The fourth-gen smartwatch doubles down on health insights with Lifestyle Logging and a new Health Status feature
In a surprise announcement, Garmin has today unveiled the Venu 4, a major update to its popular Venu line of smartwatches.
The new device—which starts at $549.99/£469.99 and is available from September 22—continues the mid-range Venu’s positioning as a wellness-first device. However, it features a raft of new upgrades from both hardware and software perspectives.
For this generation, Garmin is introducing a suite of new health-tracking features and a refined metal design with a built-in LED flashlight.
The Venu 4 also retains the multi-day battery life (even with the always-on display enabled) of its predecessors. However, the new 12-day estimate in smartwatch mode for the 45mm model is a slight reduction from the Venu 3 (14 days)—even though, curiously, the claimed battery life of the 41mm edition remains at 10 days for this latest generation.
The launch continues a blockbuster year for Garmin, which has already seen major flagship refreshes in essentially all of its core lines.
The Forerunner 970 and Forerunner 570 kicked things off in May, followed by the all-new, premium Venu X1 in June (which sits above the Venu 4). And, only last month, the Fenix 8 Pro arrived with LTE/SOS features and a MicroLED display.
The Venu 4 represents the latest major update. So, let’s dive into the most important new features.
Health dashboard, behaviour logging, and circadian rhythm analysis
The core of the Venu 4’s new software is a trio of features designed to provide a more holistic view of your health—and they all strike a very similar chord to offerings from rivals duking it out in the wellness space, such as Whoop and Oura.
A new Health Status feature (which launches in beta) will monitor trends in your key metrics while you sleep—including heart rate, HRV, respiration, skin temperature, and Pulse Ox—and alert you if they are trending away from your personal baseline, which could indicate illness or overtraining. It’s a very similar implementation to something like Whoop’s Health Monitor, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Oura’s Readiness Score contributors.
This is backed up by new Lifestyle Logging, which allows you to manually log behaviors like caffeine or alcohol consumption and then view reports in the Garmin Connect app to see how those choices are impacting your sleep, stress, and HRV. Again, very similar to the Whoop Journal, which is now a few years old and was expanded earlier this year.
Finally, the sleep tracking now includes ‘Sleep Alignment’ to help you sync with your natural circadian rhythm, and ‘Sleep Consistency’ to track your average bedtime over the last week. This follows the range of brands prioritizing circadian rhythm tracking and sleep timing in scores, such as with Apple’s just-announced Sleep Score feature.
More advanced fitness tracking—and the flashlight
On the fitness front, a new Garmin Fitness Coach feature provides personalized, heart-rate-based workouts for over 25 different activities, which adapt daily based on your history and recovery.
A new ‘mixed session’ profile also allows you to track multiple activities in a single workout, such as a brick session for triathlon training.
In a massive hardware upgrade, the Venu 4 now includes a built-in LED flashlight, a brilliant feature that has trickled down from Garmin’s high-end Fenix/Epix, Forerunner, and Enduro watches, adding a new layer of utility and safety.
The stylish metal case is available in two sizes: 41mm and 45mm. Both feature a speaker and microphone, too, allowing you to take calls from a paired phone and use its voice assistant.
The Wareable take
At least at first glance, the Venu 4 refresh is a substantial and welcome update that solidifies the Venu’s position as Garmin’s mid-tier, good-for-all smartwatch, designed to compete directly with the likes of Apple Series 11 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 8.
While the Venu 3 was already a great device, the Venu 4’s new software tools make it feel like a much more proactive and intelligent wellness partner. Features like Lifestyle Logging and Health Status bring Garmin up to speed with some of the best features available elsewhere—ones that truly help users connect the dots between their choices and their well-being.
The addition of the LED flashlight—although perhaps not one we ever really expected to come to the sleeker design of the standard Venu line—is a killer feature that adds genuine, everyday utility.
And in an increasingly crowded Garmin lineup, the Venu 4 still has a clear identity as the obvious pickup for those who want deep insights without sacrificing style. We’ll be putting it to the test and providing a comprehensive verdict over the coming couple of months, so stay tuned to see if it performs as well in the real world as it does on paper.
