“The feature itself isn’t that revolutionary”

Why is FDA-cleared the main buzzword here?

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The Venue 2 is Garmin’s smartest device?

Now that I Phones have satellite beacons they are probably scrambling to stay relevant.

Edit: I didn’t realize Garmin was making Fitbit watches… my bad.

Cause it's the only buzzword

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Would this make a Garmin more attractive than an Apple Watch with EKG? I've heard good things about the Garmins but always wanted the heart monitoring features.

FDA-cleared is the important distinction in this case because it’s a Class II product. FDA approved is more for drugs and vaccines. (Class III)

Low risk devices (Class I) don’t need clearance or approval.

Here’s one source: approved vs. cleared

We already know EKG is effective in diagnosing disease. This means they were able to show similar performance to existing EKGs and I think it’s kind of a big deal. I’ve gotten an FDA clearance and I can tell you believe it or not it means something and they don’t just hand them out.

E: if you think using the phrase FDA cleared is meant to be deceptive, please tell us what phrase would be more appropriate. It’s exactly the correct thing to say.

That’s literally the story

lol - having owned both garmin and apple watches, there's no way i'd choose an apple watch unless I was just a plain naive fanboi

I am a biased garmin fan boy, so take my word with a grain of salt.

Garmin is great in terms of providing fitness watches. The ekg feature is new to the Venu 2, but they have always had devices that have supported basic heart rate monitoring.

My Forerunner 10 that I got back in 2012 had a heart rate function. My current garmin Forerunner 35 also does heart rate monitoring, which came out before the first apple watch.

My parents both have Garmin Forerunners, a 255 and a 745. They both have wearable heart rate monitors that are separate and strap to the chest, which is more accurate than the radial reads you get from a watch.

My wife has the Garmin Venu 2. We just got it but haven't messed around with the functionality too much yet.

The Garmin app is also my favorite app for tracking my running and overall fitness.

Uh... How in the world do you compare a smart fitness-watch to an iphone( or any phone)?

How do you mean? I have no idea where you live so I can't speak to the pricing there, but here the price for Venu 2 is quite sensible.

The Venu 2 Plus mentioned in the article is $50 more than the $399 Apple Watch. Doesn't seem that crazy.

No, but it was the first( Garmin watch) a year ago to enter fda trials so it gets cleared first.

Lol. Tell me you've never used a Garmin watch without telling me you've never used a Garmin watch. It's night and day difference if you care about health and fitness

Ekgs are incredibly complex. I've been interpreting them for 10 years and am still far from an expert. Hospital based computers make lots of errors interpreting them. Just figuring out "is this a heart attack? " is tricky in many cases.

I wonder how many panicked people will go to the ER needlessly compared to how many have real concerning findings.

I think they’re misusing ekg instead of calling it a single lead monitor, similar to what apple has now. They’re decent enough for measuring rate and something like afib, but that’s about it.

The headline is misleading, I thought the same exact thing as you when I read it. Like, does this machine even know what Scarbossa’s criteria are?

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Apple does software well, so once they figure out (or package better) running metrics a little better (such as the physiological measurements Garmin uses) and extend battery life, Garmin is in for a ride. The Watch Ultra is miles better then the Series 8, and is definitely at the same level hardware wise now.

I've been a multiple generation Fenix user, then Epix 2, now Ultra.

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The Apple Watch has an ECG whose sole purpose is to detect signs of AFib. I'm guessing since they made the scope so narrow that they don't get a lot of false positives.

Yes, to my knowledge, determining "afib" is "not afib" is the only validated use of watch-based ekgs.

"Dude, do you EVEN Sgarbossa??"

Would be interesting to see how good it is. I own Withings ScanWatch with EKG and other health focused features, also FDA-cleared.

A photo caption in the article said it best: >“The Venu 2 Plus is the closest thing Garmin has to a full-featured OLED smartwatch.”

$50 more for a fitness tracker that’s finally adding an ekg which apple had what 2, maybe 3 generations ago now? It’s still charging more for an inferior product.

An EKG doesn’t have to have 12 leads and doesn’t have to know any criteria. Do you think the first EKGs knew scarbossa’s criteria?

Apple also calls it an EKG.

Apple watch’s EKG is also FDA cleared

He’s wrong because Garmin already does a bunch of stuff other than satellite beacons, not because he’s comparing a watch to a phone

You don't have to own an iPhone for one. Apple rules out a portion of the market just by that and I'm perfectly happy with my venu 2.

I’m not terribly worried about false positives with a device like this, unless it happens repeatedly to the same person — there are a whole lot of undiagnosed, asymptomatic heart conditions out there, so even if it gets them to the cardiologist on a “false alarm”, I would imagine that some nontrivial percent of those people could find something that they didn’t know to look for by getting their heart checked out.

How do you like it? I like the idea of the long battery life of these.

Until I can charge an Apple Watch once a week I’ll stick with garmin.

With the new Apple Watch Ultra it’s kind of up to your preference. I was a Garmin guy for a while because they did what I needed for hiking and running but the ultra can now do that stuff so I switched for the social features.

Garmin will still get better battery life if you ever need to be off grid more than a couple of days but I don’t do thru hiking anymore and the ultra is literally a phone on your wrist.

They do very specifically give the users a warning that it cannot detect heart attacks, it cannot detect strokes, it basically can only tell you if it thinks its a normal sinus rythm or potentially afib. Pretty sure thats about par for the course for other watches with similar features as well.

Will it include all the good fitness features they’re running watches and cycling computers do? Probs not

It’s about the only thing you could use it for as it only gets the arm leads it can’t even determine axis which it would need to diagnose things

If you can already interrupt ekgs you can get some other data from them, not very actionable but I had the presence of mind to activate the watch while I blacked out due to a vagal, got half a cool recording before I moved too much for it, but I was vaguely reassured

Well, it’s an ad, but I get it.

I think I like it. I used to wear Garmin Phoenix 6 and these interchangeably until Phoenix's wristband got damaged and I've been wearing mostly ScanWatch ever since.

It's minimalist design, not distracting, and good looking design too. It's neat.

It has subset of fitness functions Garmin has, but still a whole lot of them. Has the usual step counter. The main focus of the watch is on health functions. It has EKG, can record it into a PDF file and share it with smartphone app. Can detect Afib events. Got those a couple of times, but I can't testify how good the detection algorithm is. I do have minor arrhythmia, though.

It also got Oxi meter, FDA certified to detect sleeping apnea. That was the reason I bought it, it was a panic buy. I've got problems with breath, I was hypoxic when waking up. It could be due to COVID, could be for other reasons. Never got anything detected by the watch, though.

The battery lasts 25-30 days depending on settings. Oxygen tracking during sleep shortens the life on charge, but not by much.

Thing I'm missing from Phoenix is Garmin Pay. If I would go outdoors hiking it would also be compass, tracking and GPS. Occasionally the music player, if my phone's battery will get discharged. But I feel at ease without feature overload. Most things I used in Phoenix were step counter and breathing exercises, both present in ScanWatch.

Technically you are correct, that fits the definition of an ekg. When someone in the modern medical field uses the term ekg, it is referring to a 12 lead ekg. EKG’s of single leads are simply referred to as rhythm or monitoring strips. Like, if an attending physician asked a resident to bring them a patients ekg, and the resident showed up with a rhythm strip, well let’s just say that that resident would likely be humiliated in front of their colleagues in the very near future. Literally, no doctor in America will refer to a single lead tracing as an ekg.

So there’s the literal definition and the way it’s actually used. I identified with the original comment because I am reading that statement as a physician, not a layperson.

The comment I made about criteria was a joke that would only be funny to a very few people that read it. It was not meant to be taken as a serious comment, but sarcasm doesn’t always translate into text well.

Edit: better grammar

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Language is alive and new products and techniques lead to changes. I don’t see this causing any confusion. Your example proves my point—the reason the resident would be humiliated is because it’s obvious from context that you were expecting a 12-lead.

Who is being misled? Who both understands a proper EKG is 12 leads but doesn’t also immediately realize this would be impossible with a watch?

What does “monitoring strip” mean in the context of a wrist watch? That would be very confusing.

I mean, you’re right. I said you’re right. What do you want, a medal? I was simply explaining to you why I interpreted the headline the way I did.

Dude I wasn’t trying to disparage you, but I think it’s pretty clear you were trying to argue I was “technically” right but wrong in some other more important way. You even threw in that you’re a doctor lol so am I

The Garmin battery life is soo much longer than the Apple watches.

No, you’re right. Just wasn’t sure you’re in medicine, so was explaining why I read that the way I did.

Fair enough

It's been a good watch and has both helped me get into better shape but has also clued me in to stress levels and the issues they can cause. That definitely has been an early warning system when I'm getting sick.

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Lol. I have the in-reach mini but no watch. I really didn’t know that Garmin made fitbits.

Aren't these totally different technologies? I thought ECG was for detecting arrythmia and is very very clear that it can't detect a heart attack. EKG is what they use to detect heart attacks. Lots of watches and devices have ECG functionality at this point, very few have EKG let alone approval as functioning well enough to be advertised.

At least that's my understanding from a very quick look around at watch health features come in smart watches these days.

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Or how many people it could make not go to the ER, I went to the ER because I was having crazy heart palpitations I looked it up and started checking almost every symptom off the list of having a heart attack as it became more severe. I woke my wife up to drive me to the hospital, turned out I was fine, I was having a severe anxiety attack. Maybe something on my wrist that could help assure me that I’m okay might be a good thing, I think if I had one of these and saw that all was okay I wouldn’t have freaked out in the first place which mad me more and more panicked, mocking the symptoms more and more.

EKG and ecg are synonymous. One is electrocardiogram, one is electrokardiogram. Depends on how Germanic you're feeling.

This is the first time that I've heard of this brand of watch... I was looking for an Apple-Watch-style ECG-capable watch that would actually support Android and not be a complete joke for heart monitoring features.

Can I ask, how does the watch charge? Cable? Cradle?

Do you have to take it off in the tub/shower?

This is a cool looking device.

My Apple Watch has been doing that for a while now.

Yes, it charges with a cradle via contact pins.

It is water resistant (50m), it's okay to shower with it. I did it many times.

Unfortunately, I can't make an assessment of it's EKG function, cause I'm not a medical professional.

Plenty of ekgs are not 12-leads. Paramedics will bring in 3-leads and will still be called an ekg by providers

Portable/wearable EKGs are truly lifesaving devices..

Okay, okay. I admitted I was wrong when I said that they misused the word. What more do you want?

What I should have said is that I was confused and worried when I read the title of the article. Then I read the article and realized what they were referring to was a single lead reading, similar to Apple Watch.

I Don’t know what equipment medics have where you are, but I’ve only had them bring in 12 leads. How do you diagnose a STEMI prehospital with a 3 lead? Nobody in any hospital I’ve ever worked at or in any class in medical school has ever referred to anything other than a 12 lead as an ekg. A rhythm strip is technically an ekg, but nobody calls it that. That was the source of my initial confusion.

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I made an appointment with my GP because I kept getting alerts. I wasn't dead yet, so I could wait a week, you know?

They had me at a cardiologist the next day. I apparently have some undiagnosed genetic heart condition. I had other symptoms as well, but the watch was annoying so I finally went in.

>unless it happens repeatedly to the same person

This is what made my team and I take it seriously. I was also able to export the date to my GP easily. I was in the cardiologist's office the next day.

Of course I was allergic to the Zio lol. Next step is implanting a monitoring device. Really interesting and fascinating.

I actually worked on a device like this. Suffice to say the hospital machines are extremely bare bones tech that hasn’t been updated since it’s creation.

These new ones are extremely advanced. I signed an NDA so I have to be a bit vague.

I’d be interested in understanding it’s technology better- primarily regarding its capability of transmitting specific frequencies.