Garmin - Venu 3
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Reddit Reviews:
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Based on 1 year's data from Mar 17, 2026 How it works
Liked most:
43
7
"I know it has recovery time so when I go on a long bike ride, it'll tell me 96 hours recovery. If I did something shorter, it'll say 20 hours or whatever. So that looks like readiness, like when it's zero, you can train hard again, with it's not, you can train easy or rest."
"Great phone app with loads of detail ... I play football regularly and was really impressed that they even have heat maps and stuff ... Running activity has loads and loads of data it’s almost overwhelming but it’s amazing value for money."
"probably my favorite thing is I can watch/monitor my pace while I’m running."
27
7
"I have Venu 3 and it has 90% of smartwatch features one would need. You can take/make calls, see all notifications (with pictures), react to them (reply either with predefined messages or T9 keyboard, mark them as read, dismiss/snooze notifications, turn off alarms, delete emails etc.), pay (Garmin Pay), listen to music (local files, Spotify, Google Play etc.). There are also various apps like calendar, calculator, water intake monitor, camera apps (to control phone camera) etc. ... I use mine for getting notifications from phone, reacting to them (dismiss/snooze events, mark messages or mails as read, delete spam emails, quickly respond to messages), taking/making calls sometimes, tracking things like intermittent fasting, water intake etc., playing games while sitting on the toilette :) etc. ... So usually, while at home, I "lose" my phone. I don't even know where it is. I do everything on my laptop and receive notifications on my watch. If it's a spam mail, I will delete it from the watch. If it's important one, I open Gmail on laptop and answer."
"Until today I had several alerts about high stress. During a trip to France. And during a meltdown in a meeting. ... So at this meeting, the watch tells me he detected high stress. So I can get out the meeting or be mindful about the situation. ... This was something I really needed in my life. Something or someone to tell me when I’m in a meltdown. Or when I’m tired to take some rest."
"glancing at notifications and getting the wrist vibration for a call are all I can imagine ever needing."
8
7
"I love my Venu 3, found my way easily, very intuitive."
"I can fill in weight between sets and adjust anything else in the connect app afterwards."
"Largely the software is smooth and lag free"
9
1
"It's more comfortable than the AW10 and certainly more so than the AWU2."
"I have had the 3 since November '24 and not a scratch on it."
"It's rugged enough for me. Waterproof, and survived a few knocks."
51
4
"The fact that I can actually sleep with it in and I don’t have to charge it before hand is worth the money spent on the Venu3…."
"Don't think I'd switch to AW cuz of the battery life!"
"Battery life is about 7-8 days depending on activity level and GPS usage."
Disliked most:
0
4
"Bluetooth on my Venu 3 which is UNUSABLE. ... Like this, it's unusable for music and it keeps disconnecting from my phone as soon as I leave the room. ... My Samsung kept the connection through the whole apartment."
"Having to be within 30 feet of my phone to stay connected to my iPhone is annoying on the Garmin, that was never an issue with Apple Watch (it stayed connected via same wifi network). ... im constantly losing connection even in the next room over. ... It also drops connection for a few seconds when my watch is on and phone is in pocket."
"it disconnects through one wall"
0
19
"it is almost 2 years now (it was launched in Sept 2023) and until now, it has received only 1 proper feature packed update. ... updates are a big NO for Venu and Vivoactive series. Garmin neglects them severely."
"cannot disable auto updates (and many updates are introducing new bugs)"
"it was horrendously buggy on Venu 3."
3
10
"Sleep tracking is great if you are an amazing sleeper who doesn’t have interrupted sleep or gets up in the night. I get up to pray and when I go back it doesn’t pick up that sleep again. It is an issue because sleep tracking was a major reason for me buying a fitness tracker."
"sleep is a disaster ... I was watching TV and I was already asleep ... when I go to the bathroom in the evening, the venu didn't even notice that I was sleeping, or didn't even recognize that I went to the bathroom."
"The nap feature was a total disaster for me, giving me 3-4 naps daily while I was a work at my desk, certainly not sleeping."
0
21
"it is absolutely lacking Training metrics. ... not for the serious runner."
"You can create fully custom workouts on VA6, which the V3 doesn’t support."
"Ability to send training courses or routes directly to the watch."
0
6
"So much money for watch with no maps"
"decided I wanted maps"
"Also the Venu doesn't show hiking trails as maps or breadcrumbs just a directional arrow, that's all."
10PieceMcNuggetMeal 1.0I don't take it off the other 6 days. Part of having a nice fitness watch is that it is shower-proof. My Venu3 when I wear it comes off my wrist once a week. My instinct when I wear it comes off my wrist once a month
My fully charged Instinct, after a 5 hour hike, would go from 28 days to 24 days of battery left. My Venu3 would go from 100% to 75%, so no, I would be fine without a charger over the weekend. Your AWU wouldn't be.
4RealzReddit 1.0Vivoactive three for just in case my other watches die. They are a venu 2sq and a venu 3. Some days I like having the smaller venu 2sq.
I have it and a couple others. I liked the venu 2 sq but my venu 3 seems to have battery battery life. I use both but usually the venu 3.
673NoshMyBollocksAve 1.0I have the 970. I first switched from an Apple Watch series 10 to a venu 3 before switching again to a 970. I like even the small things like step cadence and estimated sweat loss. If I do a workout it estimates how much sweat I lost and changes my hydration goal
Both me and my wife switched from Apple Watch Series 10 to a venue three and we couldn’t be happier. I thought I would miss my Apple Watch so much more but the more I thought about it the more I realized all I use my Apple Watch for was phone calls, and texting notifications and timers. All stuff that I can do on my Garmin watch but better. And the fitness tracking actually seems way better. The Apple Watch would always have my calories way too high, and I would always question it and not believe it whereas the Garmin is a lot more conservative and I actually believe the numbers
I just switched from Apple Watch to a Garmin venue three a couple weeks ago and it’s been pretty amazing. I was a diehard Apple Watch fanboy. I’ve had them ever since the very first one in 2015. I never really tried anything else. Being in the Apple ecosystem, I was really worried that I was gonna be missing something, but I really don’t. The only apps that I ever used on my Apple Watch were reminders, alarms, timers, and workout stuff and maybe the weather app. Which is all stuff my Garmin watch can do. I’ve only charged my watch once in two weeks lol suck on that apple
On my Garmin, you can trigger Siri and let her take care of everything
abarrelofmankeys 1.0Gonna be the negative Nancy here and have to say my vivoactive 3 music died in three years, then the refurb I got to replace it (paid refurb, 90 bucks, not warrantied) broke in another 3. It came apart due to some medium force so I can’t 100% say it was its fault but I have reason to suspect that it was beginning to come apart about 3 weeks prior to the incident (screen was glitching for a few hours, was randomly acting up) and that might just have been the final straw. I did still get a new venu 3 tho. It works well and I don’t have to charge every day, that means a lot to me lol.
Abject_Work7629 1.0Garmin was mid. Accuracy I just compared all the devices against each other and my own logs.
aert4w5g243t3g243 1.0I bought the venu3 and it was great. So great i really got back into running and health and starting obsessing over garmin metrics. There were a FEW things i was missing out on on the venu, so i switched to fenix/forerunner. From what i remember it was things like race predictor and taking load/effect.
Afraid-Ad4718 1.0I have watched his videos to, all of them. i also now own a garmin venu 3. That being said, apple isnt accurate in everything. For example how many kcal you have burned is always off on apple. Than have you seen the video's of his girlfriend that tested it? these measurements are all WAY more accurate with the Garmin than from himself. That being said, does it matter if it sometimes is a bit off for example the hearthrate? If you care about HR that much, a cheststrap is always more accurate.
I don’t think I’ll be buying another Garmin, after my Venu 3. It’s my first Garmin product, and while I really like the watch itself, the software leaves a lot to be desired. There are still plenty of bugs for example, the text in the weather app doesn’t display correctly, I can’t reply or see if I receive more than two messages, and Snapchat is riddled with issues. Sometimes it shows a picture on the watch, but most of the time it’s just a red square. And if you want to disable a single sensor, like for steps? You can’t you have to turn everything off instead. Want to call with your watch? make sure you get some hearing aids because you cant hear shit... For 500 euro's i exepected WAY more.... A Samsung watch of 150 euro's can do this stuff really good, but the battery life is bad.
Alanna1231 1.0I have a Venu 3 and I love it.
Alg1ers_ 1.0I have the Venu 3 and I think it’s great. Haven’t tested the gym workouts though. I would definitely go with this watch if your looking for a more smart watch rather than a running watch, in that case I would pick the forerunner. The battery life for the Venu watch is great, also the voice assistant is a pretty nice feature. The one thing I’m missing on this watch are maps and waypoints navigation that the new forerunner watches has.
The sleep tracker works really well, way better than my old watch which was the Vivoactive 3. It’s really accurate regarding sleep and wake up time. Also the sleep stages and sleep score feels accurate, for example when drinking, I always get a really low score and often I feel that I have slept like shit. 😁 Battery lasts more than a week but that depends on how much you use the GPS, AOD etc. If I don’t use AOD, It last for about a week (with still ~ 10% left) normally with 3 long running activities. With AOD, it’s like 3-4 days. Edit: Some third part watchfaces consumes alot of battery so it also depends on what face that is used.
alone023 1.0Yes, the Venu 3 is a great start in my opinion. It is the first step on your fitness journey. Take it one day at a time, stay consistent, and you will keep improving your habits. Cheers!