Before I bought my Venu 3 I had an Apple Watch, I travel a lot and just keeping up with the charging on that thing was such a chore that I finally got to where I was mostly just wearing a dead watch on my wrist more often than a live watch. I was a bit worried I would miss some of the functionality on the Apple watch. After using the watch for 3 months, I don't miss anything about the Apple watch. The Garmin does everything I want it to do. It has a revolutionary feature where when I wonder what time it is, it shows me what time it is... immediately... without having to click through 97 popups or find a location to charge. It does allow you to get notifications from your watch but I disabled that feature on Day 1. It also keeps track health stats (steps, sleep, etc) and has some useful health related features that I can use when I want to. But mostly its just a watch and it doesn't demand a lot of my attention. As I write this review, I don't remember the last time I charged the watch and it's at 15%. I will probably charge it later tonight but if I don't it will probably still be alive tomorrow in low power mode and in my experience stays alive on the last 5% for enough time to not require a panic charge. It also charges super fast.
As far as appearance, it's a little plain but it's not terrible. I bought some rubber bezel/edge covers in different colors that make it look a little more like a real watch. Search for Venu 3 Bumper Frame on walmart.com - I just bought the open face kind sold by some obscure foreign company I'll never remember the name of. I don't have a glass protector and don't feel like I need one, no scratches to date. I don't like the rubber wrist straps in general (even the Apple ones) so I bought a 3rd party nylon strap with velcro that also improved the look IMO. It's definitely harder to find that style of strap than for the Apple Watch but they are out there.
It's definitely not as polished from the software side, things are a little clunkier and the layout/menus are a bit confusing. It took me a few weeks to adjust but now I could care less and I actually kind of like that it discourages me from fiddling with my watch all the time. Some of the advanced health metrics require a 2-3 week data collection period before they start working right, which was my main anxiety at the beginning. It doesn't integrate with apps which I thought I would miss. For example when my plane starts to board it doesn't popup an app notification telling me my plane is boarding, but that was so laggy I was usually already in line before it went off and I can't think of anything I miss about that.
Overall I love this watch and significantly prefer it over the Apple Watch. The battery life is amazing and it doesn't demand daily attention but still tracks all the health metrics I wanted and presents them in a nice way when I want to look at them.
