Garmin Venu 3 review: We test the smartwatch designed to improve sleep and wellbeing

The first thing we noticed about the Venu 3 is it’s super light on the wrist, compared with some other smartwatches we’ve tried – a real plus when playing sports or trying to beat your PB.

The screen measures 45mm in diameter, which is pretty large for a watch, but the AMOLED display means it’s not as hefty in weight as watches with OLED displays, which tend to be chunkier and less flexible.

But it was the brightness of the screen that really caught our attention. Even if you only have time to look at it for a second, you’ll be able to see the figures – or sleep scores – easily with a passing glance.

Design

Garmin has really improved on the design of its smartwatches in recent years. Gone are the functional square and rectangular designs that looked like mini calculators strapped to the wrist. Instead, deliciously streamline circular designs dominate.

Available in black or white, the latter colourway features a silver ring around the bezel, making it more of a sophisticated lifestyle accessory and not just your average functional smartwatch. Neither colourway would look out of place when worn to work or dinner, either, so you can carry on using the device to monitor your activity all day, not just during exercise sessions.

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The 45mm size is slightly larger than the 41mm Google Pixel watch (£274.99, Amazon.co.uk) but the same size as the Apple Watch series 8 (£399, Amazon.co.uk) and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 pro (£429, Amazon.co.uk).

Breathwork and meditation

Nestled away in the activities area of the smartwatch – alongside cardio, strength training, running and cross-country skiing – are breathwork and meditation activities.

There are three different breathing techniques to practise: tranquility, coherence, and relax and focus. Tranquility is a 10-minute activity that puts you in a state ready for sleep. Coherence is designed to help you feel balanced and calm, rather than excited or overly relaxed. Finally, relax and focus is something you could use at work before an important meeting or presentation, to help you concentrate via a breathing pattern of four-second inhale, four-second hold, four-second exhale, four-second hold.

A meditation activity is also available. Once selected, you can choose from free, custom or session meditations. The free option only displays a timer, so you can fully concentrate on your own meditation practise. We preferred the sessions that had built-in meditation themes, such as restore and focus, focused mantras and mindful sounds. Once you’re used to structured sessions and feeling more confident, you can switch to custom and set your own time, duration and theme. Choose your time plus an image, sounds or a phrase for your meditation.

Sleep tracking

While most smartwatches can now tell you how much sleep you get during a night, the Venu 3 takes things up a notch by offering nap tracking and sleep coaching. Rather than simply telling you how much sleep you had the night before, the sleep coach feature will track things such as your activity levels, heart-rate variability and any naps you’ve taken, and will guide you on how much sleep you need for the next night.

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While we haven’t actually tested it overnight, it could be a huge help with recovery to know when you need more rest, so you can make more of an effort to hit the hay earlier on those occasions.

Battery life

An improvement on previous Garmin models, the brand claims battery life has jumped relatively significantly from the Garmin Venu 2, up to 14 days from around around nine days.

Phone features

Venu is the only Garmin watch series that includes a microphone and speaker. This enables you to take calls (if your phone is within range) and play music.

While this is an improvement on other Garmin models, it’s not yet as functional as some Apple Watches that have cellular data, meaning you can use the watch as a phone. The Venu 3 doesn’t have this but if you connect it to your phone via Bluetooth, it essentially acts as a speaker in terms of how your phone views it. That includes voice assistant capability, so you can speak commands into the watch and they’ll be acted on. This means you don’t have to get your phone out while you’re in the middle of an activity.

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Display

The round 1.4in AMOLED display is remarkably bright at default settings. In always-on mode, the display is dimmed to a lower level, to preserve battery life, but when you raise your wrist, the brightness increases to the default level.