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.

The Garmin Venu X1's new Soft Gold colorway continues to echo the Venu series' design philosophy of straddling the line between 'powerful fitness tracker' and 'stylish smartwatch'. The Soft Gold color features a lighter gray polymer casing, with gold-colored buttons and clasp and titanium backing. A French Gray velcro band completes the new look.

It's priced at $699.99 / £679.99 / AU$1,499 (like the rest of the Garmin Venu X1 line) and is available to buy from Garmin right now.

A sign of things to come?

Garmin released a whole slew of watches last year, revamping almost its entire range. As CES 2026 has come and gone without a new Garmin watch announcement (only a Nutrition Tracking feature for Connect+ users) I'm wondering if this is a sign of things to come.

I imagine we'll see less watches coming out this year and more minor tweaks to the range like this one. However, I'm sure Garmin will make an exception for the Garmin Fenix 9.

The Garmin Fenix 8 arrived in September 2024, while the upgraded Garmin Fenix 8 Pro with a MicroLED screen and satellite connectivity arrived last year. If I was to take bets, I'd say we'll see a Garmin Fenix 9 towards the end of this year, with a Fenix 9 Pro sometime in 2027.

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