Garmin’s closest Apple Watch Ultra rival is getting a soft gold revamp

• The Garmin Venu X1 is getting a new Soft Gold color
• The Soft Gold comes with a new French Gray strap color, and retains its titanium caseback
• 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 genuine innovation – the antithesis of Garmin’s normal design philosophy. Where most of the best Garmin watches are chunky and round, this one was square and very slim with an exceptionally bright screen, while still packing in the titanium backing, LED light, speaker, microphone, GPS and powerful health tracking tools Garmin is known for. It was a real Apple Watch Ultra 3 rival, in both design and performance.

Long story short, I gave it 4.5 stars after testing, and called it „Garmin’s most innovative watch in years“. Now we’re getting a new Garmin Venu X1 and we’re less than two weeks into the new year, albeit it’s only a new color rather than a fully-fledged sequel.