Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

Garmin Venu 2 goes much ahead of a regular smartwatch, in terms of the functionality offered for tracking outdoor activities. A Fitbit Sense prides itself on its health monitoring features. Compared to the Garmin Venu 2, a Fitbit Sense is not so expensive, and a good smartwatch option. Below, we look at the key differences between a Garmin Venu 2 and Fitbit Sense smartwatches.

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Screen size and build quality – Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

Fitbit Sense has a screen size of 1.58″ and a Garmin Venu 2 has a screen size of 1.3″. However, the display resolution of the Garmin Venu smartwatch is 416 x 416 pixels. Fitbit Sense has a display resolution of 336 x 336 pixels. In terms of the display resolution, Venu 2 trumps Fitbit Sense easily. The pixel density of Garmin Venu 2 is 332 ppi and the pixel density of Fitbit Sense is 301 ppi. Display resolution and picture depth and quality are better in a Garmin Venu 2 smartwatch.

Both watches have an ‘Always on Display’ feature.

Fitbit Sense is made of an aluminium body, and the Garmin Venu 2 has a stainless steel body. The feel of Garmin Venu 2 is premium. It, really, looks solid. Garmin Venu 2 comes in Graphite and Slate stainless steel or Graphite blue colors. Fitbit Sense has a more diverse set of color offerings. It comes in Sage gray, Graphite black, and Lunar white color options.

If you want a robust watch, Garmin Venu 2 is a better option. Fitbit Sense will save you money and offers all the basic smartwatch functionality. Fitbit Sense may not be appropriate for runners or outdoor activity tracking.

Battery Life – Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

Fitbit Sense has a battery life of 6 days on the smartwatch model. When it is used in the GPS mode, the battery life is a few hours. Garmin Venu 2 has much better battery life. It lasts for 11 days on the smartwatch mode. On GPS mode, it lasts for close to 22 hours. If you wish to use your watch for extended monitoring of outdoor activities, a Garmin Venu 2 provides higher battery charge life. The battery of a Garmin Venu 2 outlasts a lot of smartwatches, and Fitbit Sense is one of them.

Health Monitoring – Fitbit Sense vs Garmin Venu 2

A Fitbit Sense has basic health monitoring features. It tracks your sleep and also manages to alert you with a high or low heartbeat. Fitbit Sense provides generic wellness tracking features. Calorie intake, water intake, and weight input features are a part of Fitbit Sense’s generic functionality.

Fitbit premium can improve health and wellness tracking on a Fitbit Sense. Fitbit premium is a subscription service. It costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 on an annual term. Fitbit premium seeks to improve the basic smartwatch functionality offered by the Fitbit app on the Sense smartwatch. It offers additional health and wellness tracking features.

Fitbit premium offers you health metrics data for 90 days.
Fitbit premium calculates a daily readiness score, based on the stress and activity levels of an individual. A daily readiness score can help you decide about doing heavy physical or outdoor activities. A score lower than 30 implies that your body needs rest and is fatigued.
Fitbit premium also comes bundled with an ECG app to take on-demand ECG of your heart. The ECG readings could help detect atrial fibrillation cases.
There are more than 200 physical workouts that are available on Fitbit premium.
Over 200 mindful meditation sessions help you to meditate and relax.

Fitbit premium strives to set the Fitbit Sense as an advanced health monitoring smartwatch. Without the Fitbit premium addon, you can have access to a very basic set of health tracking features on a Fitbit Sense smartwatch.

A Garmin Venu 2 has an elite list of health and heart health monitoring. It cannot, however, take an ECG. But, for the most part, a Garmin Venu 2 ticks all the boxes for a comprehensive health and heart monitoring smartwatch. A Garmin Venu 2 can achieve the following:

Garmin Venu 2 provides a sleep score to rate the quality of sleep.
Garmin Venu 2 has a body battery score that tells you about the condition of your body. A low body battery score means that your body is in fatigue and needs a recovery period. The body battery score of Garmin Venu 2 works much like the Fitbit premium’s daily readiness score.
It can alert you on high or low heartbeats.
Garmin Venu 2 tracks calorie intake, weight input and water intake.
Garmin Venu 2 can track respiration rate.
Garmin Venu 2 can track perspiration or sweat to uncover the intensity of your workout.
Garmin Venu 2 can take temperature readings through the tempe sensor.

Garmin Venu 2 has a full suite of health monitoring features. It, however, cannot take an on-wrist ECG. Features like respiration rate, sweat, and temperature monitoring are not a part of Fitbit Sense or Fitbit premium.

Outdoor or Sports tracking – Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

Garmin Venu 2 has a full set of sports and outdoor tracking coverage. Needless to say, all these advanced monitoring features are unavailable on Fitbit Sense.

Garmin Venu 2 has a golf mode that takes you through a session of playing gof on a golf course.
Garmin Venu 2 has a swimming activity that can track your swimming strokes and swimming efforts.
Garmin Venu 2 has a cycling activity that can measure your efforts on the pre-defined cycling profiles of biking or indoor biking. It supports a cadence sensor.
Garmin Venu 2 can also help in tracking outdoor recreation activities such as hunting or fishing. Garmin Venu 2 can provide you with a Sunrise and Sunset time for the location you are in.
Garmin Venu 2 can also track your efforts in the Gym. You can work with Gym profiles and track multiple acitivities such as the cardio training, yoga workouts, HIIT workouts, strength workouts, and pilates workout.

These modules are a part of the standard offering of a Garmin Venu 2. This makes for a full suite of activity tracking features on Garmin Venu 2. Fitbit Sense has none of the features or abilities.

GPS – Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

A Garmin Venu 2 supports GPS, GLONASS, and the Galileo GPS systems. A GPS system is a collection of satellites that are managed by the United States. GLONASS is the satellite system that is managed by the Russians. The European Space Agency manages the Galileo satellite systems.

Garmin Venu 2 is an effective fitness and outdoor tracker. It depends heavily on accurate GPS measurements. This is the reason a Garmin Venu 2 has extensive coverage for GPS satellites across the world.

A Fitbit Sense only has GPS and GLONASS satellite systems coverage. It does not support the Galileo satellite system of the European Space Agency. This may not mean much to you if you work within a well-defined geographical boundary. However, for outdoor and better geolocational data, a Garmin Venu 2 ought to be given preference.

Incident detection – Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

The incident detection feature is a safety feature that is available on a Garmin Venu 2 smartwatch. If the watch wearer experiences a fall, the smartwatch ought to be able to detect the fall. Upon no response from the wearer, it should alert an emergency contact with the GPS coordinates of the wearer. This helps in reaching out to the emergency health services for proactive response to the incident or fall. Garmin Venu 2 has an incident detection feature. It will help Venu 2 to detect a fall and notify up to 3 designated emergency contacts of the user.

Garmin Venu 2 also has a live tracking feature. The watch will share your GPS coordinates on a real-time basis.

For the most part, Garmin Venu 2 incident detection will come in second to the fall detection of an Apple watch. Still, it does have the capabilities to detect a hard fall and notify emergency contacts.

Fitbit Sense does not have an incident detection or fall detection feature. Fitbit Sense users may send in their feedback to the product development team and seek for an integration of fall detection feature in the future releases of the Fitbit app for the Sense smartwatch.

On-device music storage – Fitbit Sense Vs Garmin Venu 2

Garmin Venu 2 has on-device storage that could store up to 650 songs for offline listening. Offline music storage is a very useful feature. Especially, when you are on a hiking or biking tour with little or no Internet coverage.

Fitbit Sense can play music through the paired smartphone. So, you need a working Bluetooth pairing connection between the Fitbit Sense smartwatch and the smartphone to play songs. You could also store music files from Deezer or Pandora. This will need a premium or paid Deezer or pandora subscription. There is no on-device storage for storing music locally on the Fitbit Sense device. However, if you pay for the Deezer or Pandora app, you can download music from the apps and store them locally for offline music listening.

Miscellaneous features – Garmin Venu 2 vs Fitbit Sense

Aside from the major key differences highlighted above, there is a small set of features that make their presence on one of the two smartwatches. We will briefly mention these subtle differences between the Garmin Venu 2 and Fitbit Sense smartwatches.

Garmin Venu 2 supports ANT+ networks over and above the Bluetooth and wireless connectivity.
Fitbit Sense supports WIFI 4 standards. Garmin Venu 2 does not have WIFI support.
Fitbit Sense can be used to answer calls on a smartphone. The Fitbit app makes it possible for the smartwatch to integrate with the smartphone’s call functionality. Bear in mind that the Fitbit Sense does not have any cellular model. So, it can just manage the calls received on the paired smartphone.

Summary

Garmin Venu 2 is priced at $399. A Fitbit Sense without Fitbit premium costs $199 as of today. With a Premium subscription, the cost goes up by $9.99 a month. For people with basic smartwatch needs, a Fitbit Sense should be the right smartwatch. Garmin Venu 2 is a watch that is more robust and offers multiple sports and outdoor modes. It serves its purpose as a rough, all-terrain, sturdy smartwatch with an extended set of features. Venu 2 also has a very detailed and rich set of features. For people looking at a premium smartwatch, a Garmin Venu 2 would be a better watch than a Fitbit Sense.

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Helen Kurt

Helen Kurt is a geeky nerd who loves to cover the wearables space. She has over 5 years of experience in the smartwatch domain. You can reach her on email at [email protected].