Garmin Venu 3 Review: Finally, a smartwatch with one-week battery life!

There is a slight difference in the band size for the different Venu 3 models. The larger Venu 3 uses 22mm straps, while the Venu 3S we have uses 18mm straps.

These are your standard spring bar bands, so there are no fancy new ways to swap bands here, but after a while you do get used to this, so it was no big deal to us.

The silicone sport band that comes in the box is also soft and very comfortable, and we have found Garmin bands to be very durable and last for years.

Garmin was once known for sports watches that are used mostly by athletes, but with the switch to OLED screens and by adding support for calls and a voice assistant (via the phone), the Garmin Venu 3 aims to be more than that. It aims to be a smartwatch, playing in the same leagues as Apple Watches and Galaxy Watches (even though it still runs on Garmin's proprietary and much simpler operating system).

So how does it do as a smartwatch wannabe?

Well, we have some bad news about the interface and UI. After reviewing all of the above smartwatches, using the Venu 3 actually felt like going back in time. The interface lacks essential functionality. For example, all modern smartwatches support watchfaces with complications. You can raise your wrist and see a ton of data right away. Very few Garmin watchfaces do, at least not nearly in that amount. Worse yet, you cannot tap on a complication to go directly to the corresponding app screen, like you can on all other true smartwatches.

The watchfaces also look barebones and don't have nowhere near the information density of a modern smartwatch. Garmin has an "app store" for watchfaces, but after wasting literally a couple of hours looking for a decent watchface that would show me the information I was used to seeing on other smartwatches, I just gave up. Garmin really needs to work on creating at least a few truly good-looking, information-dense watchfaces.

Navigation also takes a while to get used to and does not always make sense: a swipe right shows you one "widget" that you can customize, but... that's it! Just one! Why can't I swipe further to see even more information? And why does nothing happen when I swipe left? These are weird, nonsensical interface design choices.

You access the majority of information by swiping up or down. That works fine, but such an interface would be a perfect fit for a digital crown like you have on Apple Watches and the Pixel Watch.

Dealing with notifications is also a bit of a pain. We love that we can see them full screen, but clearing a notification requires a few taps while it should be much quicker.

I can see how Garmin carries this interface from way back in the day of memory-in-pixel (MiP) displays with no touchscreen support and button-only navigation, but we are not in those days anymore and the interface needs to adjust and adjust quickly.

What the Venu 3 lacks in interface chops, it more than compensates for with excellent sports tracking options.

The new Elevate Gen 5 optical heart rate sensor here is the same as the one used in the flagship Fenix and Epix Pro series, and it provides very accurate data.

The GPS accuracy has also improved and while you don't have dual-band GPS support on this watch, we still found it to be extremely accurate in tracking your workouts. On a couple of runs (data above), we had great GPS accuracy.

Sleep tracking and nap detection

You can also track your sleep with the Garmin Venu 3 and in fact you really should if you want to have an accurate "Body Battery" score, which is one of the big selling points of this watch.

The idea is that Body Battery shows you a 1%-100% estimate of your supposed energy levels during the day based on how well you slept in the last few nights, your HRV status, as well as how hard and how often have you worked out.

What's new here is that when you tap on the Body Battery widget you see how exactly particular activities affected your score (we guess this feature will arrive to older watches via a software update).

As for sleep tracking, we found it did a very good job. The watch was able to accurately determine when you fell asleep and when you wake up, and gives you a breakdown of your sleep stages. We love that in the Garmin app you can also tap on each sleep stage and the watch will quickly explain why it is important and how the time you spent in that sleep stage compares to optimal times.

You also have a sleep coach feature that uses all of that information to tell you when you need to catch up on sleep and how many hours you should aim for the next night. One night, I slept only 5 hours and 31 minutes, and the sleep coach told me the next night I need to bump up the usual 7 hour 50 minutes of sleep and instead get 8 hours and 30 minutes of night rest.

As for nap detection, I was feeling under the weather and took long afternoon naps for two days straight, but the Venu 3 never registered any of them. Maybe this feature will come with a software update. We will be testing this more, but at least currently that feature does not seem to be working on our end.

The one upgrade the Garmin Venu 3 has over other similar Garmin sports watches like the Forerunner 265, for example, is the new Garmin Elevate Gen 5 sensor.

This new sensor is just physically larger, so more space is in contact with the wrist. It also comes with four metal receptors and an electrical isolation ring around them, and these will enable you take an ECG reading after a software update that is coming soon. And yes, the watch will be able to spot signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib).

You also now have 6x green LEDs for more data and more accurate heart rate measurements.

This new sensor also comes with the capability to take skin temperature readings, another feature that will be enabled with a soon-to-come software update. Skin temperature is already available on other smartwatches, so Garmin is kind of playing catch up here, but this is important because it helps better determine the duration of sleep stages, ovulation cycles for women, and the onset of illness.

One feature you do NOT have included here are Electrodermal Activity (EDA) sensors, which work by measuring changes in the electric conductivity of the skin typically cause be the sweat glands, a good indicator of how stressed you are. That feature is not commonly found on many smartwatches, but some like the Google Pixel Watch 2 do have it.

Garmin Venu 3 Battery and Charging

Don't bring a charger for weekend trips! 

A full charge takes just a bit more than an hour on both watches.

We've already talked about the biggest rivals: the Apple Watch, the Samsung Galaxy Watch, and the Google Pixel Watch.

All of them have a better thought out interface and richer "smartwatch" functionality, but none of them have the multi-day battery life of the Garmin.