Garmin Venu X1 revealed – meet the surprise new Apple Watch Ultra 2 rival with Garmin’s biggest display yet

• Garmin has revealed the Garmin Venu X1, a surprise new premium smartwatch
• It costs a hefty $799.99 / £679.99 / AU$1,499
• Its 2-inch square display is bigger than the Apple Watch Ultra 2 – but could last up to 8 days (vs the Apple Watch's 36 hours)

Surprise! Garmin has revealed the Garmin Venu X1, an "ultrathin" smartwatch with a massive 2-inch AMOLED display and up to eight days of battery life.

The Garmin Venu X1 looks set to be an Apple Watch Ultra 2 competitor, with an even bigger screen (the Ultra's is 1.9-inches). This giant, square AMOLED display is set to showcase full-color maps to ensure you can navigate adventures with ease, custom watch faces and what appears to be a redesigned interface.

An on-board speaker and microphone array allows you to take calls on-wrist while connected to your phone, and use simple voice commands such as 'set a timer' or 'start a running activity' even while offline.

The new model packs 32GB of internal memory, presumably for on-watch music, and Garmin's updated Elevate v5 heart rate sensor, most recently used on the Garmin Forerunner 570 and 970. It's got Garmin's LED flashlight onboard, a titanium back, and scratch-proof Sapphire Glass coating the display.

This is certainly a watch ready for the great outdoors, while incorporating lifestyle elements such as those voice commands and more font sizes, which makes notifications much easier to receive and navigate on that giant screen.

The Garmin Venu series has always aimed to straddle the line between a 'true' smartwatch extension for your phone and Garmin's classic dedicated fitness companion, and has done so admirably in the past: the Garmin Venu 3 was ranked 'best for most people' in our best Garmin watches list for 2025. This new thinner Venu X1 appears to follow a similar brief, with its square watch face inevitably drawing comparisons to Apple like the Venu Sq before it.

As you might expect from a premium GPS watch from Garmin, the Garmin Venu X1 doesn't come cheap, costing $799.99 / £679.99 / AU$1,499. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, this is right around the Apple Watch Ultra 2's price point.

It's available now in two colors, Black and Moss, and includes Garmin's 24mm ComfortFit nylon band.

You might also like...

• Whoops! A Garmin Index Sleep Monitor video was reportedly just leaked – by Garmin
• The Polar Grit X2 is luring us away from the Garmin Instinct 3
• Garmin Index Sleep Monitor: Everything we know so far