I have a gripe about the Garmin Venu 3: I never know when to take it off. OK, that’s not actually a complaint; it’s a pleasant problem to have, but you get the point. The $450 Venu 3 may have the longest battery life of any smartwatch I’ve tested, lasting for about a week on a single charge.
That alone is enough to leave a strong impression. Battery life aside, Garmin’s latest Venu watch checks a lot of the boxes I’d want from a smartwatch at this price, and then some. With a wide selection of health metrics and workout types combined with useful recovery advice and in-depth sleep data, the Venu 3 is clearly made for those who prioritize fitness, wellness (and battery life) most in a smartwatch.
Cons
- Design doesn’t feel as premium as other similarly priced watches
- Small app ecosystem
- Slow app downloads
- Separate apps for managing health insights and watch faces
- No home button
When it comes to the “smart” side of smartwatches, Garmin still has catching up to do. All the basics are there, such as the ability to browse notifications and access voice assistants, but Garmin’s app ecosystem is still lacking compared to the cheaper $399 Apple Watch Series 9. The operating system also isn’t as intuitive as the software on the Apple Watch, Google Pixel Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch, which is probably fine for longtime Garmin fans but may result in a learning curve for first-time users.
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With so many watches to choose from, it can be difficult to know exactly how the Venu 3 fits into Garmin’s lineup. Given its price and selection of features, it feels like Garmin’s answer to the Apple Watch. The Venu 3 both succeeds and falls short in the ways that you might expect compared to watches from Apple and Samsung. Those companies know a thing or two about designing slick software but haven’t been making wearables for athletes for nearly as long as Garmin.
The Garmin Venu 3 has all the fitness and wellness features you’d expect in a smartwatch.
Garmin Venu 3 health and activity tracking
Unsurprisingly, health and activity tracking is where the Venu 3 shines. You’ll find the standard array of health and wellness metrics, like the ability to take an ECG, heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen monitoring, stress tracking, the ability to send high and low heart rate alerts and temperature tracking, which can be used to monitor changes in skin temperature overnight.
What really stood out to me is how Garmin ties these findings together through its Body Battery feature, which isn’t exclusive to the Venu 3 but does set Garmin apart from its competitors. Body Battery shows how rested or recharged you are on a given day based on your workouts, activity and sleep.
Similar to Oura’s Readiness Score, Garmin’s Body Battery connects the dots between these factors to provide advice about whether today should be a workout day or a rest day. You can also view a graph showing how your Body Battery level changed throughout the day based on periods of rest and stress, and the Garmin Connect app allows you to view Body Battery stats from the past four weeks.
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The Venu 3 will also occasionally serve up notifications showing how your periods of rest or activity are contributing to your Body Battery. For example, after sitting on the couch for a while after work, I received a notification saying that “long, restful moments” like these can help improve my Body Battery and “balance periods of stress.”
It’s these tidbits that tie together stress, activity and rest that made me appreciate using the Venu 3 over the Apple Watch Series 9. While Apple gets a lot of things right, it lags behind Garmin and others when it comes to providing workout recovery and sleep insights.
There is a wide variety of workout types to choose from, including basics like running and biking to badminton, baseball, mixed martial arts and ice hockey. You can also edit which types of metrics are displayed on the watch during a workout, which lets you personalize the experience. I swapped out one metric on the indoor cycling screen to show calories, for example.
It sometimes felt like the Venu 3 was slow to connect to GPS during outdoor walks. In a couple of instances, I had to exit the Walk activity and open it again to establish a connection. The Venu 3 generally matched readings from my chest strap heart rate monitor during a cycling workout, although there were times when it lagged behind the chest strap while switching between heart rate zones. Both the Venu 3 and my chest strap delivered similar readings when determining my average heart rate throughout the workout.
The Garmin Venu 3’s sleep coaching is very useful.
Garmin also issues a sleep score that assesses the quality of your sleep along with a description to help you break down that score. For example, after recently receiving a sleep score of 71, the app noted that my sleep was shorter than ideal but applauded that it was a continuous rest. It also added that my activity from the day helped my sleep quality. Oura and Fitbit provide similar readings, but such insights require a paid subscription. Apple’s sleep tracking, meanwhile, isn’t nearly as comprehensive.
Garmin also has a sleep coach who advises you on changes that should be made to your sleep schedule, which can be helpful for knowing when it’s time to hit the sack.
I also found Garmin’s Morning Report to be convenient and useful. As the name implies, Garmin provides a wrist-sized snapshot summarizing what you need to know to start your day, such as the weather, your sleep score and your Body Battery level.
It’s not just about how you’re sleeping overnight; the Venu 3 can also detect naps and factor them into your overall Body Battery level. While the watch accurately detected and logged a 30-minute nap, some of my naps didn’t register. You can also set the watch to log a nap manually before you start snoozing.
Overall, I’m really pleased with how comprehensive Garmin’s sleep tracking is, and the way it ties these details into broader insights.
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The Garmin Venu 3 impresses overall with its long battery life and wide selection of health features.
Garmin Venu 3 overall thoughts
The Garmin Venu 3 shines for its long battery life and comprehensive health and sleep tracking. If you primarily want a smartwatch for building better sleep habits and tracking workouts and care less about having apps on your wrist, the Venu 3 shouldn’t disappoint. The Venu 3’s battery life is long enough to easily monitor sleep for multiple days without having to sacrifice daytime activity tracking to charge your watch.
Apple, Google and Samsung have built more polished user interfaces that might make their watches more manageable for those who are new to the smartwatch world, especially Garmin watches. If the idea of cleaner watch faces, more premium designs, sophisticated smartphone companion features (like deeper integration with voice assistants) and bigger app stores sounds more appealing to you, then you’re better off with an Apple Watch, Pixel Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch.
The Venu 3’s battery life is hard to beat, and that alone makes it stand out from the pack.
