The Garmin Venu 4 (45mm) is the company’s latest to bridge the gap between a sleek, everyday smartwatch and a powerful, dedicated multisport fitness tracker. Building significantly on the Venu 3, the Venu 4 introduces a more premium metalized design and brings over some of Garmin’s most advanced training features previously reserved for its high-end Forerunner and Fenix lines and I also feel it is taking on WHOOP with some of its features on board which is fine, WHOOP has no display and the watch does so it is a matter of wanting less time on your phone here which I do and have been doing getting metrics on the go by looking at your watch.
The 45mm Venu 4 represents a significant upgrade in build quality, moving to a full metal case that feels noticeably more premium and robust than its predecessors. The watch is stylish enough to look at home in an office setting but durable enough for the trail. It is a familiar design like many watches out there but you can up the style with different bands on offer which are nice like the leather bands.
The 1.4-inch AMOLED display is bright, vibrant, and highly responsive, offering excellent visibility even in direct sunlight. For me after using the watch for some weeks I found this display and it stands out and you can of course customize it even more with faces and make it stand out more.
A new hardware addition is the built-in LED flashlight (with white and red light modes), a feature trickled down from Garmin’s high-end watches, which is surprisingly useful for visibility during night runs or finding something in the dark like keys for trying to get into your house for example or just general looking for things in the dark.
This is where the Venu 4 truly excels, incorporating professional-grade metrics into a lifestyle watch:
- Training Readiness and Status: Borrowed from the Forerunner series, you now get a morning score based on sleep quality, recovery, HRV, and acute load, helping you determine if you should push hard or take a rest day. Training Status gives you deeper insight into the effectiveness of your overall regimen.
- Dual-Frequency GPS: The inclusion of Multi-Band (Dual-Frequency) GNSS is a major technical upgrade. This provides superior positional accuracy, especially in challenging environments like dense cities or canyons, making it a reliable tool for runners and outdoor athletes.
- Lifestyle Logging: A new wellness feature allows you to manually log behaviors like caffeine or alcohol intake directly on the watch. The Garmin Connect app then correlates these entries with changes in key metrics like sleep, stress, and HRV, offering genuinely useful insights into how your daily habits impact your well-being. For me logging things daily is annoying however tried it out here with a general task every day it will pormpt you every day which is not bad for those wanting to use such a feature.
- Sleep Metrics: The watch offers comprehensive sleep coaching, tracking naps, and introducing Sleep Alignment (how well your sleep pattern matches your circadian rhythm) and Sleep Consistency again wasted on me never used such.
- Over 80 Sports Apps: The Venu 4 covers virtually every activity, including new features like Mixed Session profiles for tracking multiple activities in one workout (e.g., a triathlon or Hyrox session).
The 45mm Venu 4 offers up to 12 days of battery life in standard smartwatch mode, which is a colossal advantage over competitors like the Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch which I have both of and can confirm in the real world this is the best watch for battery end of story I own right now.
Always-On Display (AOD): If you use the always-on display, the battery life drops to about 4-5 days, which is still competitive.
GPS Use: Even with the high-accuracy Multi-Band GPS active, the watch can last up to 19 hours, making it excellent for long hikes or marathon training mostly used with ealks for me as out with an injury and still am confined to an extent.
While the Venu 4 is a powerful all-rounder, it has a couple of minor trade-offs:
It lacks the deep, seamless integration and third-party app ecosystem of watches running Apple’s or Google’s operating systems. The voice assistant functionality relies on your paired phone and can feel a bit clunky. I am use to having full rich notifications but this is not the case here with no images in emails such as my cameras etc not a huge deal but miss it.
Unlike some competitors, there is no option for LTE connectivity, meaning you must have your phone nearby for full connectivity and calls however I think most are in this same situation and use the watch and phone for me it has always been the case.
It sits at a higher price point than its predecessor, reflecting the addition of the premium materials and advanced training features and price can be a factor for some people with the feature set, Garmin has a loyal following like Apple and Samsung.
The Garmin Venu 4 45mm which is the model I tested is an exceptional choice for the user who wants a watch that transitions effortlessly between the gym, the trail, and the boardroom. It successfully blends an attractive, premium design with Garmin’s leading-edge fitness and recovery data. If you prioritize multi-day battery life, highly accurate GPS, and deep insights into your fitness and recovery metrics like WHOOP does over the smart communication features of an Apple or Galaxy Watch, the Venu 4 is easily one of the best watches on the market right now if you are not fussy over some small caveats.
Garmin Connect App
Features
- Smartwatch with a bright, colourful display, stainless steel design, and built-in flashlight; Available in two sizes: 41mm and 45mm.
- Make improvements to promote a healthier lifestyle and know your body better with extensive health monitoring features, including wrist-based heart rate, Body Battery energy monitoring, fitness age, stress tracking, meditation and more (device data presented is intended to be a close estimation of metrics tracked)
- Get a sleep score and personalised sleep coaching, including recommendations for how much sleep you need, tips on how to improve, alignment on your inner sleep cycle by using circadian rhythm and more; breathing variations feature uses Pulse Ox to check your level of variations while sleeping (this is not a medical device, and device data presented is intended to be a close estimation of metrics tracked; Pulse Ox is required and not available in all countries)
- The health status feature looks for changes in your health data that could indicate added stress to your body for key metrics — such as heart rate, HRV, skin temperature and more — which could be related to factors such as physical activity, potential illness or other health changes (device data presented is intended to be a close estimation of metrics tracked).
- Log custom or preset daily behaviors — such as caffeine and alcohol intake — and view reports in the Garmin Connect smartphone app on how lifestyle choices may impact your sleep, stress and HRV to help you make more health-conscious decisions (device data presented is intended to be a close estimation of metrics tracked)
- Find new ways to keep your body moving with daily suggested workouts and more than 80 built-in indoor and GPS sports apps, including walking, running, cycling, HIIT, swimming, mobility, mixed session to track multiple activities in one session and more; plus, get easy-to-follow workouts for several activity types or even create your own workouts in the Garmin Connect app
- Reach for your goals with Garmin Coach training plans for running, cycling, strength and fitness, which can provide personalised workouts based on your health, fitness and recovery metrics. Take on any fitness journey with advanced training features such as workout benefit — which helps you understand how each workout affected your body — and training readiness to help determine whether you should go hard or take it easy plus training status for insight into your overall effort