One of the world’s largest smartwatch vendors, Garmin is back in town with its new smartwatch, Garmin Venu Sq. This is a budget-friendly smartwatch that is launched to give direct competition to Apple Watch SE.
Garmin also hopped onto this new market of premium budget-friendly smartwatch section (if that is a thing!). The new Garmin Venu Sq is a toned-down version of the last year’s Garmin Venu.
Notably, the Garmin Venu went straight against the last year’s Apple Watch 5. And with no surprise, the company wants to be a competition in this new segment where Apple has ventured.
However, there is no word on the Garmin Venu 2 and whether the smartwatch will see the light of the day or not. Or the company might as well think that the last year’s Venu is still capable of Apple Watch 6.
To give you some context, it weighs around 37.6 grams and has 11.5mm thickness. The display of the Garmin Venu Sq is slightly bigger at 1.3-inch as compared to last year’s Venu, which sported a 1.2-inch display.
Garmin Venu Sq sports a new design but the same old insides
The design of the Garmin Venu Sq is revamped, but now it looks like a knock-off of the Apple Watch. Though the design does not look that bad, it is still a clone.
Comparing with another clone of the Apple Watch, i.e. the Oppo Watch, the Garmin Venu Sq lacks style and finish. The device has a square shape and is lighter and more compact.
The Garmin Venu Sq smartwatch lets off the AMOLED display for a liquid crystal technology display, which is a downside of being a budget smartwatch.
The resolution also went down from 390 x 390 pixels to 240 x 240. The bezels of the smartwatch is now made up of aluminum instead of stainless steel. The display has Gorilla Glass 3 screen protection.
Garmin touts the Venu Sq to give up to six days of the screen on time. Sadly though, the screen on time drops to 14 hours when GSP is enabled.
Talk about the features of the app, it keeps all the previous year’s features like all-day health monitoring, sleep, menstrual cycle, Pulse Ox sensor to track blood oxygen levels, and stress tracking. The Garmin Venu Sq misses out on the barometric altimeter and compass.
The budget smartwatch is up of Amazon for $199.99
There are two variants of the Garmin Venu Sq, i.e. the normal and the Venu Sq Music Edition. The former costs $199.99, while the music edition costs $249.99.
The Garmin Venu Sq Music Edition has additional phone-free support thanks to on-device music storage. You can download your favorite tracks from Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer.
On a comparison level, Apple Watch SE is sharp, smooth, and fast, and Fitbit Versa 3 is the actual competitor of the Garmin new smartwatch than the Apple one.