Garmin Venu 3 - Whitestone

After owning several versions of another brand of fitness/smartwatch and finding the accuracy and features lacking, I settled on the Venu 3 after much research. There is a bit of a learning curve to overcome - there are A LOT of features and sorting out which ones are important to you can take some time. The main ones I use are the EKG App, Steps, Heart Rate and Pulse Ox. The step count is much more accurate than my previous watch. At a recent doctors appointment I compared the Venu 3 readings to actual medical devices. Heart Rate was within a beat or two of being spot on, Pulse Ox was off by about 10 points - the finger monitor reading was 98% and the Venu 3 was 88%. My doctor was interested in the comparisons so we did this several times and the Venu 3 was consistently low. The big surprise for me was the EKG App - comparing the EKG readings from the Venu 3 and what was taken in the office showed almost identical readings. I was not expecting this level of accuracy. The Garmin messaging feature is cumbersome and not intuitive so I don't use it. Getting texts and call notifications from my iPhone works very well most of the time. There have been several times I have gotten a text but it didn't show up on my watch. Not a big deal to me, but if you're counting on 100% notifications, it may not happen. There are more apps and features on this watch than most people will likely use. That being said, it is very customizable to whatever data set you're looking to track. The downside is it is not very intuitive and getting things set up takes awhile and a measure of patience. If you very tech oriented this may not be the watch for you. The silicone band is secure, but gets uncomfortable after a long day, it doesn't breathe so sweat and moisture tend to collect. I haven't researched alternative bands yet, but I likely will. There are hundreds of alternative watch faces available to add, many free, some are not. It is very easy to overload the watch face with so much data it is near impossible to read. I have tried several different faces and gone back to the default every time. For my needs I am so far happy with the Venu3 despite some of its drawback.

This watch does it all, it did take a little getting used to coming from an Apple Watch, but it still has smart watch capabilities and all the health/ fitness tracking is great, plus the battery lasts forever which is amazing! I only put 4 starts because the watch will not connect to the e-bike in my gym no matter how long I sit there and try to let them pair so my bike work outs just show the time and my heart rate which is a bummer. Overall great watch.

I bought my watch on January 2025, I was ok with the features, but not with quality of the volume of the speaker, it sounds too low when try to talk through it. The others features are fine. Less than 4 months of use I couldn't answer calls through the watch, the green icon to do so was broken.

I waited for a watch that had all the Garmin features but with Apple call ability. This is a long awaited but needed to compete against them. I love it as I learn more and more. Very happy.

I got my Venu 3 weeks ago and loving the running stats and accuracy and the battery life is amazing. Would recommend this beauty to anyone!

Opened the box. Put on charge. Started to set up the phone per instructions, and everything is in French. I’ve tried everything. Can’t figure out factory reset.

Some features like the weather app don’t work. What’s the point if basic features aren’t accurate. Too expensive for nonsense like that especially with the news of connect plus paid subscription.

Not all that I expected and can be very difficult to learn operate. The small videos on YouTube are not very helpful. One more thing is that you cannot import data from FitBit ☹️