For the past few years, the Venu range from Garmin has been the one range designed for ‘the average consumer’ (whoever that is). But, from a company that’s so used to producing watches and gadgets designed for specific niches, it’s the model with the most broad appeal.

It was the first Garmin to feature an AMOLED display, and was marketed as a device that wasn’t just made for the dedicated runner, cyclist, golfer or outdoor sports enthusiast. This is the closest thing to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach from Garmin, and the nearest thing to a ‘proper’ smartwatch.

But now that many other Garmin ranges have AMOLED displays, music and payments, is this watch still relevant?

Design

• 45 x 45 x 12mm – Stainless steel bezel – Fibre-reinforced polymer case
• 46g including silicone band – 42g including leather band
• Gorilla Glass 3 lens – 5ATM water resistance – 22mm strap

If you’re familiar with the Venu or Vivoactive line from Garmin, the design of the 2023 Venu will be instantly recognisable. Not much has changed from the look over the past few years apart from the odd refinement here and there. For the most part – at least from the top and sides – the Venu 3 looks practically identical to the Venu 2 Plus.

It’s a relatively basic round watch, with a case made from Garmin’s favourite: fibre-reinforced polymer with a ridged stainless steel bezel stamped around the outside of the display. There’s an ever-so-slight curve around the edges of the glass lens that covers the display too, with that curved portion also featuring subtle index markings. These are the little details that ensure it doesn’t look really plain.

The curved edge of the glass catches reflections in the light, and gives the outer surface a seamless look, and because the display is AMOLED, it’s hard to see where the screen starts and the bezel begins. However, the bezel is actually smaller this time, and the screen takes up a little more space on the front (more on that later).

My only concern with this watch is that the glass itself is Gorilla Glass 3. It’s an older version of Corning’s popular glass which – in some ways – isn’t a bad thing. After all, my experience with the latest Gorilla Glass Victus seems to indicate that version is prone to picking up scratches really easily. But, I’d still much rather have a sapphire crystal over the top which – in my testing across multiple smartwatches – has proved to be the most long-lasting and resistant to marks.

Still, it’ll handle any contact with water like an absolute champion. With a 5ATM rating, it’ll cope with rain, showers and even open water swimming.

The biggest design change from the previous model is actually on the underside of the watch, where Garmin’s newer sensor makeup takes up more space. Looking at it, the biggest change visually appears to be the addition of four more LEDs, meaning it’ll produce more light for the sensors to pick up on smaller details, and – in turn – producing more accurate readings and the ability to track more.

On the whole, it’s a really comfortable watch to wear for days on end. Thanks largely to its lightness. At 46 grams, including the strap, it’s easy to ignore on your wrist, especially while also being quite a slim and sleek case.

There are two different sizes this year – as with most years. I tested the 45mm model which is the larger of the two and the size suited my relatively chunky arm quite nicely. The alternative is the Venu 3S which measures just 41mm across, giving those with smaller wrists an option if they find the larger of the two a bit too big. The smaller model also comes with a lot more colour choices to pick between.

Where the 45mm model comes in white and silver, or black, the Venu 3S is available in Slate Grey, Sage (green) Grey, French (beige) Grey, Dust Rose (soft pink) and Ivory. Each with a complimentary shiny metallic bezel. Regardless of whether you go for the larger or smaller version, the price is the same. Most come with basic silicone straps, but there are a couple of options with leather that cost a bit extra.

The button layout is the same as the Venu 2 Plus, which added a third button in between the top and bottom ones. This button is the dedicated voice assistant key for launching whatever assistant is running on your phone. If you have an Android phone, that’s Google Assistant, Alexa or Bixby, on iPhone it’s Siri.

It works pretty much the same way headphone assistant buttons have worked for a few years now, simply latching on to your phone’s Bluetooth audio connection like a pair of headphones and activating the assistant before handing over audio and mic duties over to the watch’s mic and loudspeaker. That means if you did have a pair of earphones connected to your phone, it won’t use those for that function.

Display, interface and software

• 1.4-inch AMOLED display – 454 x 454 resolution
• Always-on mode available

A lot of smartwatch platforms follow a set pattern with regard to the user interface; one that usually entails a watch face, then full-screen glanceable widgets off to the right that you can swipe through to get a look at things like daily activity, weather, calendar events, and so on. Garmin’s approach is different. Instead, it has a screen of scrollable ‘Glances’, and to get to them you just swipe up or down from the watch face.

There’s a huge selection of Glances available to add to this list, so you can really customise it to suit your own needs and desires. For instance, if your main concerns are your energy levels, sleep and recovery, you can add the Glances for metrics like ‘Body Battery’, ‘Sleep Coach’ and ‘Recovery’ up near the top. If you’re more interested in your progress towards a running goal, you can have your Garmin Coach in there.

Each one of these Glances can lead you to more in-depth data, thankfully. You’re not limited to a narrow horizontal widget with basic details. For instance, if you tap the weather widget you’ll be whisked off to a full-screen weather view, complete with an animation that simulates your current weather conditions. You can then scroll through a few more screens to see forecasts for the rest of the day, and the rest of the week and see your current dew point, humidity and UV index.

All of this is displayed on a vibrant, rich AMOLED display which – combined with the interface – makes it one of the more graphically rich experiences on a Garmin watch to date. There’s smoothness in the animations, gradients in the colours and in the shadows and highlights. It’s not just a simple, blocky UI and display anymore. Plus it has a bunch of new playful, loud bleeps and tones which play when you start and end activities. You can switch those off if you find them more annoying than playful.

I’ll get more into the fitness and health side in a second, but it’s worth noting that Garmin continues to offer handy lifestyle features as well as the excellent health metrics. There’s Garmin Pay for contactless payments (as long as your bank supports it), and support for popular music streaming services like Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer.

It’s definitely something of a godsend when you like listening to tunes when you’re out on a run, but don’t want to bring your phone along. Using any of those services – and Wi-Fi – you can download your favourite playlists and have them stored offline on your watch. Just connect a pair of Bluetooth earbuds and get going, leave your phone at home. It does impact battery a little if you’re listening to music and tracking a GPS activity, but given how good the battery life is on this watch, that’s not really a concern here.

Fitness and health

• All day heart-rate, Pulse Ox, stress, sleep and movement tracking
• Dedicated workout modes
• Multi-satellite GPS location support

One of the things that marks the Venu out against its siblings – like the Fenix or Forerunner series is that its interface is very much geared towards giving you insight into your overall health. It’s not so much about athletic performance – although you can still access that data if you need to. Rather, it feels like it’s more focused on your recovery, and energy levels and gives you guidance based on that.

At the end of the day it pops up a little notification to sum up your stress and activity levels for the day, then advises a pre-sleep activity if necessary. If you’ve had a light day it might say ‘do some yoga or meditation to get relaxed before bed’ or – it might say ‘you’ve had an active day, your sleep needs are higher’. And as it’s working all of this out throughout the day, there’s a Sleep Coach telling you what your sleep needs are.

On a busy day it might suggest more than 8 hours of sleep, if you’ve had a light few days, it’ll say you don’t need as much. It adapts constantly, using your motion and heart data to determine how tired you’re likely to be. I really liked this approach, because it felt more like Garmin’s watch was more interested in my overall health than it was about pushing me to meet some fitness goals. And, if you’re tired, haven’t slept enough, or are stressed, it seems to know, and then gives you that permission to rest. It can even automatically detect naps, and adjust your rest needs after. It’s a refreshing approach.

As for all the other fitness and health abilities, it performs well, as I’d expect from a Garmin. I tested it on a number of walks and GPS data was consistent and reliable thanks to support for multiple satellites.

Similarly, I tested it by doing a few different kettlebell strength exercises, and it was remarkably adept at responding quickly to changes in heart-rate. I didn’t find that it took any time for it to catch up once my heart rate ramped up after a couple of minutes.

Garmin’s strength – particularly when you dive into the Garmin Connect app for Android or iPhone – is how much data is available to you. It tracks so much throughout the day, and through your activities, to be able to give you a really comprehensive view of not just your fitness patterns and general health, but also detailed analysis of your workout performance.

If you do strength exercises, it can use the motion data from the watch to determine which sets and reps you did. It’s not always 100 per cent accurate in its guess, but you can go into the app after working out to edit the data and choose which exercises you did. Once it’s all accurate, it’ll tell you which muscles got the most work from your activity and displays it on a body map.

More importantly though, after any workout, the watch will give you a breakdown of effort and heart-rate zones (which it learns from you over time) and the can tell how much time you need to rest and recover before you attempt another vigorous activity. In my experience, this guidance has been really sound.

It’s a similar story with the sleep tracking and body battery metrics. There were several nights during testing where I had disturbed sleep due to stress or anxiety, and the watch accurately detected that, and could tell me in the morning update when I woke up that my body battery didn’t fill up all that much due to poor quality sleep. On those days, I noticed I felt lethargic, low in energy and tired – so it added up. It’s a great overall health tool.

Performance and battery

• 14 day battery in smartwatch mode
• Up to 26 hours GPS activity tracking
• 8GB storage – Garmin proprietary charging cable

Where Garmin has excelled for years – previously thanks to low-energy transflective LCDs and now despite the switch to the more vibrant AMOLED screens – is battery life. It’s one of the features that’s made the company’s watches so appealing to anyone turned off by the 1-2 day battery you get on an Apple Watch, or Samsung Galaxy Watch.

In fact, even if you compared Apple’s longest-lasting Watch Ultra 2 or the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, you’ll still get just a fraction of the battery life on offer from the Garmin Venu 3. A full charge will get you two weeks (or 10 days if you get the smaller Venu 3S). That’s in regular smartwatch mode, with it delivering phone notifications to your wrist, and even allowing for some workout tracking.

That is – at least – the promise from Garmin on the spec sheet. In reality, how much battery you get will depend on a number of factors. For instance, if you track long GPS activities a few times per week, and make use of the offline music functionality, you’ll not get 14 days. Likewise, if you have the always-on display enabled, that’ll eat into your battery life too.

Regardless of how you use it, the battery life will go longer than most other smartwatches. Even if you’re planning on an all-day hike, the battery can track a GPS activity for at least 15 hours if you’re not listening to music, and you have all available satellite systems enabled.

If all you’re doing is tracking 30-60 minute runs a few times a week, that’s not going to do any serious damage to the available battery. In fact, it’s not even much of a panic when it drops as low as 20 per cent. It’ll still get through a couple of hours of GPS activity tracking. And if – like me – most of your activities aren’t reliant on GPS, you can track workouts even longer.

To refill again once empty, Garmin continues to offer its standard proprietary four-pin charging cable. Thankfully, the company has moved to USB-C for the other end of the cable this past year or so, thus meaning you can charge it conveniently from your existing devices and their power adapters. Still, I can’t help but feel a move to wireless charging would be more convenient.

As far as general performance goes, it’s responsive enough. There’s definitely a sense that it’s missing some of the smoothness and fluidity on offer from Apple Watch. It’s not that it’s slow, it’s just that animations and touch response from the screen aren’t quite as buttery smooth and instant as the ‘proper’ smartwatches like Apple Watch or Pixel Watch.

Verdict

My take after spending time with the Venu 3 over the past few weeks is that it’s a great fitness and health watch that slots easy into daily life, particularly if you’re an active person. The fact it can go two weeks between charges is undoubtedly a big selling point, but – as with any Garmin – the depth of data on offer from any sports and fitness tracking is unparalleled.

What I really like, however, is the Venu’s shift to focus more on recovery, energy levels and rest. It helps get that balance right between intense physical activity, and ensuring that you rest properly. The Body Battery feature combines really well with the Sleep Coach and recovery time predictions to ensure you don’t overwork. Add in the big, bright AMOLED display, contactless payments and support for offline music from Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music, and you have a really well-rounded smartwatch.

Of course, it’s not perfect – it’s missing some of the interactivity you’d get from an Apple Watch or Wear OS watch – and isn’t the most exciting design in the world, but for the health and fitness-focused consumer, it’s a better choice than a smartwatch that’ll only last 24 hours between charges.