Garmin Venu X1 Review

Review disclosure: The product reviewed in this article was provided on loan. Reviewer: Zachary Skinner.

The Garmin Venu X1 exists because someone at Garmin clearly got bored of neat categories.

For years, their watches have lived in tidy little boxes. This one is for runners, that one is for adventurers, that one is for people who want their watch to look polite at dinner. The Venu X1 turns up, kicks those boxes over, and says it would quite like to be all of them at once.

It looks like a smartwatch, behaves like a serious sports watch, and quietly borrows the brain of Garmin’s heavy hitters. Underneath the slim body and giant screen is the sort of navigation, training logic, and outdoor capability you normally find in watches that look like they were issued by a survival instructor.

The target is obvious. People eyeing an Apple Watch Ultra but wishing it was slimmer, less shouty, and far more obsessed with training data than emojis. The Venu X1 is Garmin’s answer to that itch. Not a lifestyle watch pretending to be sporty, and not a mountain tank pretending to be fashionable, but something sitting right in the middle, daring you to decide what kind of watch you actually want.

It is not trying to replace the Fenix, and it is not just a bigger Venu. It is Garmin experimenting in public, blending lines they usually keep very separate, and seeing if anyone notices.

Design and comfort, the party trick is the thickness

At first glance, the Venu X1 looks like it should be a nuisance. The screen is enormous, the shape is unapologetically square, and it has that quiet confidence of something that knows it cost real money. You expect it to sit on your wrist like a paving slab and constantly remind you it is there.

And then you put it on.

The surprise is not the size. It is the lack of weight and, more importantly, the lack of height. Garmin has done something slightly mad here by making a watch with a massive display that is also genuinely slim. Not “marketing slim”. Actually slim. The sort of slim that makes you check the side profile twice to confirm it is not playing tricks on you.

What that means in real life is simple. It does not snag on sleeves, it does not wobble around during a run, and it does not feel like it is trying to lever itself off your wrist every time you swing your arm.

A few things stand out once you start wearing it properly.

• The thickness, or rather the lack of it, is the defining feature. It sits close to the wrist and spreads its footprint rather than stacking it vertically. This makes a huge difference to comfort over long days.
• Despite the large face, the watch feels balanced. There is no top heavy sensation, even when you are moving fast or bouncing around on a run.
• The shape works better than expected. Square watches can feel awkward on smaller wrists, but the thin profile softens that and makes it far less intrusive.

Garmin includes a nylon strap as standard, and it is a good one. Soft, flexible, and easy to adjust with a proper Velcro system that lets you dial it in exactly. You can tighten it slightly for a run, loosen it after, and never feel like you are stuck between holes on a traditional strap.

There are, however, realities.

• Fabric straps are comfortable but they do hold water. Go for a swim or a shower and it will stay damp longer than you want.
• That dampness is only annoying when you notice it, which will always be when you are in a hurry.
• The good news is Garmin uses a standard attachment system, so swapping straps is quick and painless if you want silicone or leather instead.

Build quality is exactly what you would expect at this price. The case feels solid, premium, and properly finished, without drifting into the “look at me” ruggedness of Garmin’s adventure watches. This is a watch that wants to look good with a jacket on, not one that demands hiking boots and a beard.

Water resistance sits at 5 ATM, which tells you everything about the intention here.

• Swimming, showers, rain, and general daily abuse are absolutely fine.
• This is not a watch designed for diving, or high impact water sports where you might meet the surface at speed.
• It reinforces the idea that this is a performance watch for everyday life, not an indestructible survival tool.

After a few days on the wrist, the biggest compliment you can give it is this. You stop thinking about it. For a watch this big on paper, that is impressive. The thin profile does all the heavy lifting, turning what should feel oversized into something that simply feels… normal.

And that is the clever bit. Garmin has made the size obvious, but the comfort invisible.

The screen, glorious, slightly ridiculous, undeniably useful

There is no gentle way to introduce this screen. It is huge. Laughably so. The sort of display that makes other watches look like they have turned up with a postage stamp taped to the front. Garmin has gone all in, and then added a bit more for good measure.

On paper, it is a 2 inch AMOLED display. In real life, it feels even bigger, partly because it is square and partly because it stretches right out to the edges in a way that demands attention. You do not glance at this screen, you acknowledge it.

And yet, once the initial shock wears off, the logic becomes obvious.

• Text is clearer, larger, and easier to read at a glance, especially mid run or mid ride when your brain is already busy negotiating with your legs.
• Data fields finally have room to breathe. You are not squinting at numbers or cramming eight metrics into a space designed for four.
• Mapping, which is often a novelty on smaller watches, becomes genuinely usable. You can actually see where you are going without zooming in and out like a confused tourist.

Brightness is excellent. Garmin does not publish nit figures, but whatever the number is, it is enough. Outdoors, in harsh sunlight, the screen holds its own without washing out or fading into the background. Indoors, it can dim down enough that it does not feel like you are wearing a miniature cinema on your wrist.

There is a cost to this, of course.

• A brighter, bigger AMOLED display uses more power.
• Always on display looks fantastic, but it will shorten battery life noticeably.
• Gesture based wake works well, but you will occasionally flick your wrist like an idiot when it does not wake immediately.

Touch responsiveness is spot on. Swipes are clean, taps register properly, and navigating menus feels modern rather than clunky. This matters because Garmin’s software depth means you spend a fair bit of time interacting with the screen, and here it finally feels like the hardware is keeping up with the ambition.

The sheer size also changes how you use the watch day to day.

• Notifications are easier to read and actually useful, rather than something you dismiss immediately.
• Widgets feel less cramped, making the glance system more informative instead of just decorative.
• Custom watch faces can finally show off more than just the time and a vague promise of fitness.

Is it too big for some wrists. Absolutely. There will be people who put this on and immediately feel like they have strapped a small tablet to their arm. That is the price of ambition. Garmin has chosen usefulness over subtlety, and it knows it.

But if you can live with the scale, the payoff is massive. This is one of the few watch screens that actually makes you want to use features like maps, training pages, and widgets, instead of tolerating them.

It is excessive. It is bold. And after a while, it feels completely normal.

Flashlight, the feature you will mock until you use it

A flashlight on a watch sounds like the sort of thing that exists purely so someone in a product meeting can say the word innovation and feel good about themselves. It feels unnecessary, slightly silly, and very easy to laugh at.

Right up until the moment you actually use it.

Garmin has quietly included a proper built in flashlight on the Venu X1, and it is not a half hearted glow through the screen. This is a real LED, triggered by holding the button, and it works exactly as you would hope.

• Multiple brightness levels, so you can choose between polite illumination and “where did I put my keys”.
• A red light mode, which sounds niche until you use it at night and realise your eyes do not feel like they have been attacked.
• Instant access, no digging through menus or swiping around while standing in the dark.

It is the same setup Garmin uses on its more serious outdoor watches, and it carries over perfectly here. The light is bright enough to be genuinely useful without being ridiculous, and it is positioned so it actually points forward rather than lighting up your own wrist like a torch pointed at your face.

Where it really earns its keep is in normal, boring, everyday situations.

• Finding something in the car at night without turning on the interior lights.
• Getting around the house when everyone else is asleep and you do not want to wake the entire postcode.
• Early morning or late evening runs where being seen matters more than looking cool.

Garmin has also tied it into activities, which is clever. You can set it to strobe during runs or rides after dark, adding an extra layer of visibility without thinking about it. It just happens in the background, doing its job quietly, like all good features should.

And that is the thing. This is not a flashy gimmick. It is practical, fast, and useful in ways you do not appreciate until it is there. Once you have it, you start wondering why more watches do not.

You will absolutely roll your eyes at it the first time you read about it. Then, a week later, you will use it, nod slightly to yourself, and decide that yes, this should be standard on everything.

Sensors and health tracking, brilliant, then one big omission

Garmin, as ever, does not mess about when it comes to sensors. The Venu X1 is stacked with the sort of health and wellness tracking that makes you feel both informed and very gently judged.

On a day to day level, it does all the things you expect, and does them well.

• Continuous heart rate tracking using Garmin’s latest optical sensor generation.
• Sleep tracking that breaks things down into something approaching useful, rather than just telling you that you are tired.
• Blood oxygen monitoring for those who like to keep an eye on recovery, altitude, or general wellbeing.
• Stress tracking, calories burned, steps, distance, and all the background metrics Garmin quietly crunches without asking your permission.
• Women’s health tracking, fully integrated rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

It all feeds into Garmin’s ecosystem, which is where the real value lives. The watch does not just collect data for the sake of it. It ties those numbers into training readiness, recovery, and long term trends, building a picture of how your body is coping with whatever nonsense you are throwing at it.

For fitness focused users, this is familiar territory. Reliable heart rate data, consistent sleep insights, and a platform that is far more interested in long term patterns than flashy daily summaries.

And then we hit the omission.

There is no ECG support. Not now. Not later. Not “waiting for approval”. According to Garmin, the necessary hardware simply is not there.

At this price point, that is eyebrow raising.

• Many competing watches include ECG as a headline health feature.
• Garmin already offers ECG on other models using similar sensor generations.
• This watch is clearly positioned as premium, which makes the absence harder to ignore.

For some people, this will not matter in the slightest. Garmin users tend to care more about training load, recovery, and performance trends than medical style features. If that is you, you may shrug and move on.

For others, especially those coming from an Apple Watch or considering one, it will feel like a missing piece. When you are spending this much money, you expect all the boxes to be ticked, even the ones you might only use once or twice.

Everything else about the health tracking experience feels polished and complete. The data is rich, the presentation is clear, and the insights are genuinely useful over time.

Which makes the lack of ECG stand out even more. It is not a deal breaker for everyone, but it is a strange decision, and one that will definitely split opinion.

Mapping and navigation, this is the headline

This is the bit where the Venu X1 stops pretending to be polite and reminds you exactly who made it.

Garmin has put proper, grown up navigation into a watch that looks like it should mostly care about steps and notifications. And it changes the entire personality of the thing.

You get full offline, routable maps. Not the kind where you vaguely see a line and hope it leads somewhere useful, but real topographic maps, the same sort you would expect on a serious outdoor watch. Rivers, trails, roads, elevation, the lot, all living on your wrist without needing your phone or a signal.

And because the screen is massive, it actually works.

• Maps are readable at a glance rather than a squint.
• You can see upcoming turns and trail splits without constantly zooming.
• Navigation feels intentional, not something added at the last minute to pad a feature list.

Route planning is properly thought through. You can load courses, follow them exactly, or ask the watch to build a route for you on the fly. Round trip routing is here too, which is brilliant if you want to head out for a run or ride and let the watch handle the thinking, bringing you back without repeating the same boring stretch twice.

Turn by turn guidance is clear and reliable.

• Audible prompts come through the watch speaker or connected headphones.
• Visual cues are obvious without being intrusive.
• You are guided, not nagged.

Then there is ClimbPro, which is one of those features you do not realise you need until you are halfway up something unpleasant. It breaks climbs into sections, shows you how much elevation and distance remain, and gives you a sense of progress when your legs have stopped being helpful.

• Long climbs become mentally manageable.
• You know when relief is coming, or when it very much is not.
• It turns blind suffering into informed suffering, which is always preferable.

There are also points of interest baked in, so you can search for things nearby directly on the watch. It is not lightning fast, and it is not trying to replace your phone, but when you are out in the world and want to find something without digging into pockets, it does the job.

The important thing is this. Mapping on many watches feels like a bonus feature you show friends once, then forget about. On the Venu X1, it feels central. The combination of Garmin’s navigation brain and that oversized display makes this one of the most usable on wrist mapping experiences available.

If you care about navigation, this alone justifies the existence of the Venu X1.

Training tools, serious Garmin stuff in a “lifestyle” suit

This is where Garmin stops flirting with the smartwatch crowd and fully leans back into what it does best. Underneath the slim body and glossy screen, the Venu X1 is absolutely packed with proper training intelligence. Not motivational slogans. Actual data that quietly tells you whether today is a good idea or a terrible one.

Front and centre is training readiness. This is Garmin’s way of looking at your life and asking, politely but firmly, “Are you sure about that run”.

It pulls together multiple inputs and does something useful with them.

• Recent training load, so it knows if you have been sensible or ambitious.
• Sleep quality, because pretending four hours is enough never ends well.
• Stress levels and recovery, which tend to reveal what your bravado will not.
• A dynamic score that changes throughout the day rather than being locked in at breakfast.

Wake up feeling great and it might give you the green light. Smash yourself in a lunchtime session and watch the number quietly drop, like a disappointed teacher.

Alongside that is training status, which is less about today and more about the bigger picture.

• It looks at how your fitness is trending over time.
• It tells you if your training is productive, maintaining, or slowly drifting into chaos.
• It nudges you toward balance rather than constant hammering.

This is Garmin coaching without the shouting. Calm, data driven, and occasionally brutal in its honesty.

You also get the newer performance style metrics that have been creeping through Garmin’s higher end lineup.

• Endurance score, which gives a broad sense of your long term engine.
• Hill score, which does exactly what it sounds like and rarely flatters.
• VO2 max tracking, sitting quietly in the background judging your lifestyle choices.

Race planning is fully baked in as well. You can load upcoming events, set goals, and let the watch guide your training toward them.

• Countdown to race day, so there is no pretending it is far away.
• Predicted finish times based on your current fitness.
• Structured training plans that adapt as you go.

This is where the Venu X1 really shows its split personality. It looks clean and modern, but the software underneath is pure Garmin performance logic.

There are, however, a few gaps that keen runners will notice.

• Some of the very latest running specific metrics found on certain Forerunner models are not here.
• Features like advanced impact and tolerance style metrics are missing for now.
• Whether those arrive later is an open question, and Garmin’s update history with the Venu line does not inspire blind optimism.

For most people, this will not matter. The depth on offer is already more than enough to train seriously, improve consistently, and avoid doing something stupid three weeks in a row.

The clever part is how all of this lives inside a watch that does not look like a piece of gym equipment. It is serious training tech wearing a tidy suit, happy to sit at a desk all day, then quietly tear strips off you when you ask it to analyse your workout.

And that, in many ways, is exactly the point.

Battery life, the price of being slim and bright

Battery life, the price of being slim and bright

Battery life is where the Venu X1 reminds you that physics is still very much in charge. You can have a massive, bright AMOLED screen and a body this thin, but you cannot have them for free.

Garmin quotes up to eight days of battery life, which is technically true in the same way a car manufacturer’s fuel economy figure is technically true. It depends entirely on how you drive it.

In sensible, restrained use, the numbers are respectable.

• Gesture based display, where the screen wakes when you lift your wrist.
• A mix of daily tracking and regular workouts.
• GPS use that is frequent but not obsessive.

Run it like that and you will see several days without needing to reach for the charger. More than most mainstream smartwatches, less than Garmin’s chunkier endurance focused models.

Start leaning into the screen, though, and things change.

• Always on display looks fantastic, but it takes a noticeable bite out of battery life.
• The brighter panel draws more power than older, smaller Venu displays.
• Long GPS sessions with maps active will drain things faster than a simple run.

This is not a watch you charge once a week and forget about forever. It is also not a watch you panic charge every night. It sits somewhere in the middle, and that is very much by design.

The slim profile is the reason. There is simply less space inside for a huge battery, and Garmin has clearly decided that comfort and wearability were worth that trade.

Charging itself is quick and painless. Drop it on the cable, walk away, and it is ready to go again without drama. You are not babysitting it, just acknowledging that it needs attention occasionally.

For most people, the battery life will feel perfectly acceptable, especially coming from something like an Apple Watch. For long distance adventurers who want to disappear for a week with maps and GPS running constantly, this is not the tool for the job.

And that is fine. The Venu X1 is not trying to win a battery endurance contest. It is trying to be thin, bright, and comfortable, while still lasting long enough that charging does not become a lifestyle.

That is the price you pay, and in this case, it feels like a fair one.

Price and who should buy it

At $1,499 in Australia, the Venu X1 is not an impulse buy. This price puts it in the premium zone, where people start asking serious questions about what they actually need from a smartwatch.

This is not a budget fitness tracker, and it is not a stripped-down daily wearable. It is Garmin asking you to accept a bit of a paradox: this looks elegant enough to wear every day, but it also has enough sports and navigation depth to satisfy serious athletes.

So who actually gets the most out of this?

Buy this if you want:

• A watch with a big, readable screen that actually makes maps and metrics easy to use, not an afterthought.
• Garmin’s navigation and route tools, proper routable maps, ClimbPro and turn-by-turn guidance without needing your phone.
• A daily wearable that can still handle serious training data, readiness scores, performance trends, race planning tools, and structured workouts.
• Useful features like flashlight, voice notes, music, notifications, and sensor support without it feeling like a compromise.

This might not be for you if:

• You are primarily after health monitoring features like ECG, something many competitors include at a similar or lower price.
• You want maximum battery endurance for expeditions or ultra long multisport days, where chunkier adventure watches shine.
• You need extreme water resistance or high-speed water sport profiles, which are outside this watch’s design brief.

Essentially, this watch is designed for two kinds of people:

1. Someone who wants serious Garmin performance without looking like they are wearing a piece of outdoor equipment 24/7.
2. Someone who has looked at a mainstream smartwatch like an Apple Watch Ultra and thought, “I want that level of polish, but with real training tools and better battery life.”

If you fit either of those camps, the Venu X1 scratches that itch in a way few watches do: premium fit and finish up front, and deep sports and navigation tech underneath.

For everyone else, especially those who prioritise health features or extreme durability, there are other options that may feel like a more natural fit.

In short: it is ambitious in both price and purpose, and it rewards you for thinking about what you actually want from a watch rather than just what looks good on paper.

The verdict

The Garmin Venu X1 is one of those watches that makes you reassess your assumptions. On paper it looks like a big screen, slim body smartwatch with Garmin badges. In practice it is a genuinely capable sports and navigation tool disguised in something you can wear every day without feeling like you have strapped a compass to your wrist.

There is so much to like. The screen is massive and actually usable, the navigation tools are real and useful, and the training data depth feels significantly closer to Garmin’s serious performance models than anything this shape has attempted before. That alone makes it interesting. Throw in thoughtful touches like a proper flashlight, voice features, and a design that feels comfortable far longer than you expect, and you end up with a package that is more than the sum of its parts.

But it is far from perfect. The omission of ECG at this price will catch people off guard, and the battery life, while respectable, reminds you that a thin body and a bright screen come with consequences. There are models with more extreme water resistance, deeper sport support, or raw endurance if those are your priorities.

What the Venu X1 does brilliantly is sit in the uncomfortable middle ground and make a very good case for itself there. It is not a Fenix in a tuxedo, nor is it a lifestyle smartwatch pretending to be serious. It is the watch that says, “I want both,” and actually delivers on that without feeling like a half baked compromise.

If your day includes serious training sessions, navigation in the outdoors, and the occasional suit or casual outing, this watch will fit all of those contexts without embarrassment. If you want every high end health metric under the sun, or ultra rugged performance, there are watches better suited to those ends.

The Venu X1 is clever, capable, and confident. It does not try to do everything, but what it does, it does with purpose and polish. For anyone who has ever wished Garmin would make something that feels both everyday and exceptional, this is as close as it gets.

Would I Buy it?

Honestly? If what you care about is a Garmin that actually feels good to wear every day while still giving you proper training data and navigation tools, then yes, it is exactly the sort of watch you’d buy.

You like detailed metrics and features that go beyond the basics, without lugging around something that feels like a brick. This sits right in that sweet spot: big, readable screen, great mapping, strong sport support, and solid everyday smart features. It’s not perfect, but it ticks a lot of boxes most people want.

If your priorities are peak health tracking like ECG, or extreme battery life for long multi-day adventures, then I’d hesitate. There are watches better tuned to those specific needs.

But for a balanced all-rounder that leans more towards serious training and navigation than most mainstream smartwatches, yes, this is a watch you’d enjoy owning.