Garmin Venu 3 review

The Garmin Venu 3 is the most smartwatch-like wearable to date from the leader in pure sports and fitness watches. Is this Garmin playing outside of its comfort zone? Sure, a touch, but so much of the smartwatch life is about exercise and activity tracking that none of its expertise is wasted.

The Venu 3 is accurate and reliable, and has new-to-Garmin features like ECG heart rate readings. Those who are big-league exercisers should consider a Garmin Forerunner 265 instead, though: it’s a little less glamorous-looking, but has athlete-led features and stats that the Venu series lacks. The Garmin Venu 3’s touch-led approach can also be annoying during workouts, but more on that later.

You’ll pay $449/£449/$749AU for the Venu 3, making it the same price as its predecessor the Venu 2 Plus in the U.S., but slightly more expensive in the U.K.

Garmin Venu 3 review

Garmin Venu 3: Design and display

• Light and comfortable to wear
• Stylish by Garmin standards
• 1.4-inch OLED display

The Garmin Venu 3 combines Garmin’s fitness nous with a design that will appeal to folks who would never strap a Fenix 7 Pro around their wrist. It looks slicker, more like a smartwatch, and there’s less of a sense the wearer is about to start banging on about their marathon times or running club dramas.

You have two size options here, as with many Garmin lines. There’s the 41mm Venu 3S and the 45mm Venu 3, seen here. No matter which size you opt for, you get a silicone strap, Gorilla Glass 3 toughened glass screen protection and a knurled steel bezel, while the rest of the casing is a tough plastic.

It’s fairly light, not too bulky and is generally a joy to wear. However, it’s quite plain-looking as smartwatches go. It’s stylish by Garmin standards, but less so by the standards of the wider industry.

This Venu series also gave Garmin its first-ever OLED watch, back in 2022. The Venu 3 has a super-rich and bright 1.4-inch OLED display with 454 x 454 pixels. It’s great for reading text messages and looks far more lively and vibrant than the transflective display of something like the Garmin Instinct 2.

Just like a smartwatch display, it times out pretty quickly. But there is an “always on” mode that keeps the time on-screen all day, at the expense of battery life. This is a touchscreen and is responsible for the lion’s share of navigation.

Garmin Venu 3: Features

• Limited workout-tracking features
• Takes calls from your wrist
• Features ECG measurements

We used the Garmin Venu 3 for a couple of months, and while we have a lot of affection for this watch, it may not be the right one if you are all about exercise and fitness. Although feature-packed, it lacks quite a few of the features of, say, a Forerunner 965 or Forerunner 265 that we have grown to love.

For example, there are no “suggested workouts” for runners and cyclists. You lose the Performance Condition feature that shows how you’re doing a short way into sessions. And you can’t load routes onto the watch in order to navigate.

The Garmin Venu 3 is a lighter kind of watch. Its special features are things like a speaker and microphone. This combo lets you interact with your phone’s assistant and take calls from your wrist.

At the end of each exercise session, you’ll see your recovery heart rate, which in this case is measured by how many BPM your heart slows down in two minutes, a useful indicator of fitness.

While I have liked the Venu series since it began, it has lost some of its sheen now that OLED screens are pretty common on Garmin watches. The Forerunner 265 has one and costs less, for example, and the smartwatch stuff the Venu 3 can still claim exclusivity on is not one of Garmin’s strongest suits.

Interacting with the digital assistant feels a little clunky and restrictive compared to a smart speaker or Apple Watch. And the touch-led approach has led to me accidentally finishing an exercise session early when taking a quick breather or a quick trip into a shop more times than I can count. This has been the one real annoyance of using the Venu 3.

It is getting ECG readings, though, alongside just a handful of Garmin watches including the Fenix 7 Pro and Epix 2 Pro. This functionality was announced mid-testing, and has now been released in some territories, but is yet to make it to my Garmin Venu 3.

But the message here is only that serious exercise heads may want to consider a Forerunner watch. The Garmin Venu 3 does more than enough to satisfy the vast majority of people on the fitness front.

It has the same slick interface as the Garmin Epix 2, making it a doddle to see your daily stats. The watch has 40 sports modes, and you can get more from the long-standing Garmin ConnectIQ app store if you want.

You can load the Venu 3 up with music, as it has 8GB storage, and play tunes or podcasts on wireless headphones. This feature works well with the touchscreen, and the interface in general feels slick and smooth.

This watch will give you blood oxygenation readings, examine your stress levels and can be used for wireless payments via Garmin Pay. And — a relatively new feature — the Venu 3 now has a Sleep Coach as well as standard sleep tracking. This gives you advice on how to improve your sleep patterns.

Each morning you’ll also see your Morning Report, which is a summary of your sleep and notes for the upcoming day, including the weather. It’s kinda lovely, but if you don’t agree, you can always disable it.

Garmin Venu 3: Performance

The Garmin Venu 3 benefits from all the latest Garmin tech, bar one thing, Multi-Band GPS. This is found in several higher-end Garmin watches these days, including most notably the Forerunner 265, and can really help out in situations when GPS location may be tricky, such as between skyscrapers, in a deep valley or in a very tall and dense forest.

I haven’t had a chance to take the Garmin Venu 3 anywhere quite so exotic, though, and have found its location-tracking performance to be excellent. It’s highly consistent and accurate enough that, for example, you can clearly tell which side of the road you are running on.

It’s the same deal with heart rate readings. The Garmin Venu 3 has the latest generation of the company’s heart rate tech, and it is excellent.

Compared to the Venu 3 Plus, it uses reflector panels and four additional LEDs that only fire up during exercise tracking to improve results. And Garmin’s last-generation heart rate reader hardware was already great.

There are no major accuracy worries here, at least based on our testing — which was primarily running and gym use.

Garmin says you can expect the Venu 3 to last up to two weeks between charges, which is quite a significant step up from the nine days of the Garmin Venu 2 Plus. While that two weeks may be possible, it’s not the kind of longevity you’ll get using the watch to its fullest.

For almost the entire test period I used the Venu 3 with its “always on” screen mode engaged. This meant a simple analog clock face was displayed all day from 7 am to 11 pm when the watch was idle (the style varies depending on the watch face you pick).

It makes the Venu 3 a much better watch, but add the battery drain of a healthy amount of GPS use for exercise tracking and the watch may need charging around every five days. This is one of the drawbacks of an OLED watch — battery life can vary much more than it does in a classic transflective Garmin watch, whose display shows content all the time by design.

However, it’s not as if we’re talking about having to charge your Venu 3 every day, or even every other day.

Should you buy the Garmin Venu 3?

The Garmin Venu 3 is a terrific fitness watch, particularly if you want something a bit glossier and less intimidating-looking than the very outdoors-y Garmin design norm. You get the same interface as the most expensive Garmin watches, displayed through a bright, colorful smartwatch-style OLED screen.

As a Venu watch, though, the Garmin Venu 3 does miss out on some of the more advanced exercise features you get with watches from the Forerunner and Fenix series. Think about whether you want them, as you can now get some of the smartwatch gloss seen here from elsewhere in the Garmin line-up.

If Garmin Venu 3 is not for you

The Garmin Forerunner 265 is the most compelling alternative to the Garmin Venu 3, and the one I’d recommend if you’re big on running or fitness.

With Suggested Workouts, Training Load and on-watch routes (without full mapping) in tow, it comes across as a significantly more serious fitness watch. That said, it doesn’t look as good, and has a smaller screen, no speaker or microphone and no ECG reader. It’s a better watch for some, but definitely not for others.

The Vivoactive 5 is also similar but costs less. It uses aluminum instead of steel, and doesn’t have a speaker or mic, or an altimeter. It uses Garmin’s last-generation heart rate hardware too, but at $299 it is significantly cheaper. It’s a great lower-cost alternative.

Don’t discount the Venu 2 Plus, either. It's a fairly similar watch and may be available for significantly less as an older (but not that old) model. It doesn’t have the Venu 3’s ECG feature, though.