The Number One Smartwatch for Athletes

Have you found yourself in a fitness rut? Has quarantine put a damper on your workout routine? Or maybe you need another way to track your fitness outside of just looking at your body and hoping. Look no further than the wonderful world of smartwatches! More than just a fitness tool, smartwatches can be used to make everyday life just a bit easier, all from your wrist.

We're Athletes, Just Like You

We've been using smartwatches for tracking fitness and other health aspects for years. That means that we have a really good idea of just what athletes would want in a smartwatch.

The market is saturated at the moment with smartwatches that all claim to track fitness, and there are price levels for just about every financial situation. That said, if it's the best of the best that you want, the field narrows significantly. After looking at the best technology has to offer, we have chosen what we think is a clear winner: The Garmin Venu(R).

The Garmin Venu(R) For Athletes

Features

The touchscreen is made from durable Gorilla(R) Glass and features a beautiful AMOLED color display. As you'd expect, it will monitor the usual step count and heart rate, but it offers tons of other bells and whistles to make it worth your cash.

It tracks hydration, respiration, and blood oxygen saturation, no matter whether you're asleep or awake. Furthermore, it will monitor the quality of your sleep as well as your REM stages.

Athletes in any sport will appreciate the robust workout features. It's possible to design and customize your own workout in the Garmin Connect App and download it to the watch, so you can get "swole" no matter where you are!

This watch has more than 20 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps that can track all the various "ways you move," as Garmin likes to say. If you're the type that doesn't just stick to one exercise, you can rest easy knowing that this watch will track it all, be it swimming, running, or just climbing some stairs!

The Venu essentially gives you your own personal trainer on your wrist to help you train for a 5K or 10K marathon. It doesn't just track steps, like many similar watches, but it also tracks floors climbed, intensity minutes, calories burned, and so much more.

It even tracks the menstrual cycle for female users and has training and nutrition suggestions for each phase in the cycle.

Pricing

The Garmin Venu(R) varies in price depending on the color you pick. On Amazon, for instance, it is available (at the time of this writing) in black with a black bezel for $299.99. If you want to be more on-trend and get the rose-gold with a tan band, or a more mature looking silver with a dark grey band, you'll be shelling out $344.95. Last but not least, the cheapest option is gold with a black band, which can be purchased for $294.95.

Pros

• Advanced tracking system for fitness
• Advanced tracking for health
• Sharp AMOLED screen
• Optional always-on display
• Up to 5 days of battery life
• Garmin Pay support

Cons

• Not the absolute cheapest
• Some users found the touchscreen to be persnickety.

Reviews

We're not the only ones who think that the Garmin Venu(R) is a great smartwatch for athletes. At the time of writing, it's gotten over 1,300 ratings on Amazon, with an overall rating of 4.5 stars (74% of all reviews are 5 stars!!)

What Else It Will Do?

Many fitness smartwatches will do more than just track, well, fitness, and the Garmin Venu(R) is no exception! If the Garmin Venu(R) is paired with a compatible smartphone, it can receive emails, texts, and alerts. If you have an Android phone, you can even respond to texts!

You're not limited to just emails and texts, though. This watch is also capable of letting you send your location to your contacts manually. If you're doing stuff outdoors and get in a sticky situation, it can send your location automatically using its built-in incident detection - effectively "calling for help." Talk about a lifesaver!

The Venu(R) also lets you download songs and playlists from Amazon Music, Spotify, or Deezer. You can pair it with headphones too, so you don't even need to look at your phone when on the run!

Garmin Pay(TM) is also available in many countries so that contactless payment can also be used, especially convenient when you don't want to touch any COVID-infected surfaces.

For extra customizability, it's also possible to download custom watch faces, add data fields, and even get apps and widgets from the Connect IQ Store.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, if you're an athlete who's thinking of upgrading from a regular, everyday, garden-variety smartwatch, the Garmin Venu(R) is the best choice. Quite frankly, we wouldn't have thought it was possible to fit so many sophisticated functions into an affordable watch that's compatible with all types of phones.

We're particularly fond of the mindfulness features, such as breathing and stress tracking options, which make for a really lovely addition to the more athlete-centric features.

Yes, there are other options, and some of them even come close to rivaling the Venu(R) in features. But many of them are in the $599 plus price range and don't really offer any clear advantages. In our opinion, this is the best of the best for a smartwatch aimed at athletes.