Why you can trust Live Science
Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best ones for you. Find out more about how we test.
The Garmin Venu 4 is a fairly high-end fitness and running watch that does not have the same baggage as a Fenix or Forerunner. It looks less obviously like an athlete’s wearable, which will be appealing to some.
In this generation, though, you miss out on little substance compared to those marathon-botherer watches. As a result, the Garmin Venu 4 is potentially a significantly better run training partner than the Venu 3 ever was.
This added functionality comes at a price. The Garmin Venu 4 costs a chunk more than the previous generation, at $549/£469 or $599/£519 with a leather strap. This means it is priced roughly the same as the Forerunner 570 (or £10 more in the U.K.).
Garmin Venu 4 at Amazon for $534.99Garmin Venu 4 smartwatch reviewGarmin Venu 4: DesignSleek, minimalistic designLight and comfortable to wearMore touchscreen-led than most other Garmin watches
The Garmin Venu 4 is a perfect everyday smartwatch. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
Key specs
Battery life: 24 days
GPS availability: Yes, multi-band
Water resistance: 5ATM. Suitable for swimming.
Display type: 2.07-inch AMOLED
Heart rate monitoring: Yes
Sleep monitoring: Yes
Venu is Garmin’s most smartwatch-like series. That means we get lower-profile buttons, and fewer of them, in the Garmin Venu 4 compared to a watch from, for example, the Forerunner series.
The Venu 4 comes in two sizes, 1.6 and 1.8 inches (41mm and 45mm) in diameter, and what you see here is the chunkier version with the “citron” strap. In either case, though, the Garmin Venu 4’s pricing and construction are the same.
We get a stainless steel bezel, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screen projection and moderate 5ATM water resistance. It could have used Corning Victus glass or Sapphire, both of which are more scratch-resistant. Using titanium instead of steel might shave off even more weight. But Garmin only uses these materials in its most expensive watches.
Garmin also makes smart use of plastic in the casing, to avoid having to make cutouts for the LED flash and speaker. A Venu 4 does use more metal than the Venu 3, though.
Garmin is known more for making good watches rather than bargain watches. This stuff is the norm for the brand.
The Garmin Venu 4 is one of the sleekest and most smartwatch-like models in the brand’s line-up. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
The Garmin Venu 4 watch feels light and comfortable, and there’s a slight brushed finish to the stainless steel outer that looks good. This watch weighs 1.4 oz (39 g) without its strap, or 1.9 oz (54 g) with. Alternatively, you could reduce that a little by buying a lighter nylon fabric one.
The Garmin Venu 4 is light and comfortable to wear. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
This is a more touchscreen-led watch than most other Garmins. The Venu 4’s upper button acts as “select”, the lower one is a “back” button, so you do need to start swiping to get around the interface, and using touch can feel a bit fiddly when tracking more intensive exercise sessions.
On a few occasions, we’d even go as far as to describe it as infuriating. The longest tracked sessions during my time with the Venu 4 was a six-hour hike across the U.K.’s North Downs, and the wet conditions meant the sleeve of my waterproof kept setting off the touchscreen, and making a podcast play on my phone.
This happened far more than a half dozen times before I fiddled with the screen lock settings to improve (although not entirely fix) the situation. We also find having to swipe to unlock the Venu 4 screen during runs quite annoying, compared to the button-led feel of the Forerunner series watches. Be prepared. Touch is not the default in “Garmin UI” land.
We were not too impressed with the touchscreen-led approach of the Garmin Venu 4. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)Garmin Venu 4: FeaturesPacked with smart featuresNo offline mapsHigh-end fitness tracking
The Venu 4’s identity as Garmin’s premier smartwatch-style wearable is not just about design and interface. It’s also apparent in the feature set.
This watch has a speaker, a microphone and three key smart features that use them. Voice Command is perhaps the most interesting, a specialized Garmin voice assistant of sorts that you can ask to set timers, start activities, skip songs and other basic watch features. It’s not a life-changing feature and sometimes boots you out without your seemingly doing anything. But you can set a long-press of one of the buttons to access Voice Command if you like.
Voice Assistant, meanwhile, lets you use the Venu 4 as a portal to your phone’s voice assistant. There’s also a Voice Note recorder, which can have a GPS location tagged to it if you choose. However, there’s no quick access to record while actually tracking your location. As this feels like it could be a good fit for hiking, Voice Notes ends up feeling a little half-baked as of early 2026.
Smart features like these are not Garmin’s traditional wheelhouse. Whether you value them over what you get with the similarly-priced Forerunner 965 is a key question for Venu 4 buyers.
The Garmin Venu 4 is jam-packed with smart features. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
The biggie the Garmin Venu 4 lacks is maps. While the watch has 8 GB of storage, this is just for music and other audio —which can be streamed to wireless headphones or played (quietly) through the speaker.
During testing we plotted a half marathon route and sent it to the watch. While the Garmin Venu 4 guided us along the route just fine, all you see is a line and an indication of the next turn. It does not show roads or other features.
This does not mean the Garmin Venu 4 is not an enthusiast-level fitness tracker, though. Spend a moment customizing the interface and you can get a daily view on your Training Readiness and Running Performance, including VO2 Max. You get Running Dynamics and Performance Condition.
In fact, almost everything fitness-wise in Garmin’s more hardcore Forerunner watches is here, including Training Load. This is a much more nerdy exercise pal than you might guess under the surface, matching the Forerunner 570 in most respects.
The Garmin Venu 4 is surprisingly fitness-focused for an everyday smartwatch. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
The Garmin Venu 4 is also one of the few Garmin watches with ECG readings. This is where the electrical signals of your heart are analyzed rather than the watch simply “looking at” your wrist, which is how the standard heart rate reader hardware works.
There’s even a little adventuring thread in the Venu 4. It has a flashlight built into the top, with three white intensity levels and a red LED, too, for when you want minimal light output. Such a light only used to be found in the biggest and chunkiest of Garmin watches. A long press of the lower button toggles the torch too, making it extremely convenient.
Garmin Venu 4: PerformanceVery good location trackingTop-level stats trackingDecent battery life
Garmin says the Venu 4 can last up to 12 days of use from a charge, or 10 days for the 41 mm version. After 69 hours of use (just under three days), the watch had lost 43% of charge. This suggests it will last for a little under a week.
It’s a fair bit lower than the claim, but that did include upwards of 6 hours of GPS-tracked exercise. This is significantly more battery-sapping than normal use, as the screen stays lit the entire time during workouts by default.
The Garmin Venu 4 lasts up to 12 days on a single charge. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
Quoted battery life is slightly shorter than in the previous generation, down from 14 days, which could be down to increased screen brightness. It is much better stamina than you’d get from a Wear OS smartwatch, though.
As with all OLED Garmin watches, the Always-on display mode has a major hit on battery life. This shows the time when the Venu 4 is not actively in use, to make it a more useful device for telling the time. Like an actual watch.
In 28 hours, just over a day, it lost 32% charge. Again, this was with a couple of hours of more battery-sapping exercise tracking, but it suggests battery life of up to four days. As a result we mostly used the Venu 4 in its standard mode, with gesture and touch screen-waking.
Elsewhere, the Garmin Venu 4 gets a major generational upgrade in its GPS. It has dual-frequency location tracking, which can significantly improve tracking reliability in areas where signal tends to be compromised, like in dense forests or high-rise-packed cities. If you tend to run around typical suburban streets and open parks, you’re unlikely to notice much of a difference. But the GPS tracking all-round is excellent.
The Garmin Venu 4 is well-suited for tracking outdoor exercise. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
The Garmin Venu 4’s heart rate reader hardware is the same as the Venu 3’s. It’s also the same stuff seen in every top Garmin of the moment, so that’s no issue. We have reviewed many Garmins with it, and its performance is entirely familiar. The Venu 4’s heart rate accuracy during runs, and throughout the day, is great. A good HR chest strap will still do much better for non-cardio-based sessions where spikes are short, sharp and frequent. But Garmin’s performance remains much better than the majority of wrist-based heart rate reading wearables.
The Garmin Venu 4 is a highly reliable fitness tracker. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
How about sleep tracking? As with any watch like this, you’ll find it sometimes — or often — misses wakeful moments, but impressions of tracked sleep days have largely aligned with our expectations. And as usual, if you have a few glasses of wine before bed, Garmin will always pick up on it .
Garmin is more interested in HRV (heart rate variability) than most. It’s one of the better stats for determining if your body is under stress, be that actual stress, illness or being run down. And while the actual overnight HRV score the Venu 4 spits out may seem opaque initially, it also feeds into sleep scores.
We’ve found this one of the best indicators of short-term health. When you’re getting run down or ill, the Venu 4 will pretty much always pick up on that in your HRV scores.
The Garmin Venu 4 does a relatively good job of monitoring your stress, sleep and stress levels. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)Should you buy the Garmin Venu 4?
The Garmin Venu 4 appears to be business as usual. It’s a fitness watch with a sleeker smartwatch style. But there are significant changes this time.
Garmin’s Venu 4 gets a big stats injection compared to the Venu 3. Training Load, Training Readiness and Running Dynamics make this a surprisingly hardcore coach, especially when matched with one of Garmin’s free training plans.
It’s surprisingly close to the Forerunner 570 in ability, and brings extras like ECG too. Just make sure you’re game for touchscreen-led use, as there are minimal buttons here and it can feel relatively fiddly after, and during, a workout.
Buy it if: You want a less nerdy-looking fitness and running watch that still has all the stats seen in high-end watches made for ultramarathon bores.
Do not buy it if: You don’t care about the smart features and slicker style, as a Forerunner generally feels more practical in day-to-day use.
(Image credit: Andrew Williams)Garmin Venu 4: Related products
If your main goal is a watch with smartwatch style that lasts far longer than an Apple Watch you have plenty of cheaper options, including the OnePlus Watch Lite and Motorola Moto Watch Fit. These are more affordable, although they provide generally rather less accurate stats and less depth.
Within the Garmin family, there are a couple of key alternatives. For similar money you can pick up the Forerunner 570, which has more buttons but lacks the ECG and flashlight while not adding any substantial stats. Or if you’re willing to pick an older model, the Forerunner 965 was a 2023 favourite, and has downloadable maps. But its screen is significantly dimmer, and it has an older version of Garmin’s interface.
Garmin Venu 4: How we tested
We tested the Garmin Venu 4 for over two months. (Image credit: Andrew Williams)
The Garmin Venu 4 was used as our primary wearable for 7 weeks ahead of this write-up. This included a little under 310 miles (500 km) of run tracking, including a full marathon distance session and a six-hour hike. But most workouts were far more ordinary: gym trips lasting around an hour and runs of a similar length.
We wore the watch overnight for most of the testing period, too, which is a key part of getting the most from Garmin’s training readiness and Body Battery stats.
Garmin Venu 4: Price Comparison
