Before smart watches, a sports watch is a sports watch. It calculates distance, speed and heart rate (with a chest strap), among others. Some have built-in GPS and they are mostly worn by sports people.
And then, smart watches came along and the division between smart and sporty started to blur. Smart watches build sports capabilities for the sporty users and sports watches build looks and other peripherals for the fashionable set.
I try the Garmin Venu SQ from the perspective of a Forerunner 245 user and I have to admit, sometimes, I'm lost. The Venu SQ is smart in many ways, but not the kind of smart a runner like me values.
Garmin is best known for its sports wearables and with Venu SQ, it strikes a balance between sports and fashion.
It has preloaded exercises so you can choose your workouts. But unless you set the watch to a certain exercise, it won't automatically know that you are running, for example. Which is one feature I like in the Forerunner.
Aesthetically, though, the Venu SQ is much more better-looking than the rugged Forerunner. Its square face makes it look like an Apple iWatch. The strap is light and the watch sits comfortably on the wrist.
It has beautiful colour display that goes blank to save battery and will reappear with motion. The problem is while I'm running, I cannot monitor my pace seamlessly. Sometimes, I look at a blank screen and I have to shake my wrist to see my pace or distance, which is very cumbersome.
HEALTH FEATURES INCLUDED
Aside from exercise, the watch also comes with other health features. Garmin uses elevated heart rate technology to continually monitor data including heart rate, blood oxygen, respiration frequency and stress, to give you a clear picture of your health.
It also has sleep monitoring that lets you keep track of your heart rate and how you sleep at night, as well as calculating oxygen saturation and REM sleep periods. Your daily sleep report will give you the information you need to improve sleep quality.
In many ways, this is Garmin's take on a fashionable smart watch to court the fashionable set, specifically female, because it has a menstrual tracker, (which I don't use, eventhough I'm a woman).
It's a cute and practical watch, and a newbie runner (or exerciser) might find it motivating but for me, I think it doesn't read me as a runner. In fact, when I ran 3km and completed my weekly intensity minute target of 150, there were too much visual confetti as encouragement than I thought necessary.
If you're looking for a pretty watch with health or exercise features, this one might just fit the bill. But if you are like me, runner, unfashionable and well, basic, or if you are familiar with Garmin wearables like Vivo Active, Forerunner or Fenix, then this one can feel like a peculiar regression.
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