Garmin Venu Sq 2 vs Apple Watch Series 9

🗓️ Release Year

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: 2022

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: 2023



🏃 Activity

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The Garmin Venu Sq 2 delivers essential activity tracking, comprehensively logging steps, distance, calories burned, floors climbed, and active minutes. It supports personalized daily goals, offering a structured approach to monitoring and improving overall physical activity levels.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 is a powerful and intuitive smartwatch offering advanced activity tracking with enhanced performance. Powered by the new S9 SiP, it provides faster and more accurate tracking of steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes. Its comprehensive workout modes and detailed metrics are designed to help users monitor and improve their fitness across a wide range of activities.



❤️ Health Monitoring

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: This smartwatch provides continuous heart rate monitoring and estimates VO2 max, a key indicator of cardiovascular fitness. It includes respiration tracking, hydration logging, and in-depth sleep insights, offering a holistic view of the user's health status.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: This device is a robust health companion, featuring continuous heart rate monitoring, ECG functionality for detecting signs of irregular heart rhythms, and SpO2 monitoring for blood oxygen levels. The temperature sensor offers deeper insights into overall wellness and cycle tracking, while enhanced health algorithms provide more precise data analysis.



🔋 Battery Life

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The Venu Sq 2 offers impressive battery longevity, providing up to 11 days in smartwatch mode and up to 26 hours with continuous GPS activation, minimizing the need for frequent recharging.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 provides up to 18 hours of battery life on a single charge under normal usage, and up to 36 hours in Low Power Mode, similar to its predecessor. Fast charging capabilities minimize downtime, ensuring consistent tracking throughout the day and night.



😴 Sleep Tracking

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: Advanced sleep monitoring is a core feature, tracking detailed sleep stages (light, deep, and REM) and incorporating a Pulse Ox sensor to monitor blood oxygen levels during sleep. This provides users with valuable data to assess and improve their sleep quality.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Advanced sleep tracking on the Apple Watch Series 9 monitors sleep stages (light, deep, and REM), sleep duration, and provides detailed sleep analysis within the Health app. It also tracks blood oxygen levels and wrist temperature during sleep, offering valuable insights into sleep quality and recovery.



📍 GPS Tracking

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: Equipped with built-in GPS, the Venu Sq 2 offers accurate tracking of outdoor activities such as running, cycling, and walking without requiring a connected smartphone, providing independence for data collection during these workouts.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: With built-in GPS, the Apple Watch Series 9 accurately tracks outdoor activities like running, cycling, and hiking without needing a paired iPhone. It provides precise route mapping, pace, and distance data, essential for monitoring performance during outdoor workouts.



🏋️ Workout Modes

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: With support for over 25 preloaded exercise modes, including running, biking, swimming, yoga, Pilates, and strength training, the Venu Sq 2 offers versatility for tracking various fitness pursuits. It displays real-time statistics during workouts to help users monitor performance.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 supports a wide variety of workout modes, including running, walking, cycling, swimming, yoga, hiking, and more. Users can select specific modes to get tailored real-time statistics and post-workout analysis within the Fitness app.



💫 Exercise Recognition

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The Venu Sq 2 includes automatic exercise detection for common activities like walking and running, ensuring that these basic movements are recorded even if the user forgets to initiate a workout manually.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The smartwatch features automatic exercise recognition for common activities such as walking, running, and cycling, ensuring that workouts are logged even if the user forgets to manually start tracking, providing a more complete record of physical activity.



🍎 Compatibility

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The device is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, facilitating seamless synchronization of activity data and enabling smart notifications for calls, texts, and calendar alerts.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Seamlessly integrating with the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch Series 9 requires an iPhone XS or later running the latest iOS version for full functionality. It connects via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, offering tight integration with Apple Health and other Apple services.



📲 App Support

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: Synchronization with the robust Garmin Connect app provides users with a comprehensive platform for reviewing detailed activity data, tracking progress towards goals, and accessing personalized health and fitness insights.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Leveraging the App Store, the Apple Watch Series 9 provides access to a vast ecosystem of third-party apps, enhancing its capabilities for fitness, productivity, communication, and entertainment. The Apple Health app serves as a central repository for all health and fitness data.



💡 Smart Features

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: Beyond health and fitness tracking, the Venu Sq 2 offers practical smart features, including on-wrist notifications, Garmin Pay for contactless payments, music storage, and access to additional applications via the Connect IQ store.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: As a full-featured smartwatch, the Apple Watch Series 9 provides comprehensive smart capabilities, including on-wrist notifications, enhanced Siri with on-device processing, Apple Pay for contactless payments, and cellular connectivity for calls and messages without an iPhone. The innovative Double Tap gesture provides a new way to interact with the watch, and advanced safety features like Fall Detection and Crash Detection are included.



💦 Water Resistance

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: With a water resistance rating of 50 meters (5 ATM), the Venu Sq 2 is suitable for swimming, showering, and general water exposure, enhancing its durability and usability for various activities.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: With a WR50 water resistance rating, the Apple Watch Series 9 is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a durable companion for everyday wear and aquatic activities. It is capable of tracking swimming workouts.



⌚ Display Quality

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The device features a bright AMOLED color touchscreen display, offering excellent readability in various lighting conditions, including direct sunlight, for clear visibility of stats and notifications.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 features an even brighter Always-On Retina LTPO OLED display, offering a peak brightness of 2000 nits for exceptional visibility in direct sunlight. It provides sharp resolution, deep blacks, and vibrant colors, enhancing the visual experience.



👌 Ease of Use

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The Venu Sq 2 is designed for intuitive interaction with a combination of swipe and tap navigation on its touchscreen interface. This provides easy access to features, statistics, and settings.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The device offers an intuitive user interface with a combination of the responsive touchscreen, Digital Crown for precise scrolling, and a physical side button for navigation. watchOS is optimized for easy navigation, and the new Double Tap gesture adds a convenient way to interact one-handed.



✨ Design and Comfort

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: Featuring a slim and lightweight design, the Venu Sq 2 is engineered for comfortable all-day wear. The bands are interchangeable, allowing users to personalize the look and feel of the device.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 features a sleek and refined design with a lightweight aluminum or stainless steel case. It offers a comfortable fit for all-day wear and comes with a wide variety of interchangeable bands for extensive personalization, balancing aesthetic appeal with functional design.



🩸 SpO2 Monitoring

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: An integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for monitoring blood oxygen saturation levels during both sleep and altitude, providing valuable data related to acclimatization and overall respiratory well-being.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Equipped with an SpO2 sensor, the Apple Watch Series 9 allows for on-demand spot checks and background monitoring of blood oxygen saturation levels. This feature provides valuable data for assessing respiratory health and overall well-being, especially during sleep and at altitude.



💖 ECG Functionality

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: It is important to note that the Garmin Venu Sq 2 does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 supports ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality through the ECG app, allowing users to record a 30-second ECG to detect signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). This feature provides valuable heart health data that can be shared with healthcare professionals.



🧘 Stress Tracking

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The Venu Sq 2 includes stress tracking capabilities, utilizing heart rate variability to assess daily stress levels. It also provides guided breathing exercises as a tool for stress management.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: While not a dedicated stress tracking metric, the Apple Watch Series 9 contributes to stress insights through features like Mindfulness and Breathe apps, heart rate variability (HRV) data, and sleep analysis, helping users understand their body's response to stress and find moments of calm.



🩹 Recovery Tracking

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: The Body Battery energy monitoring feature provides insights into current energy levels based on activity, stress, and sleep data, helping users understand their readiness for activity and optimize recovery periods.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Recovery is primarily tracked through detailed sleep analysis, heart rate variability (HRV), and insights provided within the Apple Health and Fitness apps based on workout data. While not a single "recovery score" like some dedicated sports watches, the collected data helps users understand their body's state and inform rest and training decisions for optimal performance.



💳 Subscription

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: A significant advantage of the Garmin ecosystem is that no additional subscription is required to access the full range of features and data provided by the Venu Sq 2 through the Garmin Connect app.

2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: No subscription is required to access the core features and data tracked by the Apple Watch Series 9 through the Apple Health and Fitness apps. Optional services like Apple Fitness+ require a separate subscription.



🏷️️ Price

1️⃣ Garmin Venu Sq 2: $249.99

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2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: $399.00

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