Many features, well hidden

Review: Garmin Venu 4 - Both smartwatch and sports watch

Garmin's families of smartwatches and sports watches come closer together in Venu 4.

Published 9 December 2025 - 16:42

I always get a bit dizzy when I try to sort out the differences between Garmin's various product lines. Here are the pure sports watches like Forerunner and Fenix, and the more distinct smartwatches like Vivoactive and Venu. The difference between Vivoactive and Venu, in turn, is that Vivoactive is cheaper and more stripped down than Venu. So far, everything is somewhat logical, but knowing exactly what features you can expect from each given Garmin watch is no easy task.

Garmin Venu 4 makes it both simpler and more complicated, because compared to its predecessor, it has expanded the sports functions so that we get basically the same set of training functions as in Forerunner 570. On one hand, it blurs the boundaries between Garmin's product families, on the other hand, there is a logic in that Garmin's more expensive smartwatches are for those who do not want to have to choose between a sports watch and a smartwatch. If you are most interested in smartwatch features and more basic training, choose the cheaper Vivoactive, if you want to log and analyse workouts but don't care much about notifications and apps, choose Forerunner. If you want both, then Vivoactive 4 is the option.

Steel instead of plastic

Compared to Vivoactive 6, Venu 4 is also a bit more luxurious in materials. Garmin's watches never feel particularly lavish, durability is prioritised over style. Here we have steel in the case and sides, but the back is plastic.

Garmin Venu 4 comes in two sizes, 41 and 45 mm, and I am testing the smaller 41 mm variant. The measurement is the outer dimension of the watch's body, the screen is 1.2 inches. There are quite thick black bezels around the screen but you don't think much about it. More so about the screen being really bright and easy to read even in daylight. On the side, there are two buttons (compared to three on the Garmin Venu 3), a speaker and a microphone. You can use the watch as a headset and activate voice control on the mobile. This is a feature missing in the cheaper Vivoactive. There is also a flashlight directed to the side.

Garmin's system looks roughly the same regardless of which watch you choose. You have a watch face that you can change, you have a combined training and app menu, you have notifications and you have quick shortcuts. This is something we recognise from almost all other smartwatches, which makes it easy to learn. The most original are the widgets that you get if you swipe up from the watch face. It is a series of panels with information about health values, sleep, weather and more that you can add and sort, and that you swipe through to easily access the information you are interested in.

Rich in health data

The watch has the classic sensors to measure heart rate, movement, air pressure and more, and these in turn are used to register pulse, heart rhythm, sleep, fitness training, number of steps and so on. This is presented on the watch face, on widgets and in the Garmin Connect app. There is an incredible amount of information to delve into here, and it is not always organised in an understandable way. On several watch faces I test, there are fields that I cannot figure out what they show, the watch faces are not interactive so I cannot click on them to find out what the meters point out. At one point the watch even pings and announces that my metabolic age has been adjusted downwards. Interesting, I think, and search among widgets, apps and settings for more information about what this means and if there is anything more I can do to stay young. I find it nowhere in the watch, but instead in the app.

A lot of available functions are off by default and I really have to search the settings to activate them. Here we have, for example, blood oxygen measurement, reminders to move when you've been sitting still for too long, and automatic logging of walks and bike rides. These functions are probably off to save battery life, but even with them turned on, the battery life is excellent. Garmin states ten days of battery life without always on-display. I get just over that. The larger model lasts 12 days on a charge. That's really good for a smartwatch.

To be called a smartwatch, you might also need to be able to install apps. You can do that on Garmin's watches. The range of third-party apps is not particularly large in the app store, but here you have, for example, Spotify, which allows you to download music to the watch and connect a headset. So you can listen to music during your run without bringing your phone.

Gentle awakening

Two functions in the watch that I try with varying results are smart awakening and lifestyle logging. Smart awakening means you set an alarm time, and if I'm awake or sleeping lightly before then, the watch wakes me up so I don't have to wake up when I'm in deep sleep. It works really well. I choose silent so as not to wake the person sleeping next to me, and then the watch vibrates a little discreetly, only when I'm more or less already awake, and the real alarm goes off at the set time if I haven't reacted to the vibrations before and turned off the alarm.

The lifestyle log is a feature where I can specify various factors I want to keep track of, such as getting daylight or eating fruit every day. In practice, the watch just nags me to make notes all the time, and it becomes more annoying than practical.

I prefer the morning and evening reports. The morning report is a short summary of how the night's sleep was, the weather for the day, and a recommended activity level, which appears on the watch in the morning. The evening report is similarly a summary of the day's efforts.

Logging with gaps

The training logging is, as mentioned, the same as in the Forerunner 570, which means you get detailed running logging including stride length and cadence. On the other hand, I find no options to log a regular strength training session. If I choose strength training, I instead get suggestions for various guided sessions, with voice instructions from the watch. Quite nice, but not what I was looking for this time. When it comes to training logging, Garmin is particularly confusing. It feels as if each watch has its own set of training logs, and it's almost impossible to predict which training forms are available on a particular watch. You'd think it would be simpler if they had a standardised set. Garmin chooses to differentiate the products by giving them different training logging, but it doesn't work as a sales argument if they can't present the differences in logging between the watches.

You can tap payments with the watch and Garmin Pay has good support for Swedish banks. The watch can also take ECGs that can detect atrial fibrillation. You can receive notifications from selected apps on the watch, and if you have an Android phone, you can respond to them with pre-set text phrases that you can edit in Garmin's mobile app. There should also be the possibility to dictate responses using the phone's voice assistant, but I struggled with this during the test period. I tested with a Samsung phone, and despite choosing Google Gemini as the default app for voice communication, it is Bixby that is activated by the Garmin watch, and Bixby does not understand Swedish, or for that matter, that I want to reply to a message.

Garmin Venu is thus a pleasant watch that combines extensive smartwatch and training functions with really good battery life. But the price is quite high for a smartwatch, and it can sometimes be annoyingly difficult to find, or even know about, all the features you can benefit from.

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