The Garmin Venu 4 has arrived, and the latest model of Garmin’s sporty smartwatch is ready to rival the Apple Watch Series 11 by offering longer battery life and more fitness features.
Garmin has upgraded the sleep tracking on the Venu 4, as well as adding a built-in flashlight and new coaching features, including daily suggested workouts for a wide variety of different activities.
The new features come at a price, however, with the Venu 4 being substantially more expensive than the Garmin Venu 3, and also more expensive than the Apple Watch 11.
Garmin Venu 4: price and availability
The Garmin Venu 4 comes in two sizes — 41mm and 45mm — and costs $549.99 in the U.S. and £469.99 in the U.K., which is a big price jump on the Garmin Venu 3, which costs $449.99 / £399.99. The Venu 4 will be available to buy from 22 September.
It comes in three colors — lunar gold, silver, and black — and with a choice of a silicone or leather band, with the latter costing $50 more.
Garmin Venu 4: New features
On the design front, the big new feature is a built-in LED flashlight, which is available on both sizes of the Venu 4. It also has only two buttons, as opposed to the three on the Venu 3, so more navigation on the watch will be done using its AMOLED touchscreen.
The new software features include daily suggested workouts for 25 different sports via Garmin Fitness Coach. In the past, Garmin has only offered suggested workouts for running and cycling, and the expansion into areas like strength and HIIT sessions fits well with the Venu 4, which is aimed at people who do a range of exercises.
Garmin has also added a new Health Status feature, which looks at some key health metrics like heart rate variability overnight to see if they are in line with your usual baselines. If not, it can be a sign that something is amiss, like you’re getting sick.
Another new feature is lifestyle logging, which allows users to keep track of things like their caffeine intake and alcohol consumption and see how they affect areas like their sleep, stress, and heart rate variability.
The battery life on the Venu 4 is listed as 12 days, which drops to four days if you use the always-on screen. It offers 20 hours of GPS tracking or 17-19 hours if you use the more accurate all-systems and multi-band GPS modes on the watch.
We’ll be putting the Venu 4 through its paces as soon as possible to see how it compares to the best smartwatches and other Garmin watches like the Vivoactive 6.
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