Garmin - Venu 3
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Reddit Reviews:
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Based on 1 year's data from Jan 25, 2026 How it works
Liked most:
224
45
"Oh, and the battery lasts days even when exercising a lot (weeks without excercise)."
"Battery lasts me about a week?"
"my battery lasts about a week while using the oxymeter all the time as well as using it for tracking my workouts for about 7-9 hours a week."
227
19
"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."
"the fact that they integrate to the Apple Watch simply cannot be understated for me, I couldn’t go back to Garmin now, it is just so much part of my life now. ... Tracking weightlifting workouts, nutrition and other stuff, analysis of the data, send messages to HomePod, changing NC automatically, sending emails …."
"I unlock my computer and phone with it."
127
34
"The health algorithms are second to none, and it's one of very few systems that give you a real TDEE with reasonable accuracy, instead of just tracking active calories."
"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."
"The galaxy watches have a much better sleep monitoring and if you take a nap it is registered separately so you can remove it or keep it."
10
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."
"I don't have to worry about getting it wet or it getting beat up."
8
8
"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."
"The Connect app is more advanced, as well and much more fitness oriented"
Disliked most:
3
7
"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."
"the Bluetooth stopped working"
"it disconnects through one wall"
36
109
"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."
"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."
"I also found the sleep tracking on the GW6 to be much more reliable. ... I have small kids so I wake up every now and then during the night and on the Garmin - it's so frustrating to be told in the morning that I had a great night of sleep with only 10 mins of time awake when I spent 40 mins trying to get my 2yo to fall back asleep."
5
44
"BUT, the only FR with maps and navigation (which was essential for me) is the fr 970 ... if you don't need navigation check with the 265 (cheaper)"
"Maps are a big gaping hole for the 265 ... It saved me when I went off course during the middle of the night during a 100 miler. Maps are totally worth it"
"The 265 doesn't offer a proper map/navigation. Depending of OP needs, it can be a deal breaker. Has been for me."
1
47
"One big con for me: OPW3 doesn’t show training loads (low/high aerobic, anaerobic) — which is huge for me. I split my training into HIIT, Zone 2, sprints, and weight lifting based on those metrics. ... The watch doesn't give you training loads, which is basically how I scheduled my workouts."
"it is absolutely lacking Training metrics. ... not for the serious runner."
"Ability to send training courses or routes directly to the watch."
0
20
"cannot disable auto updates (and many updates are introducing new bugs)"
"the software is what eventually pushed me away - it is just terrible for a company of that size and the almost biweekly updates that broke more than they fixed just frustrated me to no end. For the prices they charge it is completely unacceptable. ... they have such outdated laggy, buggy software it is not going all that well for them."
"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."
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.
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!
andreisokolov 1.0I switched to the Venu 3 because I wanted to Able to trigger Siri from my watch. I’ve used it 3 times the last month I’ve had it. Maybe not worth it. I’m not super athletic but I wish I would have gone with the 265 or 965
Apart-Employment-698 1.0I used to swear by fitbit. My mileage and pace was RIGHT where I wanted it to be. Then I was due for a new watch and chose garmin. My pace was off by about a minute per mile and my fitbit was about half a mile off per mile. It frustrated me immensely. I assumed it was a watch issue. It was a me issue. I only use garmin. I used a pre-owned garmin venu 2 forn2 years since I had never used a garmin. I bought a new venu 3 and looove it!
Apprehensive_Cod8575 1.0Is it better for heart rate? My Venu 3 is going crazy with cadence lock and other
aprayiii 1.0Venu 3 has a ton of issues with Google Assistant for many (most?) android phones. For months. Check the Garmin forums for details. I made the switch to a PW3 and have no regrets. Yes, battery life is a significantly worse but I was already charging daily so its not an issue for me.
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