Garmin Venu 2s in review: Lots of great features including offline music from Spotify

Garmin provides the Venu 2 in two sizes: The Garmin Venu 2 in 45 mm and the Venu 2s in 41 mm. The latter is our test device. We are only aware of differences in terms of battery life as indicated below.

The looks remain sporty despite the classy, glimmering bezel made of stainless steel, which is due to the high proportion of plastic found in the 38-gram case. Garmin also provides leather alternatives for the 18 mm textured silicone strap with quick-release.

Garmin equips many watches with a memory-in-pixel (MIP) display that doesn't require backlighting outdoors, allowing for long battery life. The Venu 2 is not in that category, since it has a bright AMOLED display that adjusts brightness automatically, with the possibility to manually adjust it in three levels depending on the user's needs.

A total of 8 GB of data storage allows music to be stored for offline use. Thanks to WLAN, it synchronizes the playlists of the streaming providers directly with the corresponding servers, and it also receives system updates without the need for a smartphone.

The Garmin smartwatch is operated via the touchscreen and the two buttons on the side. It has neither a speaker nor a microphone and consequently no voice assistant, but it does come with NFC for mobile payments through a Garmin-supported bank.

The two buttons respond both to normal and longer presses. The upper button opens the app overview and a customizable quick settings menu when you long-press it. The full menu opens after long-pressing the lower button, which otherwise performs the back function.

On the touchscreen, vertical gestures are used to swipe through the widgets list, which can also be personalized. Horizontal gestures only open a single widget that can be saved as a "shortcut" within the settings. Among others, you can choose between the music player, mobile payments, alarms, or saving the current position.

Although the Garmin watch has and uses a compass, there's no preinstalled dedicated compass app, nor is there an app for the barometric sensor. Some of the tools include a timer, stopwatch, alarms, and pinging the smartphone.

The Garmin Venu 2 provides several options for listening to music over a Bluetooth headset without the need for a smartphone. If you have an account on Amazon Prime Music, Deezer, or Spotify that allows you to download music, you can transfer your playlists to the smartwatch and update them via Wi-Fi by pressing a button. Alternatively, the Garmin Express software transfers your own music tracks from a Mac or Windows PC.

The fitness tracker counts the daily steps, it determines the distance covered as well as the corresponding floors climbed, and it also tracks the intensity minutes and the calories burned. As an alternative to a fixed value, the Venu 2 can independently adjust the step goal if desired; the device corrects it upwards or downwards by two to three digits depending on whether the previous days' progress was positive or negative.

Garmin compares the daily activity with relaxation phases and overnight recovery to determine the body's energy reserves under the name "Body Battery". In addition, you can track your fluid intake on your wrist using another app.

The health tracker measures heart rate around the clock, while oxygen saturation is only measured at night by default. According to your needs, you can extend the measurement to the whole day or only measure it manually to reduce battery consumption. The overview of the widgets already provides an impression of the current condition. In addition, oxygen saturation, heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiration rate can be measured together at any time if you hold still for two minutes using the "Health Snapshot" feature.

We compare heart rate and oxygen saturation in multiple measurements with the results of a medically certified pulse oximeter. The Venu 2s measures both parameters reliably. It measures blood oxygen saturation comparatively quickly, and the deviation is within the normal range at a maximum of three percentage points.

Garmin only tracks the time when the user falls asleep and wakes up at night - the Venu 2 doesn't log naps taken in the middle of the day. The watch shows the intervals of the different sleep phases and provides an assessment of sleep quality. The app's log offers additional information such as the average respiratory rate and the lowest SpO2 value throughout the night. The sleep phases can be combined with blood oxygen saturation, respiration, or movement in different ways, and the trend can be viewed over several days.

The Venu 2s comes preloaded with 27 types of sports. These include golf with specific functions such as a stroke distance measurement and a digital score card; the device also provides geographical information like the distance to the front, middle, and back of green, as well as layup/dogleg distances.

Additional sports apps as well as data fields for the customizable workout screens can be downloaded from the Connect IQ store.

When motion detection is activated, the tracker either prompts the user to start the workout first or it automatically logs the activity, all depending on the user's settings. For walking and running, you can also set the response time between detection and tracking initiation, such as 5 minutes for walking and 1 minute for running. In the test, it recorded a walk including the route without requiring any further action, and it also automatically stopped tracking after about 3 minutes of inactivity.

Several sports have a menu item called "Training". While Garmin refers runners and cyclists to the Connect IQ store at this point, workouts are preloaded for yoga, Pilates, and cardio along with animated exercise instructions. The same goes for a strength training workout, where it counts repetitions depending on the settings.

For high-intensity interval training (HIIT), you choose between a minute-based workout (ENOM), maximum repetitions (AMRAP), and Tabata, or you can specify the number of sets as well as the timers for duration and pause length yourself.

According to Garmin, the sports tracker recognizes the swimming style when swimming, it determines the number of lanes, the distance, pace, and number of strokes, and it also measures the pulse under water, something that not every sports watch is capable of.

The screenshots below represent a running log in the app and on the watch. In the app, the map alternatively shows the altitude differences along with the pace, which can be seen in the second screenshot, or the heart rate trend. In landscape mode, the lap times are complemented by additional details such as elevation gain, stride frequency, and stride length, as well as the average and maximum pace in the individual laps.

Both the 41 mm Garmin Venu 2s and the slightly larger 45 mm Garmin Venu 2 have the same MSRP of $399.99. You can currently find both models on Amazon at this price.