Garmin - Venu 3S

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

Although it's much smaller, I prefer my venu 3s over my galaxy watch 7, will probably upgrade to the venu 3 sooner or later, but for now this is perfect

My partner and i have venu watches for health and fitness monitoring, we also had a stronger use case for health. Ours don't have the ekg function, but do provide the sleep tracking, hrv/stress scores as body battery, and the spo2. On that - the battery does drain easily if you have that on 24/7, at least on our watches! 

Just did this. From the series 8 once the battery couldn’t last a day. Ended up going higher to the forerunner (thanks REI 90 day returns) bc the trade offs of losing some of the apple integrations wasn’t enough gained on the venu The activities list is really limited. And its integration with Strava sucked a bit more than the Apple Watch. I could at least pick specific activities through Strava app on my watch if they didn’t come built in on apple activities, but you can’t edit the data fields on that. I wanted both. I only got about 4 days of battery, not super worth it IMO. Just enough I wouldn’t have ti charge it daily but not enough that I wasn’t frequently like “oh, I’m kinda low on battery” No unlocking each other, (phone and watch) or my MacBook for work. I miss it auto doing that the most Media players kinda suck Biggest is custom notifications on my watch vs my phone. I had to basically go in and do an overhaul so it wasn’t constantly pinging me with useless notifications I had silenced on my watch but not my phone Activities pages were limited. They were limited on the Apple Watch too but I was hoping for an upgrade here. I upgraded to the forerunner 970. Big jump. But it has a LOT more data points readily available. It’s more of what I was looking for.

The venu’s activities were extremely limited. It had the basics but that was it. Specifically it didn’t have trail running or backcountry skiing for me, basically my two biggest sports. I’m not sure about tennis. I bet it did tho. So that was probably the biggest reason. Second was the activities data page was limited, only 4 max data points. For backcountry skiing I like knowing distance, current elevation, total ascent, time, and heart rate. For trail running, the same plus pace. So that and I didn’t think I needed the navigation, but Sunday, the day I decided I really should upgrade, I got soooo off course. My bike Garmin would have told me way sooner that I was off course and that’s all I wanted.

One more thing I thought of this morning OP. Since upgrading to the forerunner, I’ve noticed the stress tracking/training elements are far superior. Mentioning it bc you mentioned the stress tracking specifically. I can’t remember if the Venu had a morning AND nightly report, but the training readiness, training status, running tolerance on the forerunner is so nice to have. You might be able to get that through the venu or the connect app, but I didn’t find it easily. But you should def look into this before purchasing. After I bought it I found out the venu is supposed to be more of a “lifestyle” watch. That makes me feel like it’s for the people who want to say they have a Garmin without the bulkiness of one? I think it’s a lower tiered watch with more smart watch integrations like Siri, but I felt it didn’t even do that well. If you’re in the US, I bought my venu through REI because of their return policy and partnership with Garmin. I think you have 90 days to decide if you like it? After not even 2 weeks I think is when I realized I wanted a higher level Garmin and just straight exchanged it for the forerunner 970.

I've had the Venu 3S since February 2024 and I'm pretty happy with it, being the first smartwatch I ever got and it being a Garmin. However, as I've been slowly getting into running in the past year, I feel like I'm missing out on a lot with the data... analysis? it lacks. I've been low-key thinking about switching to another model, and the smaller size FR 570 is just 1mm bigger than my current 41mm Venu 3S (I'm a girl and have very thin wrists), looks nice and reportedly supports all the training/running data analysis that my current watch lacks + better GPS. But that's where the positives end? Sounds like they're using the same heart rate sensor - and I've heard the Venu 3/3S not picking up heart rates correctly when your HB slows down? - does that mean same quality tracking, or is the software on the FR 570 handling this better? Thoughts?

I really wanted the Suggested Workouts, Training Effect, Primary Benefit, Lactate Threshold and Race Predictor. But now I see that Venu 4 really does have all of those? With the added benefit of Sleep Alignment, and Lifestyle Logging, which seems to be missing in the other models. But I got the lifestyle logging update on my 3S yesteday... I was initially going for the FR 570 because it's roughly the same price as the Venu 3S as when I got it 2 years ago. Something like less than 50$ difference. FR 255 seems fine... but with Garmin fast dropping support and updates for older watches, I'd prefer getting something newer?

I would personally always take a Forerunner over the Venu series, as I am pretty serious about my fitness. I don't really care much about smart watch features, just need a bare minimum. And the venu series seems to take tradeoffs with fitness features to accommodate the increase in smart features.

I wouldn’t be afraid of buying a Garmin watch for open water or pool swims. I have a first generation instinct since the summer of 2020. I’ve worn it everyday no matter what. If you don’t like the look of the instinct, I would look at either the Fenix, Enduro. The forerunner has a bezel but it’s not as raised I feel. Really any of their watches that includes the feature of a raised bezel I gravitate towards. For me, anyways, watches that don’t have that feature end up with a cracked screen like the venu and the vivoactive with the rounded edge of glass hasn’t lasted for me which is why I prefer that raised bezel. Garmin has always been good and replaced them for me in the past but once the warranty is done, there’s no more replacement. Hope this is helpful and keep going.

I recently got into fitness this year and lost about 60 pounds, I got an apple watch to track my activity (I mainly do cardio workouts) but I didn’t like how it looked on my wrist and the fact that it wasn’t that accurate. Also the battery life was trash, I’d leave my new series 10 in the drawer charged and it’d be dead the next day. I bought a new Venu 3S, it’s beautiful, I exchanged a Vivoactive 5 for it and I can say the Venu’s appearance is better and feels smoother however Vivo wins in terms of battery life. Venu dies much quicker, and I feel like the software design of Garmin feels a little lackluster however I’ve grown used to it and I love the comfortability, accuracy, battery life and design of garmin. I wont be going back to Apple, however the new paid subscriptions and having to pay for some watch faces that look decent, and then the watch itself being very pricey feels a bit like a drawback. The strap doesn’t really feel that strong and having to buy more is just more costs, not to mention it didn’t come with a charging block and it requires a USB port, so I have to use my apple one to charge it. All in all, I love the device for fitness and how much better it looks but there are some downsides imo.

And I absolutely love it, I know venu isn’t the model that I needed but definitely wanted, it’s gorgeous.

I’m in loveee with the venu 3s and i love how you are all enjoy it as well. it’s so pretty right

I love the Venu 3s. It has metrics like V02Max and does all the tracking I need as a cyclist.

I’m on day 6 with my watch and I’m at 45% haven’t had to charge it yet. It’s doing great compared to my 24 hours of my Apple. Venu 3s was a great choice of change for me