Review on Garmin Venu: Rose Gold GPS Smartwatch with Music, Body Energy Monitoring, and Animated Workouts by Marcelo Apriando

I'm from the Google WearOS ecosystem. I liked my Ticwatch but the battery life was short and the fitness and sleep tracking was very inaccurate when it was available. I wanted to track not only steps but also other activities like running, tennis, etc. On a WearOS watch, enabling GPS kills the battery in the watch. On Venu, I was able to track hours of activity with the GPS turned on and used between 20-30%. The Venu really took some getting used to and I call myself an electronics fanatic. The average person would get very frustrated trying to navigate endless menus and settings. I was going to return the watch in a week but reluctantly decided to keep it for myself. Your apps have never been as sophisticated or as interactive as the Apple Watch or WearOS. Yes, they have an app store and I've tried a lot of apps, but there are a lot of limitations, especially because the Garmin SDK is so terrible that people won't write great apps. In addition, there are many different models of Garmin smartwatches and the average developer has to change their code to work with different resolutions, square or round watches, LED or transflective watches. Apart from Revain Music and Spotify, there are no real commercial apps. You can't get Google Maps, Siri, Uber or anything like that. I love the very well designed Garmin Connect app on the phone. It shows me my day very clearly and I can view details and see charts. I also love competitions with friends and family. Unfortunately, they all have to be on the Garmin platform. It's just stupid. Sleep tracking is questionable. I don't know if I should trust that. Doesn't match how I feel in the morning. I love seeing phone notifications on my watch. Like Apple or Android but no option to enter your answer. To do this, you need to pull out the phone. Still, it's nice to be able to glance at your watch and see a text message, Slack, or Hangout without pulling out your phone. Apple Watch and WearOS already do this. The watch is durable, I've had it for 2 months now and there isn't a scratch on my face yet. In general, you have to be really fit to benefit from it. Or maybe you're willing to sacrifice other smartwatch features for much longer battery life. By the way, they do NOT track tennis. That was one of the reasons I bought the watch. I knew this, which is why I use "indoor running" as the closest activity to tennis. Hope that was helpful! Ask questions in the comments section if you have any.