Garmin Venu® 3S, Premium Fitness Smartwatch, 41mm, Pebble Gray

Absolutely love this watch! Garmin really gets fitness tracking right. I've found it to be much more accurate than other fitness watches and smart rings I've owned. It offers a wide variety of workout tracking options, which has helped me jump-start my fitness routine and stay motivated. The quality of both the hardware and software is outstanding. The watch feels durable and well-made, and the interface is intuitive and responsive. Setup was quick and easy, and navigating the features became second nature after just a short time. Overall, this has been an excellent purchase, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a reliable, feature-rich fitness watch.

This is my 1st purchase of a Garmin Smartwatch. I had several Fitbits in the past 10 years and I was pretty much satisfied with just using the basics of that simpler watch. Music, payments, advanced workouts, messages, all the rest – I never used my watch for those functions. I was looking for a smartwatch to count my daily steps, track heartrate (see why below), quickie weather forecasts, a few stock quotes, oh yeah…and the time. That was pretty much the limits of my Fitbit usage. So having those plus a bunch of other simple apps or glances (Garmin’s terms for simple and oft-used apps), I was more than happy. The Garmin Venu 3S does all of this and more. If you want to do music, videos, payments, and lots of other features the Venu 3S can do those too, but that’s not my bag, as Austin Powers once said. The glances features are pretty easy to navigate once you get comfortable with these app-like functions. The Body Battery function is interesting, combining data from several apps to determine how much energy your body has or needs. Sleep Score is also useful. I even found a nifty Sun & Moon app that gives me the time for sunrise/set and moonrise/set plus the Moon phase -- useful for my daily activities and those days and nights when I pursue my astronomy hobby. I am especially pleased with the heart apps. I have several heart issues including HOCM (Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy) so being able to check my heart rate at rest and during rigorous walks is very important to me. The ECG and HRV Status apps are nice additional features to have (if you have an arrythmia check with your cardiologist/doctor before activating the ECG function). The Pulse Oximeter is also good to check upon during long walks or other strenuous activities. Battery life consistently averaging 10 days is fantastic, especially compared to Apple smartwatches that need to be recharged in under 2 days. My Fitbits could last 5 days but that meant bringing a charger for most vacations or longer times away from home. The Venu 3S is able to last 10 days right on the dot, and that included during the setup run when the watch was being used a lot more and downloading updates, glances, apps, etc. A battery saver option with a “sleep” mode will help you survive until you can get back to your home and charger, preserving battery life if you’re using the watch but running low on power. I got the Venu 3S instead of the brand new model 4S (which had just come out) because for someone not maxxing out on all the apps/glances/features, the 3S was more than enough for my needs. I didn’t see a revolutionary change from the Venu 3S to the 4/4s. If you are a person who lives more off their smartwatch than your smartphone, then perhaps the additional features and new OS (assuming no glitches) on the Garmin Venu 4 will be worth it. At an extra 20% in cost, make sure you need the latest features or it’s an unnecessary expenditure. Net-Net: this is a really nifty smartwatch for the advanced or beginner smartwatch user. The interface is very nice…swiping is easy and seamless....button navigation also very simple...the watch face colors are bright and easy to see even in direct sunlight. The 41mm size is fine for me (I’m under 6 feet tall) and most people, but if you like having an oversized watch or are a bigger person with a bigger wrist, than the 45mm size of the Venu 3 might be better for you. Very happy with my Garmin Venu 3S and if my prior experience with their GPS car navigation systems holds, I should have many years of trouble-free usage ahead of me.

Let me preface this by saying I chose this one after buying, trying, and then returning the Apple Watch, the Samsung Galaxy Watch, FitBit, and a couple of other lesser-known brands. I actually went with a Garmin Venu Sq. 2 first and I loved it, at which point I bought this one due to the beautiful, large AMOLED screen and because it runs on the sand base software. That’s a GOOD thing, so let me elaborate. This is by far the most accurate watch for counting the total calories burned. The Apple Watch simply did not let me view the TOTAL calories burned, as it would show your estimated basal metabolic rate and then stack the active expenditure in a separate category, so you’d have to go back and forth to view each one and then add it up. The Galaxy watch suffered a similar problem, but it was not that accurate at measuring steps, which would directly affect the caloric expenditure. The FitBit was just WILDLY inaccurate and once told me I burned 5000+ calories in a day because I had a panic episode after something bad happened in my personal life, and so that night it registered me as having burned thousands of calories just laying in bed. The Garmin, however, did everything right (accurate steps that match the ones my iPhone said to within 5%, heart rate matched a professional blood pressure cuff, and the calorie counter tracked my weight loss exactly). It is extremely useful when counting calories where a slim margin is needed, such as aiming to lose 750 calories a day to lose 1.5 lbs/week. It it’s off by just 100 or 200, that’s already a half pound off, or 26 pounds a year. It is extremely important to me that it gets it right. It also has a ton of features, but I don’t use them honestly. It’s very easy to connect and set up, too. The price is subjectively fair but objectively it is quite high. Regardless, I am very pleased with it. The battery life is EXCELLENT if you turn Bluetooth and WiFi off, too. 5/5 all around!

So far, I'm impressed. I'm not a big brand purchaser, and I've used a $50 smart fitness watch for years quite happily. I always wanted a Garmin, but was put off by their lack of function as a smart watch, but really wanted their better fitness tracking. Finally decided to treat myself even at the much higher cost, but so far I've been truly impressed by the upgrade. Everything it does, it just does better. The tracking seems truer, but it's really easy to use and has a lot more functionality; BP, O2 states, as well as good monitoring when you're using as a fitness tracker. The watch is a nice size (41mm), plenty of visibility to read and react to notifications, works great with my android, but without the cost of an I-watch. The watch itself is nice to look at, and the strap is strong but so soft and flexible that it's a pleasure to wear it. This doesn't have the sapphire face, so I did spend a few bucks buying screen protectors, which do not interfere at all with the functionality of the touch screen. I think this is my new favorite, and i'd definitely but this watch again if I lost it.

Oh Man do I love this watch! I came from Apple Watch ownership. I always loved the fact that the Apple Watches pretty much mirror your iPhone in functionality. But the Apple Watch leaves much to be desired especially with their battery life. They’re great for a few years (if you don’t mind charging your watch every night); but even after a few years of use you will find yourself turning features off (especially if you exercise) because the battery capacity inevitably diminishes. Either that, or you can top off your watch by charging it during the day. This was always very annoying for me. The Apple watch display also is barely adequate for reading messages. Now the Garmin Venu 3S has a very bright 1000 nit display and has battery Galore! It Boasts up to 10 days between charges. But if you pair it with an iPhone as I did, you will be giving up many features in exchange for this fabulous battery and rich display. Android smart phone users will have more features as the Venu 3S is Android friendly. Well no matter. Here is the Good: BATTERY up to 10 days! The best Apple Watches have to offer is a battery that will last just under 2 full days. It has a much brighter display and is easier to read than the Apple Watch. It’s OS is like a second smart phone, but it’s very different from Apple’s IOS. There is much of the same functionality plus some extra bells and whistles in the way of apps. You have all the standard ones similar to apple with respect to health, sleep and fitness, but their are a few enhanced ones like GPS weather with radar (if you pay extra), the Body Battery App (your body, not the watch battery), the Stress App and more. Here is what I had to give up coming from Apple. The Venu 3S provides you notifications, from your messages and email, in a very efficient manner. I like the way they are presented on the watch better than the Apple Watch. But you cannot do a quick response or even reply as you would on an Apple Watch. You can read them only on the watch, and then reply on your iPhone. Android Users do not lose this functionality, you can reply right on the watch. This is probably due Apple’s unwillingness to allow it on the Garmin OS. You can make and take voice calls on the Venu 3S watch though. Also you can ask Siri questions, by holding the middle button. Another annoying thing with the Venu 3S is that while you can use Contactless payment with Credit Cards (like Apple Pay), you cannot use Amex. I use Amex for everything because I get a very favorable cash back deal (5% for groceries etc.). Garmin only has a limited number of Banks that they will work with, one being Chase. I have a Chase card and can use it in my Venu 3S wallet, but I prefer Amex, so I will be paying with my iPhone instead of using the watch for most contactless pay purchases.. Garmin doesn’t offer smart charging that helps preserve the battery, like Apple does. The Apple Watch will automatically (if enabled) charge the watch to 80%. This helps the battery last longer. Garmin only charges straight up to 100 percent. However you can manually charge the Venu 3S watch and stop it at 80%. Online sources say that if you keep your Garmin watch charged between 20% and 80%, rather than charging it fully to 100% and letting it drain completely; you can gain an extra year or more of battery life. It’s super fast to charge. I charged mine from 25% to 80% in about 30 min. (The time it takes to shower). This gives me around 6 - 7 days of battery life between charges. Setting the the Venu 3S watch up isn’t very easy. Unlike the Apple Watch which pairs easily and mirrors with your iPhone. The Apple Watch sets up in minutes. I spent hours setting up the Garmin Venu 3S. There is a bit of a learning curve, and the manual is required reading for the setup process. It feels like this setup process is not for beginners. I had great difficulty setting up Spotify for example (it requires a paid account). It took me 5 tries and I had to enroll in a Spotify paid account (free Trial) to get it to work. I will have to see in 3 months when my Spotify free trail is up and I cancel my membership, if the watch will continue to work with the free Spotify account. Other’s have complained in reviews about setting up the wifi etc. I had no such problems. My Advice to those who have difficulties with the setup process of the Venu 3S, is to just keep at it and you eventually you will figure it out. And when it’s setup to your liking, you will really love the watch. But the extended Battery life, and the Garmin watch OS App features, more than make up for these short comings. In a perfect world, if Apple bought Garmin and integrated the Garmin Watch OS into it’s Apple IOS, there would be perfection and no other smart watch brand could compare. However, Garmin on it’s own will surely improve the OS to improve upon it’s shortcomings. Hopefully in the future Garmin will include more banks into its contactless pay system, hopefully including AMEX; and it will possibly develop it’s own version of smart charging. As I said before, Android smart Phone owners will have more functionality with the Venu 3S watch especially with messaging. But even as an iPhone user, I still love this watch way more than my previous Apple Watches. This Watch is OUTSTANDING! But it could be sooo much better, for the reasons listed above, and especially with the difficult setup process. This is why I’m deducting one star for a 4 out of 5 star rating.

I absolutely love my Garmin Venu 3S\! It’s the perfect size for a smaller wrist and looks stylish enough to wear every day\. I use it to track my workouts, steps, heart rate, sleep, and overall activity, and I love how much information it gives me about my health and fitness\. The battery life is also amazing compared to other smartwatches I’ve used\. The screen is bright and easy to read, and it’s comfortable enough to wear all day and while sleeping\. It is definitely an investment, but I think it’s worth it if you’re serious about tracking your fitness and daily activity\!

I used to be an "All In" Apple fan until the last couple of years when they really started going downhill. My daughter had started doing research on Garmin and told me about all the wonderful selling points on it, and I just couldn't believe it! I went with the Venu 3 in the men's version instead of the women's version because it gave me a bigger watch face. I wear reading glasses and want to be able to see it without having to put my glasses on for the smaller selections that I would need to see. Let me tell you what I found as a new Garmin convert! First of all I wasn't sure if it was going to like the round face as opposed to the square face, but I actually love it more. It took a couple of days to get used to the different ways of doing things, but once I understood how it worked I find I really like it more. The bottom button is kind of like your "go to" button on the right side of your watch. This button is your "back" button that you hit to go back a screen and finally end up at your Home Screen. If you want to record an activity or access one of your apps then you would press the top button. If you want to do an activity, you press the one that you want on the screen, and then you would press the button on the top to start it. To pause the activity or restart it you would press the top button again. If you want to delete the activity for whatever reason then there is a trash can on the top of the screen that you tap, it will take you to the next screen and you can either confirm that you want to delete it with the top side button, or you can go back because that is not what you want to do with the bottom side button. If you want to change your watch face, record an alarm or stop watch, or go to settings then you would long press the bottom button. It will give you the choice of "Watch Face", "Clocks", or "Settings". if you go into one and that is not what you want then you simply press the bottom button again to go back to the previous screen. Garmin gives you some really neat watch faces to choose from, or you even get the option of customizing one of your own. One thing I have to mention is how long the battery lasts! I was used to my battery draining by the end of the day, or way before if I was recording any activity. However, with my watch I can record activity or not and I can still have a ton of battery power left by the end of the day. When I don't record anything I will normally have about 92% left from a full charge. I decided to do a test to see how long I could go before I really needed to recharge my watch. I didn't Not record activity for this little test of mine because I wanted to get a fair assessment of how well it would work for me. By the 5th day I was at like 45% when I finally decided to that the Garmin was going to win in this stand off. I came to the conclusion that if I went on a week's vacation that I wouldn't need to bring my charger with me. I went with the Venu 3 because I wanted the ability to answer calls and read emails, while also being able to record activities. I still need to figure out how to turn up the volume on my watch when I am talking on it so I can better hear when someone is talking to me. Other than the volume thing, it is pretty straightforward on how to answer it. I included a picture of how the watch looks on my wrist as a woman with a small to medium frame. I love it and highly recommend it. I really love this watch and I am super glad that I went with the Venu 3!

There are so many things wrong with this watch it's hard to begin. First off I was trying really hard to get past all the problems and try to get used to the watch. My last watch was a fossil 4 and it was amazing. The only downside to that watch which was a huge downside was the battery couldn't last a full day when using the watch functionality regularly. Unfortunately, Fossil has stopped making their smartwatches and have gone a different direction so now I'm left with trying to find another brand that is as good and has a better battery. I thought I found something better when I found Garmin's venu series. I was sorely mistaken. Let's start with the only two positives I have about this watch: Physical aesthetics and battery life. I bought the 41 mm diameter version of this watch and it feels and looks amazing. It's extremely light and the face and back of it have the dimensions of a small and unobtrusive as well as elegant looking watch. Battery life, I haven't had a chance to test just because I was disgusted by the watch after the first 30 minutes of trying to get it set up. On paper, the battery life looks amazing so I'm just going to give Garmin the benefit of the doubt and say that, yes, it will probably last a full 10 days. All right, now to the laundry list of garbage associated with this watch that makes it completely unusable. 1. This watch is incapable of connecting to my Wi-Fi router. I'm pretty good at setting up devices on my router. I can set them up with automatic settings or manual settings pretty easily. Anything that has the ability to connect to a modern router I've been able to connect to my router. So far I've had several failed attempts at connecting to my Wi-Fi from this watch. I've attempted to make the connection from the watch itself as well as from the Garmin app. I've restarted the watch and attempted these connections again. I've also attempted doing the connection manually on the watch by setting the security type of my network as well. I know the SSID and password for my network like the back of my hand so the chance of user error trying to set this up is zero. This reason alone is enough to return the watch. Without Wi-Fi access there's no way to configure apps, there's no way to install apps, there's no way to sync up data to my phone, basically you can't use the watch for anything other than checking the time. If that's all I wanted then I would have gotten a cheapo $20 piece of garbage at the store that only tells time. 2. The UI is nowhere near as good as WearOS 3.0. Garmin touts their watch as a device for active people who are outside a lot and want to track their location, distance, calories and everything else associated with being active. To do this, they decided to build their own operating system/app instead of piggybacking off of what Google made. That was a big mistake because there UI and UX designers are absolutely incompetent at building a user experience that is intuitive and easy to use. The way you have to swipe around to get to different screens is not as intuitive as WearOS. All of the swiping is mostly vertical and really only gives you exercise and activity screens. You can swipe right to give you a custom screen which could either be a music app or a couple of other different options. That's it. That's all you get. For $450 that is pathetic. Furthermore the physical sliding of your finger across the screen has to be perfectly done from the outer edge of the screen to make a swipe register. My Fossil watch would let you start your swipe from anywhere on the screen and as long as you swiped in a particular direction that it recognized (Left, right, up, down) it would do as you asked. I would love to have reviewed the rest of the watch such as the activity functionality as I was using it, The GPS accuracy, the battery life, and everything else associated with using The everloving atrocity that is the Venu 3S, but alas, Garmin made it impossible to actually use their watch. I wonder if this was a ploy by the engineering team to sabotage the company. It sure feels like it.

Now having used this watched for over a year I am in love with it. Only complaint is it leaves a mark on your hand if you wear it to sleep. Has decent battery even after a year, lasts me 7 to 9 days before I charge it fully. I love the morning reports which has the weather, my sleep factors etc. The watch faces that are cute are really lacking in options but that is a Garmin issue nothing to do with the watch. I am happy with this watch with looks beautiful and also functional and a powerhouse.

Efter 3 veckor funka fortfarande

Die Garmin Venu 3S ist bei mir jeden Tag im Einsatz und ich bin sehr zufrieden. Sie läuft flüssig, lässt sich einfach bedienen und reagiert zuverlässig. Für mich persönlich ist die Größe der absolute Hit, da ich gerne kleinere Uhren trage. Besonders begeistert mich die Akkulaufzeit. Ich muss sie deutlich seltener laden als andere Smartwatches, was im Alltag wirklich angenehm ist. Auch die Verarbeitung und das Tragegefühl gefallen mir sehr gut. Für mich eine klare Kaufempfehlung – ich würde sie jederzeit wieder kaufen.

I bought this to replace my aging Fitbit Sense, which wasn't charging well anymore. It had the promise of using the phone's voice assistant, which was better than the Sense 2 which only has access to Alexa now. It's Bixby given I'm on a Samsung phone, but it's better than Alexa and it can control stuff on the phone remotely from the watch which is a cool bonus. I did not have any appreciation for the massive difference in health tracking between a Fitbit and a Garmin when I pressed Buy Now. Every feature of the Fitbit is here in some form, both subscription features like readiness score (recovery) and enhanced sleep metrics to all of the basic stuff. Lots of things that are restricted to while you're asleep on the Fitbit work at all times on the Garmin, like respiration and blood oxygen. The sensor and LEDs on this are much bigger than on a fitbit and are much more sensitive to highs and lows in heart rate that fitbit can't pick up. The stress detection and body battery features are really cool and seem accurate. Fitness age presents an unflattering but likely pretty accurate picture of my health after wearing the watch for a few days. Everything is customizable on the watch and in the Garmin app; there is even a feature to design your own watch face with a photo background of your choice and the placement of the watch elements and complications where you choose them. You can put what is important to you front and center and you can ignore anything you don't care about. Both the watch and the app require a bit of messing around to get things looking the way you would like, but it's easy and I had fun poking at the watch for hours making everything perfect. There are a LOT of pre made watch faces included with assorted complications, some of them configurable and some not. The one pictured is not configurable but it displays exactly the stats I want and looks good. There are several included faces that look great so you aren't forced into their store right away. It is ironic that there is a working YouTube Music app for Garmin watches but not for the top of the line fitbits. I have loaded my likes playlist to the watch, which loaded almost 300 songs in the same order they are in on the YM app. This took a while and I left the watch plugged in while it downloaded over wifi. Connecting headphones was really easy and I set the "shortcut" swipe from left side to open the music player. I have used the watch to listen to music instead of my phone on some walks and it's a great experience. I am very fond of this. It's an upgrade in every way from a Fitbit Sense. It's the Samsung phone of fitness trackers with all of the bells, whistles and options you could ask for and some you didn't know you wanted before you got the watch. Worth the 600 bucks.

Garmin Venu 3 45mm – Fitness-Smartwatch, 1,4" AMOLED-Touchdisplay: Ich habe mich in diese Fitness-Smartwatch verliebt: Sie ist elegant, praktisch und der Akku hält bei zehn Tagen aktiver Nutzung der Uhr durch. Ich bin mit der Funktionalität der Uhr rundum zufrieden, insbesondere mit der Klarheit der Herzfrequenzmessung, der Body Battery-Option und der Schlafqualitätsbestimmung. Ich habe mich für schwarze Farbe entschieden und finde diese Uhr modisch. Sie sieht schön und modern aus. Vorteile: 🌿 Die Schrift ist groß genug und die Nachrichten sind gut lesbar. 🌿 Format und Hintergrundbild des Displays lassen sich auswählen. 🌿 Nachdem ich die Uhr mit dem Handy verbunden hatte, wählte ich die gewünschten Sportarten aus und installierte die benötigten Apps. 🌿 Alles funktioniert einwandfrei und die Nachrichten kommen pünktlich an. Die Sportart lässt sich einfach auswählen und das Training kann gestartet werden. 🌿 Während des Trainings werden der Kalorienverbrauch und der Puls gemessen. Von mir eine klare Kaufempfehlung.