Offering a wealth of data and powerful analytics, the Garmin Venu 3 is a highly capable GPS smartwatch meant for tracking both introductory-level workouts and serious fitness regimens. It builds on its excellent predecessor with even longer battery life, an ECG app, new calling and texting capabilities, a wheelchair mode, nap detection, sleep coaching, and an on-device app store, but those upgrades come with a $50 price increase from the last generation to $449.99. If you're all about fitness tracking and want a stylish wearable with up to two weeks of battery life between charges, the Garmin Venu 3 fits the bill. For even more apps and lifestyle features, the $399 Apple Watch Series 10 is our Editors' Choice for iPhone users, while Android fans have plenty of options to choose from.

Design and Price: A Premium, Stylish Build

The first thing you'll probably notice about the Garmin Venu 3 is its elegant design—you can confidently wear it at the office or even to a dinner party. The thin silicone band is unassuming, and the watch uses a bright and colorful AMOLED display. The Venu 3 is not ruggedized for scuba diving or triathlons, but it has a 5ATM waterproof rating, meaning you can wear it without worry while diving into water, showering, snorkeling, swimming, and in the rain and snow.

(Credit: John Brandon)

The third-gen version looks remarkably similar to the previous model. The default home screen shows your Body Battery (a common Garmin metric indicating your remaining energy reserve on a scale from five to 100), heart rate, and steps, although you can customize the analytics displayed by choosing one of about a dozen preinstalled watch faces. Some are streamlined with big digits for the time, while others are crammed with information, so you can monitor more real-time data at a glance. If none of the preinstalled options appeal to you, more watch faces are available for download via the Garmin Connect IQ store, which you can access directly on the Venu 3 without downloading it to your phone.

The Venu 3 comes in 45mm or 41mm size options, with the smaller model (denoted with an S at the end of its name) getting a 1mm bump from the last generation. The 45mm size has a 1.4-inch-diameter display with a resolution of 454 by 454 pixels, while the smaller Venu 3S has a 1.2-inch display with 390-by-390 pixels.

Both sizes are available in all black, and the large 45mm model also comes in silver with a white band, while the smaller 41mm Venu 3S gives you the choice of four additional color combinations: soft gold with an ivory, french gray, or dust rose band, or silver with a sage gray band. For this review, I tested the 45mm version in all black.

(Credit: John Brandon)

Priced at $449.99 regardless of size, the Venu 3 lands somewhere in the middle of Garmin's extensive smartwatch lineup. The $299.99 Vivoactive 6 is the closest alternative in terms of design and features, but the Venu 3 has a more premium build with a stainless steel bezel instead of aluminum and adds a speaker and microphone, enabling voice calling right from the watch.

Garmin's Venu Sq 2 ($249.99) remains an excellent budget-minded alternative to round Venu models with key health and lifestyle features, including integrated GPS functionality, support for on-demand blood oxygen saturation readings, and Garmin Pay. Other options in Garmin's lineup include the Editors' Choice-winning Lily 2 ($249.99) female-focused fitness tracker, the premium Fenix 8 series (starting at $999.99) designed for multisport training, the Forerunner series (starting at $249.99) meant primarily for runners, and the Instinct series (starting at $299.99) for those seeking a rugged lower-cost alternative to the Fenix.

Battery Life: Up to Two Weeks On a Charge

Compared with the Venu 2, the third-gen model really ups its game in terms of battery life. If you disable the always-on display and don't look at the watch repeatedly throughout the day, Garmin says the Venu 3 can last up to 14 days on a charge, up from 11 last generation (or 10 days for the 3S version, the same as the Venu 2S). How realistic is that? In my tests, I primarily used the watch for workout tracking, and I tended to look at it often to flip through the analytics and settings, so the total usage was more like eight days for me. When I disabled all notifications (for texts and emails), the watch lasted a full day or two longer.

That well exceeds the battery life of the Apple Watch Series 10 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, both of which only last about a day on a charge. This means you'll deal with a lot less charging hassle if you use the Venu 3. Its long battery life meant I didn't have to bring the Venu 3's charging cord along on trips and didn't need to add another gadget to my daily charging routine. Its long battery life will benefit those who train outdoors often. Garmin says it will last up to 26 hours with the GPS firing.

App and Navigation Controls: How to Set Up and Use the Venu 3

The Garmin Venu 3 relies heavily on your phone, so the initial setup naturally starts there. As with other smartwatches from the brand, you need to install the Garmin Connect app (available for Android and iOS) and add the watch, which is easy and quick. The process is straightforward, if a bit cumbersome. You have to enter details like your age, height, and weight, let the watch know when you typically go to sleep and wake up, and select a few other settings. Like with the Venu 2, you can also set workout goals and view tutorials in the app.

(Credit: Garmin Connect/PCMag)

The Venu 3 gains one additional button on the right side compared with the Venu 2/2S, for a total of three. As with the previous generation, the top Action button is how you start an activity, and the bottom one is a Back key that will return you to the previous screen. The Venu 3 adds a middle Custom/Voice Assistant button you can press to quickly launch a custom shortcut (an app or feature of your choice, such as your Garmin Pay wallet or music controls) or you can hold it to activate your phone's voice assistant.

Getting used to the watch functions takes hardly any time at all, but it might be slightly confusing to recall how to access features using the touch screen and buttons when you first start using the device. For example, the watch doesn't show a complete list of workouts available, so I had to do a little digging to find that there are many more modes, including activities like pickleball, a voice-guided meditation, and a wheelchair workout. This just meant I had to customize which activities are shown on the list to include my favorites for easy access. I also had to configure the Garmin Pay app to be able to use tap to pay on the watch, and it took a while to do that.

Like the Vivoactive 5 and 6, the Venu 3 series offers a wheelchair mode you can turn on via your user profile settings in Garmin Connect. Enabling wheelchair mode tracks your movements as pushes rather than steps, and changes the typical running and walking activities to Push-Run Speed and Push-Walk Speed, respectively.

In testing, I completed the setup process in about 20 minutes, including adding the watch to the app, customizing device settings, and configuring extra features. It took that length of time because the Venu 3 has so many powerful features. From there, I was ready to track my first workout.

Health and Workout Tracking: Accurate, Detailed Data

(Credit: John Brandon)

The watch offers a lot of rich health and workout data, and goes far beyond telling you your daily step count and heart rate. For instance, the Venu 3 automatically detects naps, a new feature for this generation, and factors them into your Body Battery score along with your heart rate variability, stress level, overnight sleep quality, and activity data. Long-pressing on the Body Battery icon on the watch face brings up a cool graph of your energy levels throughout the day, a feature I really like.

As with other Garmin wearables, the Venu 3 buzzes to remind you to move or rest. I was not a fan of these reminders at first because the watch kept informing me that I had a stressful day and needed more rest. While annoying, it was also accurate. My solution was to take a more intentional rest during the day, and that helped.

(Credit: John Brandon)

My main workouts tracked with the Venu 3 included cycling, running, and walking. During workouts, I loved seeing my heart rate in real time on the Venu 3's gorgeous display, and the built-in GPS tracked my distance. During a run, I compared my real-time heart rate on the Venu 3 with a Wahoo Elemnt Rival on my other wrist, and both showed 139 beats per minute (BPM). However, the Venu 3 said my average heart rate for the entire 30-minute run was 117BPM, while the Wahoo watch reported 130BPM, which seemed more accurate. Garmin reps told me the heart rate discrepancy could have been impacted by the position of each watch on my wrist. On a second 30-minute run, the averages more closely matched.

(Credit: Garmin Connect/PCMag)

For tracking your distance, pace, and route during outdoor workouts, the Venu 3 offers a new All Systems GPS setting that enables multiple satellite systems for improved accuracy and ease of use compared with the Venu 2 series. That’s helpful for detail-oriented folks like me who like to see their exact route and share it with friends on social media apps like Facebook. After my run, I looked closely at the detailed GPS map of my route on the Venu 3 itself and in Garmin Connect on mobile and the web, and the watch nailed it—the route was perfectly accurate.

The Venu 3 also offers twice-daily reports that I found helpful. In the morning, you'll see a summary of how you slept, including the duration of your deep slumber. In the evening, it delivers a report based on your Heart Rate Variability (HRV). I loved checking that evening summary because it revealed how much stress I had experienced, and it was amazingly accurate. On days when I had too many meetings and not enough downtime, my HRV was low. Spurred by the watch, I decided to take more breaks and relax a bit more, and my reports were more positive thereafter.

(Credit: John Brandon)

I was not very impressed with the sleep coaching, however. After wearing the watch to bed at night, I’d wake up to find out I did not get enough deep sleep and the total duration of my shut-eye was low. That's good feedback, but the watch didn't offer any tangible advice on how to fix my sleep deficiencies. I tried darkening my room and went to bed a bit earlier, but that didn’t help. More guidance here would be welcome.

The Venu 3 includes an ECG test not available on the previous-gen model that lets you check for an irregular heart rhythm. When I first tested the feature, it kept telling me the test didn’t complete. Later, when I calmed myself first and rested my arm, the reading worked fine. It just took some practice.

Because the new model has a speaker, you can do voice-guided meditation right on the watch. It’s not really my thing, but it was fun to listen to a few soothing prompts and the sound of someone breathing.

In terms of other useful health features, the Venu 3 lets you log your water intake, review data on your breathing, and offers jet lag insights while traveling. There's also a pregnancy tracking feature that shows data on how your body is changing over time and lets you log baby movement, blood glucose readings, and physical and emotional symptoms.

Smartwatch Features: Calls, Music, Voice Assistance, and More

The Venu 3 is mostly meant for health and fitness, but I was surprised by how many extra features it has for everyday life and even work. There’s a long list of non-fitness-related features, some of which were already included with the Venu 2. For the Venu 3, Garmin has added a flashlight app that turns the AMOLED display a bright white; I used it during a late-night hike, and it worked well.

Like the Venu 2, you can load music on the watch itself and skip having to bring a phone. The watch has 8GB of storage and supports Amazon Music, Deezer, Spotify, and YouTube Music. You can load about 1,500 songs on it, but that varies depending on song lengths.

Thanks to the new speaker and microphone, I could ask about the weather and send texts by voice using Siri, features I found helpful. On phone calls, the Venu 3's speaker quality was OK for a smartwatch, and I could hear the person on the other end of the line just fine, even though it's a bit muffled and distorted. Callers said my voice sounded a bit raspy but still distinct through the Venu 3. Garmin reps said call quality depends on the Bluetooth connection and other factors. Apple gets extra kudos for richer-sounding audio and optional LTE connectivity for calls without a Bluetooth phone connection on its Series 10 smartwatch.

One surprise is that on Android, you can only select a canned response to a text when replying directly from the watch. iPhone users can choose from canned responses or speak to text using Siri. However, Android users can customize the canned responses to text using the Garmin Connect app and can view images from notifications right on the watch, features that are not available when connected to an iPhone.

As for digital currency, you can use the Venu 3 to pay using just your wrist. As mentioned, configuring this took a bit of time and didn’t seem worth it in the end, since you can also just tap with a phone. That said, once you set it up, you can use Garmin Pay on the watch without a Bluetooth connection, so it could come in handy if you run into a store without your phone.