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One minute review
The Garmin Vino 4 is a gem, and one that will cater to moderate to serious exercise enthusiasts who want a great smartwatch with a decent-sized battery and a heavy focus on fitness. While it’s not as rugged as the Forerunner, Instinct or the Phoenix range, it’s better suited to those who want an unobtrusive, premium-looking watch for the office and a powerhouse for runs and rides, something between a Samsung Galaxy watch and a regular Garmin.
The operating system, as clever as it is, also has some cumbersome monotony: I’m so used to Google and Apple’s rise-to-speak voice assistants that using the top buttons and touchscreen to access Garmin’s voice assistant functionality, which I use to set kitchen timers and the like, seems almost arcane and counter-intuitive.
However, these are minor niggles: in general, the watch performs admirably. While the lack of full-color directional maps is disappointing, the interface works fine when following courses during runs, and the voice assistant is as responsive as Siri, if not as sophisticated as an on-device AI like Gemini. The 12-day battery life in smartwatch mode is an accurate measurement: I wore the watch for 10 days before needing to charge it, which was plenty of work to do. Heart rate readings from Garmin’s Elevate V5 sensor are accurate enough for all but elite athletes, but I’ll touch on that more in the performance section of this review.
New health tools like lifestyle logging and health status are useful, especially the self-reporting lifestyle logging structure, which allows you to assign tags to your day (caffeine, alcohol, healthy food, heavy food, and so on) to show the effects of different stimuli on your measurements.
Garmin’s usual outstanding metrics are present and accurate: As a regular runner, I find stride length, cadence and so on useful for tweaking my technique, and Garmin’s race calendar and primary race widget are second to none. It’s a worthy purchase for anyone who wants a Garmin, but doesn’t like the look that many of them share.
Garmin Venu 4: Price and Availability
- 9,549.99 in the US
- 9 469.99 in UK
- AU$949 in Australia
The Garmin Vino 4 costs $549.99 / £469.99 / au $949, and that’s true for both the 41mm and 45mm sizes. You get a choice of silver, slate and lunar gold colors – I have the slate option, and it looks great – and you can pay an extra $50 / £50 / au$69 for the other bands. I’m seriously considering splurging on a gray leather band, which would really take on the slate look.
In terms of value, it’s around the price of the more expensive Apple or Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, and I’d say that’s about where it sits in the market. It lacks smart communication credentials, it includes battery life and fitness features. There’s no getting around it’s price compared to the older Veno 3, but the premium metal body and extra features make it worth the trade-off.
Value Score: 4/5
Garmin Venu 4: Specifications
Components | Garmin Vino 4 (41mm) | Garmin Vino 4 (45mm) |
Price | 9 549.99 / £ 469.99 / au $ 949 | 9 549.99 / £ 469.99 / au $ 949 |
Dimensions | 41 x 41 x 12 mm | 45 x 45 x 12 mm |
The weight | 46 g with band | 56 g with band |
Case/Bezel | Stainless Steel/Polymer | Stainless Steel/Polymer |
Display | AMOLED display in 390 x 390px 1.2 | 454 x 454px 1.4-in Amoled display |
GPS | GPS, Galileo, Glonass, Bedouin, QZSS, Satiq | GPS, Galileo, Glonass, Bedouin, QZSS, Satiq |
Battery life | For 10 days | Up to 12 days |
Connection | Bluetooth, Wi-Fi | Bluetooth, Wi-Fi |
Water resistant | Yes, 5 ATMs | Yes, 5 ATMs |
Garmin Venu 4: Design
- Stainless steel body upgrade
- Redesigned UI
- Bright screen – but the bezels are thick
If you’ve read much of our review, you’ll know that I love the look of the Garmin Venu 4. While the stainless steel element of the 3 was limited to the bezel, which in this case was made of plastic, Garmin has expanded the use of steel to include the case as well, and it looks all the better for it. My slate model’s dark metal is understated and classy, and I can’t wait to pair it with a leather strap. The screen is bright, but the bezels could be a bit thin for my taste. Still, it’s hard to complain about the look of this watch.
As opposed to external-oriented watches like the Phoenix, Forerunner, and Instinct series, the Garmin Vino 4 has two buttons instead of five. Its fast and responsive touchscreen does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to navigating, though you can configure the buttons to work on long and short presses. A long press on my “back” button ignites the LED torch (now a great addition to all the best Garmin watches), while a long press on my top “start” button invokes the Controls tab, through which I can activate the voice assistant, quickly find my phone, DND and other functions. This is a good system.
The redesigned UI isn’t as sleek and smooth as WatchOS or Wear OS, but it’s not far off. The Garmin looked downright basic in comparison (which I think had a charm to be honest, and part of me misses it), but it looks great and works well in practice when you’re switching through widgets or plotting a workout. Garmin users who choose to upgrade will find the new setup intuitive to use, as will first-timers.
Design Score: 5/5
Garmin Venu 4: Features
- New health status and lifestyle logging
- The usual suite of excellent fitness tracking features
- Speaker, microphone and LED torch
There are so many great features galore. The new health status feature tracks five key metrics during sleep: heart rate, HRV, respiration, pulse rate and skin temperature. It tells you if all your measurements are within their normal range, and if one or more are over, something is already.
Often, this can be combined with a lifestyle logging feature to self-diagnose potential issues. Lifestyle logging allows you to tag your day with the amount of caffeinated beverages, meditation, alcohol, healthy eating, heavy meals, cold showers, or any other custom tags you might care to add. If your skin temperature is out of your healthy range and you logged a few alcoholic drinks at a party the day before, or your HRV is off after a day of too much caffeine, you’ll know what to change to get yourself back in line. Still, it would be a cold day before the Garmin gave me up on my morning coffee.
The usual suite of wellness and fitness features is present, with the Vino 4 – like the rest of the best Garmin watches – particularly excelling at running and cycling. Garmin Coach, local courses and training plans for upcoming races created in the Garmin Connect app can be loaded onto your watch to turn it into a training powerhouse. Advanced metrics like power for cyclists, and ground contact time or vertical oscillation for runners really empower the watch to be especially helpful for experts. I also use it for my rest periods in the gym between sets. I’m missing the full color maps here, but for long courses the basic follow-wing directional arrows will be good enough for most.
Smart-wise, the Controls tab houses the My Phone and Voice Assistant features, which are serviceable and useful but pretty basic. There are no device AI smarts here, but I can easily set up a timer fairly easily. The LED torch is remarkably useful in three levels of powerful white light and a less aggressive red option for night runs. A speaker and microphone allow you to make calls on the wrist, which is useful in a pinch. However, without the option to connect the watch to your network without a phone via LTE, it’s a convenience rather than a necessity.
Features Score: 4.5/5
Garmin Venu 4: Performance
- The V5 sensor is highly accurate compared to industry standard heart rate monitors
- Battery life performs as described
- The watch was comfortable and functional throughout the testing process
I compared the Garmin Venu 4’s Elevate V5 heart rate sensor to a chest strap—the Polar H10, described as the most accurate heart rate monitor available to most people, and used by professional and amateur athletes—during a couple of workouts.
During my tests, after a brief bit of initial variation, the Garmin Vino 4 very closely matched the hard and polar H10’s readings. After 30 minutes of running, the Polar H10 registered an average of 156bpm for my heart rate. The Garmin Venu 4 registered 151bpm.
For training purposes, that’s certainly close enough for most – it’s not really a serious statistic – although I think it could be closer. The Apple Watch Ultra 3, which I also wore during this run, registered 155 bpm. Still, there’s nothing to worry about outside of 5pm throughout the workout, and a high V5 is a good enough estimate to indicate accuracy.
Battery life performs as described, too: The watch lasted a full 10 days with multiple workouts before needing a top-up. The Veno 4 was comfortable to use and a lump better for sleeping than the Phoenix – I barely took it off all week.
Performance Score: 4.5/5
Garmin Venu 4: The Scorecard
Description | Comments | Score |
|---|---|---|
Price | About right for its spot in the lineup, but not a huge deal | 4 |
Design | Looks great and is intuitive to use. High number | 5 |
Features | I would have liked LTE and full color maps, but those are just my cobbles | 4.5 |
performance | Accurate, durable and looks great on the wrist in the office. Smart enough for most. | 4.5 |
Garmin Vino 4: Should I Buy?
If you buy it…
If you don’t buy it…
Also consider
Components | Garmin Vino 4 (41mm) | Apple Watch Series 11 (42mm) | Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 (40mm) |
Price | 9 549.99 / £ 469.99 / au $ 949 | 9 from 399 / £369 / au $679 | 9 from 349.99 / £319 / au $649 |
Dimensions | 41 x 41 x 12 mm | 42 mm x 36 mm x 9.7 mm | 42.7 x 40.4 x 8.6 mm |
The weight | 46 g with band | 30.3g (42mm) | 30 grams |
Case/Bezel | Stainless Steel/Polymer | Aluminum with metal core or titanium (100% recycled) | Coach aluminum |
Display | AMOLED display in 390 x 390px 1.2 | Always Retina LTPO 3 Display Wide Angle 374 by 446 (42mm) | 1.3-in Super AMOLED |
GPS | GPS, Galileo, Glonass, Bedouin, QZSS, Satiq | L1 GPS, GNSS, Galileo, and Baidu | GPS, Glonass, Bedouin, Galileo |
Battery life | For 10 days | 24 hours, 38 hours in low power mode | Up to 30 hours |
Connection | Bluetooth, Wi-Fi | Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi, second-generation ultra-wideband chip, and 5G (optional) | Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 |
Water resistant | Yes, 5 ATMs | WR50 and IP7X | Yes, 5 ATMs |
How I Experienced
I wore the Garmin Vino 4 for two weeks, draining the battery while hitting the gym, exercising and hiking. I used features like lifestyle logging, tested the voice assistant, ECG functionality, enabled the nighttime torch, and tested the accuracy against the Polar H10 heart rate monitor and Apple Watch Ultra 3.
