Garmin Venu 4 Launch: Features, Design, Price & Strap Sizes

Garmin has just unveiled its latest smartwatch in the Venu line: the Venu 4, a device that aims to sharpen its wellness credentials, improve fitness tracking, and bring serious utility — all while keeping a stylish finish. If you’ve been eyeing the Venu 3 or weighing options against Apple, Samsung or Whoop, the Venu 4 adds several new angles that make it compelling.

What’s Different? New Features & Health Upgrades

The Venu 4 is packed with improvements in health, fitness, and usability. Some of the standout additions:

Health Status (in beta): Tracks key biometrics during sleep; heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), respiration, skin temperature, Pulse Ox and sends alerts when these drift outside your personal baseline. Useful for spotting illness, overtraining or other disruptions.
Lifestyle Logging: Lets you manually track behaviours such as caffeine or alcohol use, then see how they impact sleep, stress, HRV etc in the Garmin Connect app. Helps connect the dots between choices and well-being.
More Refined Sleep Metrics:
- Sleep Alignment helps you sync more closely with your natural circadian rhythm.
- Sleep Consistency tracks your average bedtime over the past week.
Garmin Fitness Coach: Personalised, heart-rate-based workouts across 25+ activity types. These adapt daily based on your activity history, sleep and recovery. Also, a mixed session profile allows tracking of multiple activities in one workout e.g Hyrox.
Accessibility Enhancements: Spoken watch face for hearing the time, health data etc; display filters for different types of colour-blindness.

Hardware, Design & Utility Upgrades

Beyond new software, Garmin has added useful hardware enhancements:

Built-in LED flashlight: This feature trickles down from higher-end Garmins (Fenix/Epix etc). Handy for darker environments, outdoors at night, safety, etc.
Speaker & Microphone: Enables calls from watch when paired with phone, voice-assistant integration. Some voice commands are available directly from the watch without needing a connected phone.
Stylish, premium design: Comes in two sizes, 41mm and 45mm, with metal casing. Colour ways include variants like silver & citron, lunar gold etc. Bands offered in both silicone and leather.
Battery life: Up to ~12 days in smartwatch mode, which keeps it competitive in the “wear all day/night without charging” category.

Comparisons & Where Venu 4 Sits in the Market

The Venu 4 is positioned as a mid-to-high-end wellness-smartwatch. Some competitive angles:

Against Apple Watch Series 11: Garmin adds health tracking and features like Health Status & circadian sleep metrics, areas where Apple is strong. Venu 4 competes on features plus battery life and utility (flashlight, etc.).
Against Whoop, Oura, etc: The new health-trend tracking and lifestyle logging feel inspired by those in the “readiness / wellness scoring” space — Garmin is bringing many of those ideas into its ecosystem.
Value and Price: In the UK, the starting price is around £469.99; in the US, $549.99. It’s a bit pricier than Venu 3’s launch, but many of the new features justify the increase depending on what you care about.

Strap Sizes & Fittings

You mentioned strap fittings: Garmin has kept the quick-release system. The sizes are:

Venu 4 41mm Straps : 18mm quick release straps
Venu 4 45mm Straps: 22mm quick release straps

This means ample compatibility with many 3rd-party bands, letting you customise look and comfort without much hassle.

Pulling It All Together: Strengths & Possible Weaknesses

Pros:

Very strong health and wellness suite, especially for those who want more insight into sleep, lifestyle, and readiness.
Long battery life for a smartwatch with these capabilities.
Useful hardware add-ons like flashlight, speaker/mic etc which broaden utility.
Good design, premium materials, multiple sizes and strap compatibility.

Things to Watch:

Some features (e.g. Health Status) are in beta; effectiveness will depend on how accurate the sensors and algorithms are in day-to-day usage.
Price is higher than some previous models; you’ll need to value the upgrade.
As always with watches that track many health metrics, you’ll need to wear it regularly and maintain it (charging, firmware updates etc) to get full benefit.

Who Should Buy the Venu 4?

You're likely to get the most from a Venu 4 if you:

Care deeply about wellness metrics (sleep, HRV, recovery etc).
Want a smartwatch that can be that “on-wrist coach” rather than just displaying notifications.
Prefer longer battery life over needing to charge every night.
Like having hardware utility (flashlight, voice commands, etc) and a stylish look.

If what you want is more basic fitness tracking, or you prioritise ultra-lightweight wearables, lower cost, or minimal design, you might find the previous Venu models or competing devices more cost-efficient.

Conclusion

The Garmin Venu 4 represents a clear step forward in Garmin’s strategy to combine style, wellness and utility. With enhanced health tracking, lifestyle logging, better sleep features, a built-in flashlight and refined design, it’s positioned as more than just a fitness watch, it aims to be a daily companion that helps you understand and improve your health.

As always, real-world usage will reveal how well Garmin has pulled off all these new features. But on paper, Venu 4 looks like a very tempting option for those who want more insight from their wrist without compromising on battery life or utility.