse) are navigated through a mixture of touchscreen and buttons, and have acquired a Liquid Glass-style facelift to utilize Garmin’s Apple Watch-style display screen. Nonetheless – and to maintain the comparability going – generally the framerate can lag, and with out Garmin’s five-button configuration or an Apple-style digital crown, swiping round could be cumbersome (particularly mid-workout). It doesn’t spark pleasure, to cite Marie Kondo, in the identical manner that Apple’s kind issue does.
However, I’ve been carrying the look ahead to weeks, and I’ve completed my testing, and it’s nonetheless on my wrist – and as soon as I’ve completed testing my subsequent watch, I’ll in all probability strap it again on once more. It’s gentle, it seems to be good, it’s snug, it lasts longer than an Apple Watch (with the latter two elements serving to to make it sensible to put on in a single day for higher sleep monitoring), and it’s only a rattling good watch. I nonetheless can’t recover from how good full-color maps look on its monumental display screen.
Garmin Venu X1: Price and availability
- $799 / £799 / AU$1,399
- One size
- Around the same price as the Apple Watch Ultra 2
The Garmin Venu X1 is available in all regions, priced at $799.99 / £679.99 / AU$1,499. That’s around the same price as the Apple Watch Ultra 2, which is priced at $799 / £799 / AU$1,399.
Like the Apple Watch Ultra 2, the Garmin Venu X1 comes in just one size, as opposed to most other Garmin watches that are available in multiple sizes. However, the Ultra 2 does have one major feature the Venu X1 doesn’t: LTE support.
LTE support means you can add the Ultra 2 to your phone’s data plan (this usually costs extra), and allows you to make calls, send messages and even stream music directly without being connected to your phone. The Venu X1, despite being in the same premium price bracket as the Ultra 2, doesn’t have this functionality.
Then again, neither do other Garmin watches such as the Garmin Fenix 8, which actually costs more than the Venu X1. The difference between the two is that the Venu X1 is positioned as a smartwatch competitor, rather than an adventure watch.
Garmin Venu X1: Design
- Gorgeous, bright AMOLED display
- Slim profile, highly unusual for Garmins
- Stainless steel curved backing for comfort
The Garmin Venu X1 is slimmer than any other Garmin I’ve yet tried, and I’ve tried a lot. No chunky adventure watch here: Garmin has opted for a practically bezel-less slender watchwith just 7.9mm of thickness. The slim profile combines with the metal backing, which is curved to follow the wrist, for a fit that I found very comfortable, though people with smaller or larger wrists than mine might not find it quite as good a fit.
Most other smartwatches have straight backs, relying on straps to bind their boxy cases to your wrists, which can cause the sensor to dig into your wrist. I found the Garmin Venu X1 very comfortable indeed, more so than the Apple Watch Ultra series.
While the back is cambered, the wide display isn’t curved at all, unlike the Apple Watch Series 10. Instead, it’s completely flat, slightly reducing glanceability in theory, but the screen is big and bright enough that it doesn’t really matter. The display (a 51.2mm AMOLED Sapphire Glass display) is among the best I’ve ever seen on a smartwatch.
The velcro strap included with the watch isn’t particularly stylish, but it’s perfectly adequate performance-wise. It’ll need cleaning, as it’s fabric, and it got a bit dirty even during my first month of training.
The only real design flaw I’ve identified after using this watch for a month is Garmin’s operating system, which has had a bit of a facelift to better suit Garmin’s biggest, brightest display. It looks fine, but to navigate it you have to scroll through with two buttons and the touchscreen, as there’s no digital crown and only two buttons, unlike on most of Garmin’s other watches.
This is something that’s always been a problem with the Venu series for me; however, it’s by no means a dealbreaker. Occasionally you’ll need to swipe between screens during a workout, from heart rate and time to maps for example, with the touchscreen – and this can become smeared with sweat and dirt. However, it’s not enough to be a serious problem with the watch; it’s just a minor gripe.
Garmin Venu X1: Features
- Garmin’s top-tier training features
- Full-color offline maps
- LED torch
First up, all of Garmin’s best features, including Morning Report, Training Readiness score, Endurance and Hill scores, Garmin Coach, full-color maps, work brilliantly here, and the watch functions well as a workout companion that’s much lighter than the chunkier Forerunners and Fenixes, making it ideal for runners and swimmers as you’ll practically forget you’re wearing it.
The added comfort and reduced weight are especially beneficial for sleep tracking. The watch is so much more comfortable than watches with thicker profiles, which means it’s easier to wear in bed. You can get all your recovery metrics, such as sleeping heart rate variability and sleep quality, from the watch directly, rather than not wearing it (or even removing it in frustration during the middle of the night because it’s stopping you nodding off, as I’ve done with some chunky watches) and relying on Garmin’s estimations.
That massive display is transformative when viewing complex information such as multiple glances at once, or full-color maps. You can’t use the touchscreen for precision movements such as responsive pinches to zoom in and out, like you would on a phone, but the maps screen is still ideally suited for getting turn-by-turn directions on city walks, or long runs using the Create a Course performance.
The Garmin Venu X1 provides a beneficiant 32GB of onboard storage for music and GPX maps, and helps offline playback from apps corresponding to Spotify. It’s additionally packing Garmin’s helpful LED torch, with a pink mode for carrying at evening as a security gentle, and three ranges of white gentle. It may be used for something from discovering your option to the toilet at nighttime to signalling for assist atop a mountain, maybe if you’ve taken a fallacious flip after a hike.
The torch makes use of a good quantity of battery, although, so for those who’re going to be out in a single day you would possibly need to disable the always-on show to preserve energy – extra on that in a second.
Garmin Venu X1: Performance
- Good battery life without always-on display
- Easy to wear
- I enjoyed training in it
I wore the Garmin Venu X1 for around a month, draining the battery completely, charging it multiple times and doing lots of running and resistance training while wearing it. I also competed in a 12K trail-running event, using the Primary Race training tool to fine-tune my plans for the day. I slept with it, took it out on the roads, and wore it throughout fitness center and yoga classes.
I’ve seen some criticisms stating the battery could be very dangerous with always-on show enabled, they usually’re proper: with this performance on, you’re solely getting a couple of days of battery life. Nonetheless, as somebody who discovered the raise-to-wake performance greater than appropriate and delicate sufficient for my wants, I’m residing with the watch simply nice. Throughout testing, the battery lasted round per week with a number of GPS exercises, which is just about as marketed.
Utilizing it as a working watch, I discovered that it’s among the finest I’ve tried this yr. It’s not as highly effective or rugged, or fairly as feature-rich, because the Fenix 8, however it’s a a lot better all-rounder watch. I used the voice command performance to set kitchen timers and so forth, and it’s definitely simpler than swiping by the OS. Nonetheless, it’s not fairly as seamless because the Apple Watch’s nigh-on futuristic raise-and-speak performance, because it nonetheless takes a swipe and faucet to arrange.
As Garmin’s try at an Apple Watch, the Venu X1 very almost succeeds, and it’s a stunning watch to put on and prepare with in its personal proper. Nonetheless, I feel that to be able to actually succeed each as a coaching watch and a smartwatch, it wants to depart extra of its Garmin trappings behind – amongst different issues, Garmin must utterly redesign the interface, and allow customers to entry its voice command characteristic with one fewer swipe.
Scorecard
|
Category |
Comment |
Score |
|
Value |
A premium watch with premium features, but not outrageous value. |
4/5 |
|
Design |
A beautiful screen with a transformative slim, light chassis. |
4.5/5 |
|
Features |
Garmin’s best features packed into a slender package. |
5/5 |
|
Performance |
A terrific running watch, but not quite the complete smartwatch package, and so-so battery life with always-on display. |
4/5 |
Should I buy?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Also consider
|
Component |
Garmin Venu X1 |
Apple Watch Ultra 2 |
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra |
|
Price |
$799.99 / £679.99 / AU$1,499 |
$799 / £799 / AU$1,399 |
$649 / £599 / AU$1,299 |
|
Dimensions |
41 x 46 x 7.9 mm |
49 x 41 x 14 (mm) |
47.4 x 47.4 x 12.1mm |
|
Weight |
41g |
61g |
60.5g |
|
Case/bezel |
Titanium/Polymer |
Titanium |
Titanium |
|
Display |
51.2 mm AMOLED Sapphire Glass display |
49mm poly-silicon always-on OLED Retina Display |
480 x 480 full-color AMOLED |
|
GPS |
GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou, QZSS |
Dual-frequency (unspecified) |
Dual-frequency GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo |
|
Battery life |
Up to 8 days |
36 hours |
590mAh, up to 100 hours |
|
Connection |
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi |
Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi, LTE |
Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi |
|
Water resistant |
Yes, 5ATM |
Yes, WR100 (diveproof) |
10ATM + IP68 |
How I tested
I wore the Garmin Venu X1 for a month, draining the battery multiple times and testing it against the Apple Watch Ultra 2. I used the Primary Race tool to complete a trail running event, slept with it, showered with it and completed gym, running and a variety of other workouts with it. I used its maps functionality in conjunction with running routes created on Garmin Connect.