Garmin Venu 4 first impressions — Garmin’s most popular smartwatch has received some huge upgrades

Early Verdict

The Garmin Venu line is Garmin’s most popular smartwatch, and it just got even smarter with the launch of the Venu 4. The Venu 4 looks pretty similar to its predecessor, but get a little closer, and you’ll see this watch has received some huge upgrades, making it even more appealing, whatever you’re training for. That said, these upgrades have led to a $100 price hike for the Garmin Venu 4.

But how does it compare to the Garmin Venu 3 and Garmin Forerunner 570, which is the same price and also pretty new to the market? To find out more, I’ve gone hands-on with the Garmin Venu 4 for the past week. I’ll be updating this page with a full review in a few weeks, but read on to find my first thoughts on my Garmin Venu 4 hands-on below.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Quick facts

• New stainless steel design: Compared to the Garmin Venu 3, the Garmin Venu 4 has a new, all-metal design, giving it a more premium feel on the wrist. It still comes in two different sizes — 41mm and 45mm.
• Two side buttons: The Venu 4 now has two buttons on the right-hand side of the watch, compared to the three buttons on the Venu 3. Whether this is a positive or negative depends on your personal preferences.
• More advanced training metrics: The Venu 4 has some of Garmin’s most premium health and training features, as well as a bunch of new ones built in, including the new sleep consistency and sleep alignment features, lifestyle logging, and health status.
• Addition of a flashlight: The Venu 4 also now has a flashlight built in. It can be turned on by holding the back button down for a couple of seconds, and you can change the brightness by swiping up and down on the watch. There’s also a red mode, and you can use the flashlight during running and cycling activities to add visibility to your workouts.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Specs

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Price and availability

The Garmin Venu 4 is available now, and costs $549 for the basic model in both the 41mm and 45mm versions, and $599 if you want to add a leather strap. This is a $100 jump from the Garmin Venu 3, which launched at $450.

As mentioned, the watch comes in two different sizes. Both the 41mm and 45mm versions come in lunar gold, slate, and silver, with different color watch straps. For this review, I tested the 41mm lunar gold version with the bone silicone strap.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Design and display

There’s no doubt about it, the Garmin Venu 4 looks beautiful. The all-metal casing, rather than just the metal bezel on the Venu 3, gives the newer watch a more premium feel on the wrist. The watch has a bright, AMOLED touchscreen, which is much brighter than the Venu 3, making it easier to see in direct sunlight. There’s one less button, however, with just two on the right-hand side of the watch, rather than the three buttons on the older model. Whether this is a positive or negative depends on your preferences — as someone who does a lot of swimming, and inevitably a lot of running in the rain, living in the U.K., I much prefer buttons to a touchscreen, but this won’t be the case for everyone.

That said, this brighter display does impact the battery life of the Venu 4, which isn’t quite as long as the Venu 3, but still beats competitors like the Apple Watch Series 11 hands-down.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Health and fitness tracking

When the Venu 3 launched, it introduced sleep features like nap detection, which were new for Garmin at the time. The Venu 4 adds to this with two new sleep features built into the watch — sleep alignment and sleep consistency. You need to wear your watch for three weeks to get a sleep alignment score (despite the fact that my Garmin Connect has years of sleep data), but when you do get a score, a graph will display how your sleep compares to your circadian rhythm. Sleep consistency will look at how consistent you are getting to bed. Both of these features will be available in Garmin Connect for other, newer Garmin watches, but are available on the Venu 4.

The Venu 4 also has Garmin’s new health status alerts. Similar to Whoop, and the Vitals app on the best Apple Watches, these will look at key health metrics like your heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin temperature as you sleep. Once the watch has established a baseline, you’ll be alerted if any of these metrics are out of the ordinary, potentially showing signs of stress, illness, or overtraining. Again, other watches will support this feature, but the Venu 4 has it built in already.

Compared to the Venu 3, the Garmin Venu 4 also gets some of Garmin’s most advanced training tools, including Training Readiness and suggested workouts. In fact, from a training perspective, this watch is exactly the same as the Garmin Forerunner 570. Unlike the Forerunner 570, you can also get ECG readings on the Venu 4, which you can download in a PDF form from the Garmin Connect app and share with your doctor should you need. Despite having the same heart rate sensor, you cannot take ECG readings on the Forerunner 570. There is also no built-in flashlight on the Forerunner 570.

The Venu 4 has Garmin’s gold-standard multi-band GPS, as well as triathlon, duathlon, and trail running modes. It also has training load and load ratio features, as well as heat and altitude acclimation modes. Garmin seems to no longer be positioning this as a smartwatch; instead, the Venu 4 is now a watch with advanced health and fitness tracking.

Finally, the Venu 4 has more accessibility features. The Venu 4 has spoken watch faces and watch data readouts for users with sight loss. There are also customizable filters to improve the readability of the watch screen for color blind users.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Smartwatch features

As mentioned above, despite Garmin positioning this watch as a smartwatch, it hasn’t really gotten any new smartwatch features. It has Garmin Pay, speakers, and a microphone, but other than that, it’s the same as the Forerunner 570 from a smartwatch point of view.

That said, I’d argue that the fewer buttons and the design and feel of this watch make it look more like a smartwatch than a sportswatch. I’d happily wear this watch out to meet friends in the evening, whereas my pink Forerunner 570 definitely looks sportier on my wrist.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Lifestyle logging

Another new feature built into the Garmin Venu 4 is the brand’s new lifestyle logging feature, similar to those available on Whoop and Oura devices. Again, lifestyle logging will roll out to other new watches, but this is the first time we’re seeing it on a Garmin device.

Once it’s set up, you can record things like your caffeine and alcohol consumption, exercise, and how heavy your meals were throughout the day to see over time how these things affect your sleep, stress, and recovery. As you check off factors on any given day, you can track over time to see what they are doing to your body, to make positive changes to your routine.

I’ll continue to log my morning cups of coffee and occasional glasses of wine, and report back on this feature in my full Garmin Venu 4 review.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Battery life

That brighter screen and more demanding dual-frequency GPS has impacted the battery life of the Garmin Venu 4 compared to the Garmin Venu 3. Whereas the Garmin Venu 3 had up to 14 days of battery life in smartwatch mode, this drops to 12 days with the Garmin Venu 4. With the always-on display turned on, this reduces to four days.

Here are all the battery stats:

During my hands-on testing, I’ve been using the Venu 4 for a week, without the always-on display toggled on, completing at least one hour-long workout a day, and haven’t needed to recharge my watch yet.

Garmin Venu 4 hands-on: Early verdict

I’ve been really impressed with the Garmin Venu 4 after a week of testing — this feels like a premium smartwatch, but it’s packed with Garmin’s most advanced health and training features. If you’re upgrading from an older model, you’re getting a lot for your money here. Sure, it’s more expensive than the Venu 3, but it has the newest features built into the watch, as well as the ability to take ECG readings and use the flashlight.

The trickier question for me would be deciding between the Garmin Forerunner 570 and the Garmin Venu 4. Until the Venu 4 landed on my desk, the Forerunner 570 was my top Garmin watch of 2025, but how similar these watches are has confused me. I’m not sure why Garmin didn’t scrap the Venu 4 line and just give the Forerunner 570 an all-metal design, but here we are.

Personally, as a runner and swimmer, I’d lean towards the extra buttons of the Forerunner 570, especially as it makes it easier to actually use the watch when wearing gloves, or in the pool. You’re also getting a slightly larger display, but if you’re not bothered by the touchscreen, the Venu 4 is definitely an appealing model.