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As a privacy-conscious tech enthusiast, I held out on getting a smart watch for a long time. But the health benefits aren't lost on me: these devices can record exercise, track sleep, and more. Earlier this year, I bought a Garmin Vivoactive 6 for my dad, followed a few weeks later by a Garmin Venu 4 for myself. Join me for a brief unboxing and setup of the Venu 4 (in 41mm size)!
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Transcript
00:00Hello everyone, I'm Jacob Kauf, and I'm the Nerd on the Street, and today we're unboxing a Garmin Venue 4
00:04smartwatch.
00:13Alright everyone, I'm gonna try to keep this unboxing short.
00:16Brevity is the name of the game for me when it comes to unboxing videos.
00:19This is a smartwatch from Garmin.
00:21Yes, the same Garmin that used to make those GPS systems for cars.
00:25They've sort of pivoted to health devices now.
00:28A lot of their offerings are smartwatches, fitness watches, lifestyle watches.
00:33They also make some other fitness devices like rings or straps or things like that to track different biometric things
00:39about yourself.
00:40I joined a running club in the Denver area a couple of years ago,
00:43and most of the people in that club have Garmin watches.
00:46That's why I started looking into these.
00:48Now back in 2024 when I started looking, the Garmin landscape for all the different watch models was
00:53really confusing and really frustrating because most of their watches had 80% of what I wanted,
00:59but they were all missing a different feature that I wanted.
01:02You know, maybe one watch had an ECG feature, maybe one watch had a maps feature,
01:06one watch had a nice screen, but they didn't really have a good all-around option.
01:09They had a thousand different models that were all just missing tiny little things.
01:13That was also the case when I looked again last year in 2025, but this year in 2026,
01:18I found out that the last sort of refresh that Garmin did added some pretty nice looking watches to their
01:23Venue line.
01:24This is one of their more generic lines of watches.
01:27It's not just for runners like the 4Runner line.
01:29It's not just for people doing extreme sports.
01:32The Venue line is kind of for people who want a smartwatch,
01:34but just want better fitness tracking and better battery life and things like that
01:38compared to the big smartwatch brands like Apple watches or Pixel watches or Samsung watches.
01:43On top of that, my dad's birthday was a few weeks ago,
01:45and my sister and I got him a Vivoactive watch.
01:49The Vivoactive line and the Venue line are kind of two pieces of the same line in the Garmin ecosystem.
01:54This Venue line just has a few power user features that that Vivoactive line doesn't have.
01:58So the Vivoactive line is great for lower tech people and people who are more entry level,
02:02and then you've got the Venue line on top of that.
02:05Once again, not the highest in smartwatch,
02:07the Garmin cells are the highest in smartwatch out there,
02:09but just a really solid, hopefully all-around smartwatch with very good fitness tracking built in.
02:14Now, I wore watches years ago.
02:16For many years, I wore a watch, just a digital watch, $10, $20 cheap digital watches.
02:22When my last one broke during COVID, I wasn't really going outside that often during COVID.
02:28So I normally had computers and phones and stuff around me to see the time.
02:31I didn't feel like I needed to replace it at the time.
02:33But yeah, I'm going to try to get back into wearing a watch.
02:36And in terms of the fitness tracking stuff,
02:38I'm definitely going to be wearing this thing out when I'm running with people.
02:41It'll be good just to track some basic stats about my runs.
02:44I might not wear this 24-7.
02:46You know, some people would have privacy concerns about a smartwatch like this.
02:50I'm not too paranoid when it comes to that,
02:52but I'm not sure if I'm going to wear it all the time.
02:54Another thing this watch does is sleep tracking.
02:56I'll be interested to see if it is able to tell me anything
02:58about the different levels of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night.
03:01Again, that's another thing that you might or might not want to have a watch tracking,
03:04just for privacy reasons.
03:05But yeah, I've been thinking about getting one of these for years.
03:07Like I said, literally a couple of years.
03:10And so if I don't end up using it a ton or if I end up not liking it a
03:13ton,
03:13I could just, you know, not upgrade it in the future.
03:16But for now, I had been thinking about picking one up for way too long.
03:19For the record, I did not use any Nerd on the Street funds for this.
03:22This was a personal purchase.
03:23I'm just unboxing it on camera because I thought Nerd on the Street people
03:26might be interested in this technology.
03:28But yeah, that's about it.
03:29I'm going to bring the camera in and we'll just take this thing out of the box real quick and
03:33get it set up.
03:33All right, guys, brought the camera into my desk here.
03:36I did find my lighting settings on the camera were messed up just now.
03:40Hopefully that intro wasn't too dark.
03:42Glad that I noticed it before doing the actual unboxing part of the video at least.
03:45So Garmin's fulfillment is very quick, both the times that I've ordered from them so far.
03:50They've had free two-day processing and two-day shipping.
03:53And in this case, I ordered this watch on Wednesday, about the middle of the day on Wednesday.
03:57It's currently Friday.
03:59It showed up Friday afternoon.
04:00So they got this thing out faster than they promised.
04:03And it was shipped faster than UPS promised too.
04:06It seems like they've got a warehouse in Kansas that these come from.
04:09The Vivoactive for my dad went to an address in Missouri.
04:12This one came here to Colorado.
04:13It makes sense that both those places are close to Kansas.
04:16But yeah, very plain outer brown box.
04:18Not a whole lot here.
04:19You know, if this is sitting on your doorstep,
04:21nobody's going to see it and know that it's necessarily an expensive smartwatch.
04:25Talking about cost, this thing actually wasn't super expensive for a smartwatch.
04:29I think some Apple watches can get up to like $800.
04:31I paid just under $500 for this thing with a coupon that I got through a health app
04:37that basically funds coupons using advertisements in the app.
04:40I just used the app for a couple of weeks.
04:42Got a 20% off coupon, which is generally better than any of the seasonal discounts that Garmin offers.
04:49So it was worth doing that for me.
04:51The app I used was called Optimity.
04:53I just did some surveys on that, played some games that they partner with for a couple of weeks
04:58in order to save $60 or so off the list price for this thing.
05:02So yeah, it was worth it for me, like I said, to save that money.
05:06Opening this thing up here, we've got some bubble wrap.
05:09And inside of there, we've got a tiny box.
05:12I think this is actually smaller than the box for the Vivoactive 6 was.
05:17The Vivoactive, like I said, was a slightly cheaper watch.
05:20It was a slightly lower end.
05:21So I was expecting the Venue 4 box to be bigger.
05:24But yeah, this is actually, I think it's smaller.
05:28I think it's less tall than the Vivoactive box was.
05:31I don't have that one in front of me to compare, so I can't say for sure.
05:34But the Vivoactive was definitely more of an upright rectangle,
05:37whereas this is a square that we're looking at right here.
05:41This is the 41 millimeter size.
05:43There are two sizes of the Venue 4 watch.
05:4641 millimeter, this is the same size screen as the Vivoactive 6.
05:50And it's a slightly smaller bezel, just ever so slightly smaller bezel.
05:54The Vivoactive has an aluminum bezel, anodized aluminum.
05:58The Venue 4 has a stainless steel bezel.
06:00So that's one difference between them.
06:01But yeah, the Venue 4 also comes in 45 millimeter.
06:04Some people refer to this 41 millimeter as the Venue 4S.
06:08That does not appear to be an official Garmin designation,
06:10since they just say Venue 4 on the box.
06:12But on the Garmin Wiki and stuff, I see people calling this the Venue 4S,
06:16in case you're curious about that.
06:18So there's some kind of barcode on the one side there.
06:21Lots of text on the back.
06:22Package contains in a bunch of different languages.
06:25And then Bluetooth trademark stuff.
06:28Lots of regulatory marks and things, since a smartwatch is going to have
06:32both technology and some medical stuff going on in it.
06:36So yeah.
06:37On the box here, it says engineered on the inside for life on the outside.
06:42And yeah, Garmin is definitely marketed sort of towards the sportsy crowd.
06:46Again, the Venue line is one of their more lifestyle type of watches.
06:50It's more a watch you can wear anywhere.
06:53I wanted the smaller size of this because I didn't want to look like a tool walking
06:57around with a giant watch.
06:58You know, my wrists are not huge.
07:01So, you know, if I really bulk up in the future,
07:03I can always upgrade to a different size.
07:05But for the foreseeable future, this should be perfectly fine.
07:08And I think that the Venue line looks nicer than the 4Runner line.
07:11The 4Runner line has a lot more colors and things like that.
07:14Even their highest end 4Runner watch has this really annoying neon green band on the side.
07:19And I think Garmin does that sort of intentionally to separate out their lines.
07:24They don't want people buying a super expensive 4Runner watch and then wearing it to fancy events.
07:29They really make the 4Runner series for people who are running.
07:32And like I said, I got this thing kind of primarily to track my running.
07:37I'm interested, you know, what my heart rate's doing during running.
07:40I've gotten a lot faster since I started running a couple of years ago,
07:43but I've sort of plateaued with some of my progress.
07:45So just wondering if any of the stats here are going to be useful to me at all.
07:49Again, if they're not, no big deal. At least I'll have a watch.
07:52And I can just always downgrade back to a dumb watch if and when this ever breaks.
07:57Hopefully I'll get some good years out of this one though.
07:59Um, so right there in the box, we've got the watch and it's basically what I expected.
08:04Um, I got the slate gray color of the watch and a black silicone band.
08:10Um, I thought about getting the fabric band, upgrading to it.
08:13Garmin's bands are a little expensive.
08:15Getting the silicone band by itself is 40 bucks and their fabric band is $70.
08:20So if I was going to get the Garmin official fabric band,
08:23it would have made sense to upgrade to that for $30 and not pay the full 70 to get that.
08:28Um, if I ever want to use a different band,
08:29I'll probably just get a $10 cheaper one from Amazon or something.
08:33I believe this is an 18 millimeter band size,
08:36but whatever band size it is, they're all standardized and you can get them from third parties.
08:41Um, so yeah, I'm going to set this off to the side for just a moment
08:44here in the box.
08:45What else do we have?
08:47We've got a pouch on the left.
08:48That's got a cable in it and this is going to be our charging cable.
08:53So I think this is a proprietary connector.
08:57Uh, let me get the cardboard off there.
09:00Sort of looks like pogo pins, but I don't think they're actually pogo pins.
09:04Um, it's just four pins there in that side of the connector.
09:09Um, so we don't have USB-C on the watch, unfortunately, but this thing should be,
09:14uh, completely waterproof.
09:16You know, the watch itself is water resistant, sweat resistant, rain resistant, all that,
09:20because sometimes I do go running when it's raining out.
09:23Um, the other side of this cable is USB-C and the watch does not come with an actual charging
09:28brick.
09:29It just comes with the cable.
09:30So all of my chargers actually are for USB type A.
09:34So I'm probably going to have to plug this into my computer for a while just to charge
09:37it unless I want to pick up a charging brick that's USB type C.
09:40Actually, now that I think about it, I do have a type C brick laying around.
09:44Um, I think I've got one laying around from work now that I think about it, but yeah,
09:48the Vivoactive also just came with this same cable, um, no charging brick.
09:52And my dad did not have a charging brick that had USB-C on it.
09:56So when I was with him helping him set it up, he once again, just had to plug it into
09:59his laptop to charge it, I think, which works fine.
10:02It's just a little less convenient, but yeah, that is everything in the left side flap there.
10:08And then on the right side, we've got looks like some booklets, some paper booklets.
10:13That's everything that is in there as you can see, and that's everything out of the box.
10:18So we've got a Garmin Venue 4 series, probably some sort of quick start guide.
10:23I've got a link to the support website for Garmin.
10:26Uh, yeah.
10:27So it's telling you how to turn this thing on, hold the power button for three seconds.
10:30It'll give you a QR code, use that to download the Garmin Connect app.
10:33Um, yeah, it's letting you know where the flashlight is, where the microphone is.
10:38Apparently the flashlights in these things are semi-decent.
10:40I do use my phone's flashlight quite a bit.
10:43So if I can not have to fumble around with that quite as often, if this thing actually has a
10:49decent
10:49LED flashlight in it, that would be pretty cool.
10:52That is one thing I think the Venue has that the Vivoactive doesn't.
10:55Obviously not worth the price upgrade for that alone, but yeah.
10:58Uh, just some different, different gestures and things that looks like you can use to quickly
11:02activate features with the buttons on top of the touch screen that the watch does have.
11:07Some people don't like their watches having touch screens.
11:09I'm glad that it's sort of modern.
11:11It's got an OLED screen.
11:12It's got a touch screen.
11:14We'll take a look at all of that in a moment.
11:16Um, this is a lot of safety and product information, a lot of regulatory stuff, uh, regarding probably the
11:20wireless frequencies, things like that, the battery in probably a hundred different languages in there.
11:26Um, it is a lithium ion battery.
11:28So if you're wearing it on a plane, don't put it in your checked baggage.
11:31Um, so there's that.
11:33All right.
11:33I'm going to slide the watch off of this cardboard here and that cardboard has nothing else in it.
11:40So I'll just put it aside and here's the watch itself.
11:44Um, I am going to peel off this fake screen cover there.
11:49And there's the actual screen.
11:50You can see it's kind of, kind of, uh, beveled a little bit on the edges.
11:54If you can see that.
11:56So that's cool.
11:57All right.
11:57So taking a very close up look at this watch in 4k, um, yeah, we've got the screen,
12:03we've got the bevel, uh, we've got that nice stainless steel bezel around it.
12:08As you can see, um, taking a look at the back underneath the strap there,
12:13you can see we've got the heart rate sensor.
12:15This is the Elevate V5 sensor.
12:17That's one other difference between the Vivoactive 6 and this Venu 4 is the Vivoactive
12:23has the Elevate V4 heart rate sensor, which does not support the ECG functionality.
12:28And the Venu here, the Venu 4 has the Elevate V5 heart rate sensor.
12:32It might be a little bit more accurate just in terms of sensing your heart rate.
12:36And it does support a very rudimentary electrocardiogram function.
12:40Um, it's not going to be medical grade.
12:42You know, it's not going to necessarily be taken as authoritative by doctors or anything,
12:47but it's just, you know, an interesting thing to have if you ever do want to pop that Garmin
12:51ECG app open and try to take one.
12:53Um, so on the right side here, we have two buttons.
12:56There's a round button and a sort of rounded rectangular button.
13:00The left side has no buttons at all.
13:03Um, and yeah, we just, we've got one strap here.
13:06Um, how do I release the strap?
13:08I am just curious because like I said, these straps can be very easily changed out.
13:12It looks like there's a slider on the left side of the bottom here and on the right side of
13:17the top.
13:17And if I just slide that slider looks like we can
13:24sort of, uh, yeah, unspring it and then take it out of, of the watch.
13:31And so I'll do the same thing down here.
13:33It was harder for that top one.
13:34I think just since it was at an angle, but yeah, if we just slide, slide that
13:40and we can take the band right off.
13:43So that's the silicone band.
13:44Once again, if this ever breaks or anything like that, um, or if you just want to change the style
13:50out,
13:50this is the actual watch itself.
13:52This is the tech and you can just pop whatever band that you want onto there.
13:57There's a very small text on the band itself.
13:59It says quick release.
14:00So it's meant to be changed out.
14:02You know, some people would change them out when they're going to a fancy party.
14:06They might change it to a, uh, a fancier band.
14:09All right, but I've gone ahead and put that band back on.
14:11I think I put it on the right way.
14:12So I am just going to pop this watch on at this point and we'll give it the first boot.
14:18And I'm not going to walk you guys through every single feature under the sun with this.
14:21Once again, I don't want this video to get super long, but I do just want to power it up,
14:27check that it works, get the app connected up here and maybe show you the first time setup.
14:33So fitting that onto me here.
14:35Um, silicone straps are easy to work with at least, you know, fairly soft, a tiny bit stretchy,
14:41but not really meant to be stretched and very easy to clean and everything.
14:45You know, silicone is a resilient material.
14:47It's not going to absorb anything.
14:49So yeah, I'm going to go ahead and attempt to power the watch on here.
14:55Um, I just hit the round button for a few seconds.
14:59Um, my dad's Vivoactive a couple of weeks ago was charged from the factory.
15:03There we go.
15:04Second time's the charm.
15:06Um, so yeah, I think this thing will be partially charged.
15:08It's probably not going to be fully charged.
15:10We'll see here when it turns on, but we do have a little bit of a Garmin splash screen there.
15:18Vivoactive, or sorry, Venue 4.
15:21I have to remember which one I have.
15:23Okay.
15:23And so here's the first time setup.
15:25I can see in the camera, uh, you can see a little bit of flickering there that has to do
15:29with the
15:29refresh rate of this OLED screen looking at it in person.
15:33I don't see any flickering.
15:34That's just a artifact of the camera, uh, pair phone to enable connected features.
15:39I'm going to select yes.
15:40If you don't want to use this as a smartwatch, you don't even need to pair it to a phone
15:43though.
15:43So that is good to know for those privacy conscious people out there.
15:46Not that you necessarily want a fancy Garmin watch like this, if you are not going to be pairing it.
15:52So it says scan with camera.
15:53I am going to put that lighting filter actually back on the camera here,
15:57maybe just to get a better view, just have to remember to turn that off again.
16:02Cause that's the part I always forget with my camera here.
16:04So I am scanning this QR code with my phone, and I think it's just going to be a QR
16:10code
16:11to download the Garmin app.
16:12I don't think it's going to immediately pair yet.
16:15Okay.
16:16Come on phone.
16:17There we go.
16:18All right.
16:18Connect.garmin.com
16:20And we'll see what that goes to that did open up the Garmin connect app.
16:23And I did already have that installed.
16:24It looks like, so it'd probably bring you to the play store or the website,
16:27with a link to download it.
16:29If you don't have it, I'll go ahead and sign in.
16:32I created an account when I was ordering this thing.
16:35So just selecting my credentials here from Bitwarden and sign into that.
16:40All right.
16:41And confirm details.
16:42We'll keep an eye on the watch here as well.
16:44We need to know your age and country of residence, and that's going to
16:48enable certain features in the software, hardware, firmware.
16:53So they're complying with regulations wherever you are.
16:56So I'm going to put in my birthday as well.
16:58I had to scroll all the way down to the use section to find the United States.
17:02A little bit of a pet peeve of mine.
17:04Not that any of these other countries aren't all so important,
17:06but I doubt that they sell as many devices in them as they're selling in the US.
17:10But I'll click continue there.
17:11And I'll just confirm that personal information.
17:14All right.
17:14Welcome to Garmin.
17:15I'll click add a device, allow access, allow, turn on Bluetooth, allow.
17:23Here's the part where we're just allowing everything.
17:25Once again, I might pair some of this back later.
17:27I am somewhat privacy conscious, not super paranoid, but I am conscious.
17:31So yeah, as you can see, I didn't even have to do anything else on the watch.
17:34My phone's just saying ready to connect.
17:36It found the Venue 4 41 millimeter, also known as the Venue 4S.
17:40Once again, it doesn't look like they actually call it that here.
17:42So I'll click connect it, link your device.
17:45Yes.
17:47Oh, okay.
17:48So this is optional.
17:50Oh, all right.
17:52I just clicked out of it without giving it permission to link the device.
17:56And it just didn't give me an option to do it once I clicked out of it.
18:01So that was poor UX.
18:03I'm sure I can go and do that again later if I want.
18:07All right.
18:07Well done, it says.
18:09So we've got two different things going on here now.
18:11On the phone, it's asking me to set a profile picture for my Garmin account.
18:15I'll do that later.
18:16And it's going to ask me some basic information about myself,
18:20just to know sort of what my health goals should theoretically be.
18:24I'm going to have to look some of this up.
18:27On the watch, though, at the same time, again, it's asking me if I want to set a passcode.
18:31And it's going to only ask for the passcode when the watch detects that it's been removed
18:35from your wrist.
18:36My dad's watch was sometimes asking him for his passcode when it was still on his wrist
18:41the whole time.
18:42So this is not perfect, the heuristics it uses.
18:44But I will just put one in.
18:46All right.
18:46So passcode set.
18:48And that way, if you take your watch off,
18:50you know, if you're about to go into a sauna or something,
18:53and you take your watch off, put it in a locker, or if somebody just takes it off your wrist,
18:57then theoretically, they won't be able to just use your watch to get into your phone and everything.
19:01Text size.
19:02This text size looks good for me so far.
19:04I'll just keep the default.
19:06It's asking me to put my passcode in already.
19:08Select the activities you want to use frequently.
19:10Sure.
19:10I will be walking.
19:11I will be running.
19:14So this is interesting.
19:15I don't think I need mobility.
19:16I don't think I need meditation.
19:19Road bike.
19:20I don't have a bike here.
19:22Okay, so everything else should be deselected by default.
19:25But that first section of popular has some stuff that's selected by default.
19:29I'm not sure what mobility means.
19:31The rest of this I might do sometimes.
19:34So I'll just leave that.
19:36And you can customize that again later as well.
19:39So I'll click done.
19:40And okay, so it knows what time it is.
19:43It knows what time zone I'm in, since there's a GPS in this thing.
19:46It knows it's 1133 PM.
19:48This is not the watch face that was in the Garmin advertising for this model,
19:53which is interesting because my dad's Vivoactive 6 did have the watch face selected by default
19:57that was in the market materials and on the box and everything.
20:01As you can see, I was expecting this watch face for my venue here, but it's a different one.
20:08But I'm sure this one's available somewhere if I want it.
20:11So yeah, it'll start tracking my steps.
20:13We were at 63% battery out of the box, which is pretty good.
20:17Just let you get started with it.
20:18Estimates about six days left on that charge.
20:21Garmin watches, again, these fitness watches,
20:23they're going to be much better at long term battery usage
20:25than like an Apple watch or a Pixel watch that you're going to have to charge every day or two.
20:30It's got my heart rate started detecting there.
20:32Once again, it'll be interesting to see that kind of stuff over time when I'm running and whatnot.
20:37The body battery function, it's going to start tracking my sleep
20:40and trying to figure out how much energy I have in general.
20:42Yeah, and lots of different stuff you can do here.
20:45Again, I'm not going to walk you through every single thing in the watch.
20:48Just see what I can do.
20:49Yeah, swiping to the right gets me to activities.
20:52I can also customize like my watch face.
20:54Ah, there's the default watch face.
20:59Watch face, stencil.
21:05Okay, it's really interesting.
21:06I wonder if it's because it's nighttime.
21:07I think it's because it's nighttime that it's giving me that simplified watch face.
21:11I think it would be giving me this one that looks just like the sticker once again,
21:15if it was daytime, but it thinks I should be sleeping right now because it is quite late.
21:20And it's probably right about that.
21:22So yeah, once again, I'm just going to go through, going to set the rest of my stuff up here.
21:26But that is a very quick introduction to the Garmin Venue 4.
21:32I'm trying to figure out how sensitive it's going to be in terms of when I pick my arm up.
21:35Is it going to show me the time without me having to tap it every time?
21:38It probably should.
21:39But once again, that might be because it's nighttime mode on it.
21:42Yeah, and it is just a moment later.
21:44I finished that tutorial and I did get it to show me the actual home screen.
21:48It was in sleep focus mode was the reason why it was giving me that simplified screen.
21:53But this is the default watch face.
21:55Once again, they have a different watch face for every color of their watches.
21:59It seems like a different default face, but you can absolutely customize that with lots
22:03of other ones as well.
22:04So yeah, let me know if you guys have any questions about this.
22:06So far, it feels fine.
22:08It looks fine.
22:09I was worried about how thick it would be, but I am glad I got the 41 millimeter size.
22:14This size looks great on my wrist.
22:16You know, this doesn't look tiny.
22:17It doesn't look silly how small it is.
22:20I think the bigger one would have been almost bigger than my wrist.
22:23And like I said, it wouldn't have been out of place in all contexts.
22:26When I'm at work at my tech job, a huge junkie watch would have looked fine.
22:30But you know, if I'm going to a party or something, if I'm wearing a suit,
22:33I could still wear this thing.
22:34Whereas I wouldn't want to wear a huge rocket scientist calculator watch.
22:38But yeah, I'll possibly update you guys more about this in the future.
22:42If not, that was a real quick unboxing.
22:44I'm Jacob Kaufman, I'm the Nerd on the Street, and I'll see you guys in the next one.
22:47Bye.
22:56Bye.
22:58Bye.
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