For the last few weeks, I've been using what is arguably the best smartwatch on
the market, the Garmin Venue X1. I've never used a Garmin smartwatch before.
And right out of the gate, there were a ton of things to absolutely love [music]
about this thing. First and foremost being the giant sapphire glass covered
2in OLED display. As you can see, it's
already set up, but there's really not that much to miss about the setup
wizard. It's painless and other than one small typo, was basically just cute. It
was as easy to set up as any modern smart device that I've used in recent
years. It's shockingly slim for all of
the features and sensors that it has packed into it, which really did make
more of a noticeable difference to comfort than I actually expected and
includes a sports style band that really
indicates what this watch is for. On paper, I am the perfect target audience
for this because I am techie, I'm active, and maybe most importantly, I
can afford an $800
smartwatch. Good god, is it ever expensive. But let's talk about what you
get for your money. Included in the box is a
really, you guys, 1 and 1/2 ft proprietary charging cable.
What even is this? To its credit, it goes on pretty easily. It is reversible
and I didn't have any issues with the interface [music] with respect to, you
know, water getting on it and preventing it from being charged, which, oh,
speaking of, it's water resistant to 50 m or five atmospheres, but is not as
dive focused as something like uh Huawei's recent efforts. All right, you
also get some documentation. I love documentation. Not charging it below 0°
is an odd choice for something that's so
outdoorsy focused, but maybe the hope is
you won't be charging it that often. They claim up to 11 days in power saver
mode, up to 8 days in smartwatch mode, and I usually got more like 2 or 3 days
because I used the always on display because in my opinion, if [music] you
can't always tell the time, it's not a watch. It's certainly not very smart. On
their site, they get even more granular about what kind of battery life you can
expect with the most demanding use case being all systems, global navigation,
satellite mode with music playing. And they say you can get up to 7 hours. Now,
that's not necessarily long enough for the most demanding athletic events. Like
say, what were you saying? An Iron Man event takes longer than that. Super
cool. Wouldn't know. Never done an Iron Man event. Uh but in fairness to them,
that's with a lot running. GPS, Gloness, Galileo, QZSS. I've never even heard of
that one before. They do that one. I know. Heart rate monitor, blood oxygen
saturation monitor, barometric altimeter, compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, thermometer, and ambient
light sensor. And they managed to pack that all into this skinny titanium
frame. So, actually, I the display was a really high point for me as well. So,
it's a 2-in OLED with a 448x486
pixel resolution that I found very easy to read in basically [music]
every circumstance. Let's have a look at the interface. Frankly, I didn't find it
to be the most intuitive thing, but it's kind of part for the course for smart
watches. So, you pull up to get access to a bunch of your sort of common
functions and important data. Here's all
your notifications. Boom. Uh, there were
some things I really liked about the way it handles notifications. For instance,
in Microsoft Teams, when you dismiss something from here, it's dismissed. You
don't get harassed by that notification again when you load up your phone. But
that is a bit of a double-edged sword. I did have a couple times that I swiped
something away from my watch and it was like now that's gone forever. So, so
that's cool. Then we can press this button and I went and I customized my
various activities. It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to get rid
of the ones that I don't want. I don't
walk for exercise. I walk to get somewhere. Like I don't need that as an
exercise thing. If anything, I would like it out of the way of the stuff that
I do do. I love the stair climber, the elliptical, the rower, and then check
this out. They got badminton. Yo, that's freaking awesome. But like, see, these
aren't pinned, right? But they're still they're still here and they're at the
top, which was a little bit irritating. You know what else is irritating?
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>> we found it. >> Swiping does nothing. Whoop whoop.
Hitting the pin does nothing. [music] Okay, these are the things that I
assumed because I used pin, see to to
pin the ones that I actually wanted. So I thought, well, I must be able to unp
[laughter] if I if I had just tapped like half a
centimeter to the left, I would have been able to say yes. Hell yeah. Okay,
that's freaking awesome. And then if they want bonus points, they could make
it so that I can press and hold and rearrange them. That would be even
better. Anyway, the bottom button is back. And I
basically didn't use this that much um because I think that this is it. This is
the definitive nail in the coffin of me
caring about [music] advanced smart watches. Like I said at the beginning of
the video, on paper, I'm the perfect customer for this. It's really cool.
Like it can do all this stuff. But what I found more than anything else was that
I used it to set a timer for like footwork drills and stuff. I probably
could have done that for a lot less than $800 US. And there were some areas where
the Venue X1 did fall short for me
compared to other smart watches that I've used. For instance, it doesn't have
any cellular connectivity. So, you can't just go out and leave your phone at home
if you expect to get any calls. And making matters worse, its integration
with databased calling apps was not
perfect. I got a team's call once while I was in the bathroom. TMI, sorry. And I
had left my phone at my desk and I was like, "Oh, I will simply take action and
I will let them know that I no, I will do absolutely nothing." I couldn't take
the call and talk to them through my wrist. And I wasn't even able to send a
message that said be right there or give
me a sec or you know, whatever. Here, Belle, do you want to call me on Teams?
>> Yes. >> Do you really want to though? You don't sound like you want to.
>> Yeah. >> Don't you love his enthusiasm, folks? incoming call. Okay,
so my options are
decline call. [laughter]
Okay, and that's on Android. Some iOS
users have pointed out that [clears throat] the integration with iOS
and notifications and whatnot is not as good as it is on Android. However, it is
important to lay the blame for that where it belongs and it lies with Apple.
Apple, get your together. If people want just an iPhone, that's okay. If
people want just AirPods, that's okay, too. I promise this video is not going
to turn into an Apple rant. See? See my discipline? I'm done. [music] Anyway,
no, no, I'm not quite done. The uh Pebble co-founder who recently
relaunched Pebble was talking about how flipping difficult Apple makes it for
third party accessories to work as well as the first party ones. Apple, get your
together. Sorry, I'm done. I'm done. This is the coolest feature of this watch, though. This is something I've
never actually seen before on a watch. CHECK THIS OUT. WA! IT HAS A BUILT-IN
FLASHLIGHT. AH, how cool is that? It
doesn't look that bright right now because we're under studio lighting. But
let me tell you, this got me out of some binds. I did not use it that often. Used
[music] it like three times, but man, what a rush. What a rush those three
times, you guys. Flipping amazing. And you know what? The comments are going to
be full of people who get a ton of value out of this stuff, right? That's like so
cool. And um I love it for you. Oh,
played some crazy badminton last night.
Way way way more than I probably should have cuz I have training again today.
Oh, that's one thing the Venue X1 can help you with theoretically. It can like
help you plan your optimal recovery time and tell you when you're good to go
again. I just like went hard with the massage gun, had a long bath, and then
got really hydrated in hopes that I will somehow survive today. They've got like
pace tracking for if you're a cyclist or a runner. Climb pro, which I don't know
if you're going to like free climb a skyscraper or something. Maybe that'd be
useful. Maybe it wouldn't. I wouldn't know. Never done it. Oh, they've got a
bunch of cool tennis stuff, which presumably the Australian Open would ban
anyway. They got a bunch of golf stuff, including course view maps for 43,000
golf. Did you know there's 43,000 golf courses on Earth? Wow. Golf. Yeah.
Wow. We can have a look at the app if you guys want. There's my body battery
in case anyone cared about that. So, some days I start pretty low and other
days I start high and I go low. I've never been able to understand this cuz
like I eat a thing of pad thai like
every other day for lunch at work that has got to be like 2500 calories. It's
like a family style like pad thai serving for the table. And apparently I
only burn like 2,000 calories every day. But I eat other meals. I don't
understand the math of this. You guys look at that day. What day was that?
Good lord. Wednesday CES
22,000 steps. I like going for a walk at
the end of the day. Um, you know, to take my mind off all the walking around
that I've done that day during CES. So, I end up walking a flipping [music] ton
during the show. Last comment, I don't know if they got any like antimicrobial
whatever in it, but the strap didn't get super stinky, which normally is a
problem for me. Thanks for watching ShortCircuit. Sup,
Garmin fans. Hopefully I uh
didn't displease you. Please don't yell at me in the comments forever.