Apple Watch Ultra 2 vs. Garmin Venu X1: I raced 5 miles wearing both watches — here’s the winner | Tom's Guide
I wore the Garmin Venu X1 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 to tackle a 5-mile race to compare their design and sports tracking features. However, the gap between smart and sports watches grows smaller year by year. The Apple Watch keeps getting sportier, and the Garmin Venu X1 is a clear attempt by Garmin to tap into the Apple Watch audience more. It has a vast 2-inch AMOLED display and a thinner design than any Garmin I’ve tested.The new Garmin Venu X1 packs most of Garmin’s key sports tracking and training analysis features into a very slim smartwatch with a huge AMOLED display. Its square design certainly brings to mind the Apple Watch Ultra 2, and the Venu X1 has some useful smart features like music storage and NFC payments.In my experience, chest straps are a more reliably accurate option for heart rate tracking than wrist sensors, so I could compare the readings from the Venu X1 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 to see if they matched. Purple - Garmin Venu X1; Blue - Apple Watch Ultra 2; Brown - Garmin HRM600 (Image credit: DC Rainmaker Analyzer)At the start of the race, it took a while for the reading of the Venu X1 to rise to the correct heart rate, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 showed no heart rate reading at all for the first minute or two, but once both locked on to my heart rate they were accurate for the rest of the event. ... The Apple Watch Ultra 2’s battery life has been very consistent for me through years of testing, with the watch invariably lasting a couple of days of use, even when I ran a marathon with the watch.