Garmin’s Apple Watch Ultra’s Closest Rival Gets a Soft Gold Redesign

• The Garmin Venu X1 receives a new Soft Gold color
• The Soft Gold comes with a new French Gray strap color and retains its titanium case back.
• It starts at $699.99 / £679.99 / AU$1,499

The Garmin Venu X1 was one of my favorite smartwatches of last year because it was a true innovation – the antithesis of Garmin’s normal design philosophy. While most of the best Garmin watches are big and round, this one was square and very thin with an exceptionally bright screen, while still retaining the titanium stand, LED light, speaker, microphone, GPS, and powerful health tracking tools that Garmin is known for. It was a real rival to the Apple Watch Ultra 3, both in terms of design and performance.

Long story short, I gave it 4.5 stars after testing and called it “Garmin’s most innovative watch in years.” We’re now getting a new Garmin Venu