The Garmin Venu Sq 2 gets a welcome facelift, but at a significant jump in price

Everyone’s favorite rectangular Garmin now shines even brighter. The newly launched Garmin Venu Sq 2 series now features a vibrant AMOLED touchscreen display. Not only is the touchscreen brighter, but it’s also bigger, bumping up display space from 1.3 to 1.4mm. With full-color menus and watch faces, the device is more attractive (and more user-friendly) than ever. It also offers a more well-rounded user experience extending battery life to 11 days in smartwatch mode.

Since a better battery should mean more time on users’ wrists, Garmin again packed the new lineup with plenty of features to keep you busy. This year’s series lands with more than 25 sport modes plus preloaded workouts ranging from cardio to HIIT. If you are training for a marathon, you can use your Venu Sq 2 to access free Garmin Coach training.

During workouts and beyond, the watch keeps tabs on your health with heart rate and SpO2 sensors and offers insights via Garmin’s popular Body Battery and Health Snapshot features. It also tracks stress and sleep and provides a cherished sleep score after each night of shuteye. You can still use Garmin Pay with either model in the series, but only the Garmin Venu Sq 2 Music Edition offers storage space for music.

Read more: The best Garmin watches you can buy 

Garmin touts the Venu Sq roster as an affordable line of GPS smartwatches but this year, they’re not as budget-friendly as they used to be. The Venu Sq 2 is priced at $249.99 which is $50 more than the launch price of the original. The Venu Sq 2 Music will set you back an extra $50 on top. We recently got our hands on the latter and are eager to find out if the new device is worth the bump. Both models are available now on Garmin’s website. The Venu Sq 2 comes in shadow gray/slate, white/cream gold, and cool mint/metallic mint. The pricier Music Edition is available in the ivory/peach gold shown above, as well as black/slate and French gray/cream gold.