Apple Watch vs. Garmin Venu: My Honest Review

First of all, this post is in no way sponsored (I wish it was!) and these opinions are strictly my own based upon my experience over the last month 🙂 I recently made the switch from the Apple Watch to the Garmin Venu and today I want to give my honest feedback and review of my new smart watch.

Why did I make the switch? To be perfectly honest, it was mostly based on looks. The Garmin Venu has a round face, is pretty large, and has a super cute grey/rose gold color combo. It just looks sleek on the wrist. I know, a really dumb reason to buy a new smart watch but that’s just me, ok? No shame in my arm party game! I mean, it wasn’t the only reason.. another was that the Apple “rings” were starting to mess with my head. For those with an Apple Watch, you know what I mean. It was almost like my watch was taunting me and if I didn’t close my rings one day, I felt like I had failed in some way. So lame but at the end of the day, I was over the rings and over following other people and seeing what they were doing compared to me. I know, the comparison game is a lame one and I did eventually take all “sharing” options away but the rings still got in my head.

Another reason I made the switch is because I heard Garmin was more accurate in terms of outdoor runs as well as tracking other measurements like breaths per minute, body stress, menstruation, sleep cycles, hydration and more. So that was enticing.. it had lots of bells and whistles that interested me.

It has taken me a full month to get used to the new technology and I will be completely honest.. at first, I hated this watch. I wanted to send it back within the first 2 days of owning it. But I pushed through the pain because I told myself this was like moving from a MAC to a PC or vice versa. Change is hard, people. And now, I can say that I do like the watch for many reasons:

PROS:

1. Battery Life: the Garmin does not need to be charged every night like the Apple Watch. In fact, it can go DAYS without charging even when you wear it at night to sleep.
2. Display Options: the display is similar to the Apple Watch and user friendly. You can download different watch faces from the Garmin app and totally customize the look you’re going for. The touch screen allows you to toggle between your fitness measurements, weather, text messages, email, etc.
3. Health Stats: I think the Garmin has more capabilities from a health perspective. It measures your stress levels, “body battery,” blood oxygen level, sleep cycles, how much water intake you get in a day, menstrual cycle, and even measures your heart rate during a workout and shows you how often you hit red, orange and green zones (like Orange Theory if you’ve taken a class). Overall, from a a “health” perspective the Garmin wins over Apple tenfold.
4. Access to music, texts, calls, and apps: When I first bought the Garmin I thought I wouldn’t be able to do all the things I did on my Apple and I was wrong (for the most part). I still receive calls, texts, calendar notifications straight to my watch because it connects via bluetooth to my phone. I can do “Garmin pay” just like Apple Pay and I have apps like Starbucks directly on my watch. You can even download Pandora or Spotify to your watch and listen to podcasts and music. So from that perspective, I am not missing any capabilities. I’ll get to the things I miss in my CONS section below.

Now, to the things it took me awhile to adjust to and what I am missing with this watch:

CONS:

1. Responding to calls/texts: So this one is a pro and con. The pro is that I have retrained myself not to be so quick to respond to every little thing that comes through. While I miss the feature of being able to answer a text from my watch or answer a call (if my phone isn’t nearby), it is also a pro because I am becoming less dependent on always having a quick response. Does that make sense? I don’t carry my phone around the house with me all day so when I get a text and I see it on my watch, I can’t respond and have to get to it later when I get back to my phone. This one is still a work in progress. I miss being able to send a quick “thumbs up” to a text but also think it’s a good thing to disconnect. Pro and con in my opinion. Side note: you can PING your phone from a Garmin but it has to have sound on for it to make a noise (unlike Apple). This feature saves me on the daily with both Apple and Garmin so I was so glad to find out my Garmin can do this.
2. Fitness Tracking Learning Curve: I am still trying to figure out the different “workouts” that Garmin offers and which ones I think I should be selecting when I workout. One con is that when you start a workout on your Garmin, you can’t click out to check the time or how many steps you’re at like you can on the Apple. If I want to click out of my workout, I have to stop the workout entirely. Sometimes, I want to know what time it is or if I’m close to 10K steps but I can’t get to that info without stopping my activity. So this one was a little bit annoying. Also, I like to do strength training via the Peloton app and if I select “strength” as my workout on the Garmin, it wants to count reps which isn’t always the case for a class. So I usually just select “Cardio” but I’m not really doing cardio.. I’m doing strength. And the other day I selected cardio instead of an indoor cycle and it counted my cycle as steps.. I think because I selected cardio maybe it thought I was running. But I was cycling.. and definitely didn’t get 2500 steps doing that. So I am still trying to figure out the right workouts to select to get an accurate read. This one is 100% user error and I’m still learning.
3. Overall Learning Curve: It took me a full month to figure this watch out. I can say that with the Apple Watch, it takes maybe 3 days to get used to everything. This Garmin is complicated when you first get it and I can say that I have barely scratched the service with its capabilities. Again, a pro and a con but for someone who isn’t super techy, it’s a little frustrating. The Garmin is definitely “techy” and sometimes I feel like I’m not sophisticated enough for it. But I do think it’s more accurate than the Apple in so many ways as mentioned above. I was talking to one of my guy friends the other night about this watch and he has had it for years and says will never switch back. So his testimony made me feel more confident in my switch, too.

Final opinion: you can’t go wrong with either Apple or Garmin but if you make the switch, you’ll probably hate it for awhile like me before loving it. If you’re “techy,” a true runner or athlete, have an Android, and love the bells and whistles of a smart watch, the Garmin is for you. If these don’t fit your criteria, get the new Apple Watch 6 series that just launched. Apple put the blood oxygen level technology in the new 6 series as well as sleep patterns like the Garmin (which is interesting since the battery life is so short on Apple.. interested to see how that works if you sleep with it on and then want to wear it all day the next day). That’s next on Alix’s wish list so hopefully she can give us her review in a few months.

Let me know if you have specific questions about either smart watch in the comments! Or, if you have any tips or tricks if you have the Garmin.. I need all the techy help!

xo, H