Tag: daily

Garmin Venu 4 45mm Smartwatch Review

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
  • Enjoy the convenience of making and taking phone calls from your wrist — even use your smartphone’s voice assistant to respond to text messages and more (when paired with your compatible iPhone or Android smartphone); plus, you can respond to texts via voice, or Android users can text directly from the smartwatch
  • ECG app can record your heart rhythm and check for signs of atrial fibrillation (not available in all regions; for people 22 years or older)
  • Enjoy connectivity features, including music for phone-free listening and Garmin Pay contactless payments that allow you to leave your cash and cards at home (with a supported bank and payment network)

BUY

Other smartwatch reviews

Video Review

Sky’s the limit for Inflight Dublin as Landmark Technologies secures operations

Landmark Technologies, an Irish provider of IT and cybersecurity services, today announces that it is helping to secure daily operations for in-flight entertainment provider Inflight Dublin. Together, Landmark and Inflight Dublin’s IT team have developed a customised cybersecurity solution tailored to Inflight Dublin’s specific needs. This integrated solution counters rising cyber threats, safeguards critical data, and provides a secure foundation for innovative in-flight entertainment solutions that enhance the passenger experience.

Headquartered in Dublin and with locations in North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, Inflight Dublin provides blockbuster movies, popular TV programmes, music, apps, games, and moving maps to leading airlines worldwide. These include Qatar Airways, Condor Flugdienst GmbH, Copa Airlines, Gulf Air, Philippine Airlines, Sunclass Airlines, and Ethiopian Airlines.

As Inflight Dublin collaborates closely with Hollywood studios to provide top content for customers, data security is paramount. The nature of the business requires many employees to travel overseas, and Landmark secures all devices and networks for the company’s 55-strong team – wherever they’re working.

As cyber threats continue to grow more sophisticated, Landmark works closely with Inflight Dublin’s internal IT team to provide rapid response and remediation should an incident occur. In addition, the tailored solution is boosting resilience for Inflight Dublin with onsite and offsite data backups to ensure business continuity in the event of an incident. Regular penetration testing identifies any cybersecurity gaps or vulnerabilities, and Landmark provides cybersecurity awareness training to employees.

Landmark’s technology, seamlessly integrated with Inflight Dublin’s bespoke solutions, enables a secure, immersive, and uninterrupted entertainment experience for airline passengers. Inflight Dublin recently completed a major IT infrastructure upgrade, deploying data centre-grade systems engineered for fault tolerance, redundancy, and maximum uptime. This enhancement ensures the continued rapid delivery of content and publication updates to in-flight entertainment systems worldwide including Inflight Dublin’s own wireless platform, Everhub.

Additionally, Inflight Dublin recently announced a new partnership with TED to bring thought-provoking TED Talks to its onboard content offering.

Pat Nolan, Director of IT & Information Security, Inflight Dublin, said: “Against the backdrop of a changing cyber landscape, this advanced security solution from Landmark and our teams gives us the confidence to continue to roll out our services, safe in the knowledge that our data and operations are fully protected. Effective cybersecurity is of the utmost importance in the aviation industry, and we are committed to providing secure solutions for customers which offer passengers an engaging and entertaining in-flight experience. In addition, even when located in different regions and time zones, our teams can work and collaborate securely to ultimately drive innovation for the business.”

Ken Kelleher, Managing Director, Landmark Technologies, said: “We are providing peace of mind and resilience for Inflight Dublin as the company continues to grow and evolve. Seamless access to movies and TV is a top priority for many airlines and as customers’ needs become more complex, our ultra-secure services reduce cyber risk and enhance capabilities. Meanwhile, our customer-first ethos and proactive support is crucial for Inflight Dublin, particularly as its team is often dispersed. Landmark is enabling Inflight Dublin to take off and deliver its services quickly and efficiently, while futureproofing operations and supporting seamless scalability in line with business growth.”

45% of Irish commuters stressed by their daily journey

KINTO Join – a provider of sustainable mobility applications – today reveals the findings of its survey which found that 45% of commuters in Ireland find their journey to work or university stressful.

The research – conducted by Censuswide and involving 1,000 people who commute to work or university in the Republic of Ireland – found that more than half (51%) have considered changing their commute method. However, 48% have never tried a different mode of transport for their commute.

Traffic delays and congestion were cited by 44% of commuters as one of their biggest frustrations. The other leading frustrations were fuel costs (30%), the time lost having to commute (30%), the weather (29%), and delays with services (15%).

Driving by car is the most popular primary mode of transport (51%) among commuters. However, only 16% prefer to travel this way. If available, the bus was the most preferred means of commuting (25%), followed by the train (24%) and walking (23%). One in ten (10%) respondents said they would prefer a company or university shuttle.

In urban areas, driving by car and getting the bus were tied for the top spot as the most popular primary mode of transport (at 32% respectively). In terms of generations, almost twice as many Generation X commuters drive by car (63%) than Generation Z commuters (32%).

Of those who commute by car, 91% always or mostly do so alone. Their top reasons for travelling to work or university by car are that it is more time-efficient (48%), it is the only option (43%), and inadequate public transport accessibility (34%).

The study found that the average daily commute time is around 1 hour and 10 minutes, whilst the average daily cost is €10. Train commuters have the most expensive journey to work or university (€13.14). At the other end of the scale, (excluding walkers) eBike commuters have the least expensive commute (€4.71).

As for the average distance of a one-way commute, this is just shy of 17km, with those in Roscommon (30.56km), Wicklow (24.97km), and Westmeath (23.76km) travelling furthest. Meanwhile, respondents in Longford (6.13km), Waterford (9.58km), and Donegal (11km) have the shortest distances to travel.

Patrizia Niehaus, CEO, KINTO Join Ltd, said: “It’s ironic that while so many commuters in Ireland drive alone out of necessity, a significant number would actually prefer not to. They’re frustrated – by traffic, rising fuel costs, and the stress of it all – but don’t feel they have another choice. Of course, large-scale infrastructure upgrades are vital, but they take time. In the meantime, the congestion worsens, and emissions reduction targets slip further out of reach. That’s why action at the micro-level is so critical.

“A large share of short-distance travel happens for work and education. Employers and institutions are uniquely positioned to support more sustainable commuting through initiatives like shared transport schemes, carpooling platforms, or incentives for walking and cycling. When organisations take the lead, they not only support their own sustainability goals, but also drive behavioural change that benefits entire communities — cutting emissions, easing traffic, and giving people what they clearly want: the freedom not to drive alone.”

Achieving sustainability goals in the era of AI

Today, as AI seamlessly integrates into our daily lives, its adoption and impact are no longer a question of ‘if’ but ’when’ and – most importantly – ’how’. Mark Hopkins, Sales Director at Dell Technologies Ireland

According to a Dell Technologies study, 76% of IT leaders believe that generative AI (GenAI) will be significant or transformative for their organizations. Meanwhile, McKinsey estimates that work automation using GenAI, and other technologies will boost productivity by 60-70%.

As AI becomes more embedded in our daily lives, its potential to help build a more sustainable future is becoming increasingly evident. AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data allows businesses and governments to make more informed decisions about sustainability efforts. Moreover, from optimising energy consumption to enhancing supply chain efficiency new technologies can help achieve sustainable goals in the era of AI.

This comes as the EU pushes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 and achieve climate neutrality by 2050, new sustainability reporting standards are being enforced, compelling businesses to rethink their ESG strategies.

Organisations in Ireland see the opportunities that lie ahead. Dell’s Innovation Catalysts Study found that 80% of Irish business leaders said that emerging technologies has positively impacted their sustainability goals, with 37% using technology to improve energy efficiency.

However, integrating AI is not without challenges. One of the most pressing concerns is the energy intensity of AI technologies. According to a Gartner® report1, increasing adoption of GenAI will lead to dramatic increases in energy use, with annual ICT electricity increases of 25% or more. This rise in energy use threatens sustainability goals, as companies risk falling short of environmental performance targets.

Accelerating energy efficiency

Modernising data center infrastructure is one of the most effective ways to advance sustainability. AI can support this by driving efficiencies while also enhancing company’s ability to monitor and manage its carbon footprint.

Energy-efficient technology has also evolved significantly over the years, rendering old hardware a burden. What took six servers in 2013 takes just one today. Meanwhile, innovative software and remote management solutions can provide an overview of the organization’s energy usage and environmental impact.

By carefully designing their IT environment in line with their priorities, businesses can find a balance between reducing their physical footprint, increasing efficiency, and equipping themselves with the capacity they need to grow.

However, as companies approach IT transformation, what they do with their data will have implications for future growth. 37% of respondents to the 2023 Dell GenAI Pulse Survey indicated that their data and intellectual property are too valuable to be placed in a GenAI tool to which a third party might have access. By bringing AI to your data, you can maintain data sovereignty while embracing the benefits of GenAI.

As-a-Service enabling AI transformation while advancing sustainability

The demand for flexible consumption models like ‘As a Service’ (aaS) is growing, as it offers companies greater agility in developing AI workloads. A Forrester study found that 88% of businesses expect sustainability benefits from adopting aaS model, and 65% anticipate cost savings for more than 10%.

An aaS model ensures access to the latest, energy efficient hardware produced with sustainability in mind, all while reducing waste.

By opting for an aaS model, businesses can cut costs and reduce waste while gaining more control over their applications and data, thereby allowing them to modernise their IT environment and scale with AI where necessary.

Adopting AI without compromising energy efficiency to drive the future of work

Modern devices are increasingly being designed, manufactured, and shipped with sustainability in mind, in addition to having intelligent AI-enabled features that keep users productive. For instance, Dell Optimiser adapts and responds to how users work, adjusting performance to meet peak worktimes and extending battery life through intelligent power-saving features.

Simple actions such as aligning energy settings with performance needs, powering down devices after work, and using rechargeable peripherals contribute to energy efficiency.

Regular technology refresh cycles also ensure that companies are operating with the most energy-efficient devices, reducing both upfront costs and total cost of ownership while driving sustainability efforts forward.

Leveraging AI for a more sustainability future

Adopting energy-efficient infrastructure is a powerful way to advance sustainability and is already bringing about a shift in how businesses in Ireland approach innovation and growth, especially in the context of the country’s goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

However, integrating AI into these efforts requires a commitment from the entire organisation. To fully leverage these opportunities, businesses must adopt a holistic approach, bringing together leaders from various departments to collaborate and embed AI-driven strategies into every aspect of their operations.

As Ireland embarks on this critical journey towards a sustainable future, the era of AI has begun, and there has never been a better time to prioritize multifaceted energy-efficient initiatives that align with national carbon reduction goals.