Amazfit Balance vs Garmin Venu 3: What Makes It A Worthy Alternative?
Naila Syifa
Updated January 2025
Garmin Venu 3 is a well-known lifestyle smartwatch that offers a balance of fitness tracking, smart features, and premium design. However, it comes with a hefty USD 449.99 price that many users may find difficult to justify. For more budget-conscious consumers, the Amazfit Balance could be a worthy alternative, and we'll tell you why!
Key Takeaways
Despite being more affordable, the Amazfit Balance boasts a higher resolution display, more extensive sports modes, and more advanced navigation with maps than the Garmin Venu 3. In addition, the Amazfit Balance has unique features like a BIA sensor, built-in Zepp Flow AI assistant, Amazon Alexa, and notification quick replies for WhatsApp, all that the Garmin Venu 3 does not offer, making it a very compelling option for many users.
Amazfit Balance
Balanced Life, Work, Wellness
✓ 1.5” AMOLED
✓ 156 Sports Modes
✓ Built-In Speaker & Microphone
✓ Zepp Coach & Zepp Flow
Garmin Venu 3
Lifestyle & Fitness Smartwatch
✓ 1.4” AMOLED
✓ 54 Activity Profiles
✓ Built-In Speaker & Microphone
✓ Wheelchair Mode
Design & Display
Amazfit Balance
As lifestyle smartwatches, the Amazfit Balance and Garmin Venu 3 have a sleek and casual design as opposed to the rugged, sporty aesthetic commonly seen in fitness-focused smartwatches.
Both feature a high-resolution AMOLED display, but the Amazfit Balance has a larger 1.5-inch AMOLED screen with a higher 480 x 480 pixels resolution, compared to the Garmin Venu 3 with a 1.4-inch AMOLED screen and 454 x 454 pixels resolution.
The Amazfit Balance also has a slighter bigger case size at 46 mm compared to the 45 mm case size of the Garmin Venu 3, but both smartwatches are equally lightweight at around 30 grams without the band.
Both smartwatches are also available in several color options, but the Garmin Venu 3 only comes in a silicone strap, while the Amazfit Balance offers nylon and silicone strap options. I think the Sunset Grey nylon strap on the Amazfit Balance looks particularly stylish and elegant.
The Amazfit Balance is also set apart with a crown on its body, adding a more premium and refined look compared to the button-only design of the Garmin Venu 3.
Health & Fitness Features
Garmin Venu 3
The Amazfit Balance offers many of the same health and fitness tracking features as the Garmin Venu 3, including all-day monitoring of heart rate, SpO2, and stress levels; sleep quality monitoring with sleep stages and score; activity tracking; breathing exercises; meditation; automatic rep counting for strength exercises; and Garmin Coach or Zepp Coach for guided training programs.
In terms of running features, the Amazfit Balance is also closely catching up with the Venu 3, offering comprehensive metrics from distance, time, pace, heart rate zones, VO2 max, and even cadence and running power.
The Amazfit Balance even wins over the Garmin Venu 3 when it comes to the variety of sports it tracks, supporting 156 sports modes compared to the Venu 3 with just 54 built-in sports apps.
The list of unique sports modes only found on the Amazfit Balance includes endurance sports (like triathlon and multi-sport), adventure sports (like mountain biking, BMX, rock climbing, hunting), dance activities (like zumba, ballet, street dance), water sports (like sailing, kayaking, snorkeling, indoor surfing), combat sports (like judo, taekwondo, karate, fencing), and some others.
Amazfit Balance
The Amazfit Balance also offers some features not found on the Garmin Venu 3, including a readiness score, which measures your physical readiness for the day, and a BIA sensor, which provides body composition measurements like body fat percentage, skeletal muscle mass, protein rate, and more.
However, the Garmin Venu 3 is not without its advantages. The ECG app records heart electrical activity and detects signs of an irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation (AFib). The Wheelchair Mode can track pushes and provide workouts for wheelchair users. Meanwhile, the Body Battery Energy Monitoring provides a detailed view of your body's energy levels throughout the day. These features are not found on the Amazfit Balance.
Therefore, each has its own strengths and limitations, but the extensive features of the Amazfit Balance despite its price are very impressive.
Smartwatch Features
Garmin Venu 3
The Amazfit Balance and Garmin Venu 3 equally allow you to view smartphone notifications, receive morning report/morning updates, store and control music playback, and make contactless payments with Zepp Pay or Garmin Pay. However, Garmin Pay currently supports more payment providers and banks in wider regions compared to Zepp Pay, which is more limited to European countries as of now.
Both smartwatches also feature a built-in speaker and microphone, so they can equally handle phone calls and voice assistants. The difference is that the voice assistant on the Amazfit Balance comes built-in with a variety of options, including Amazon Alexa, OpenAI's GPT-4o-powered Zepp Flow AI assistant, and an offline voice assistant. Meanwhile, Garmin Venu 3 uses your connected smartphone's voice assistant such as Siri, Google Assistant, or Bixby.
The Amazfit Balance also offers a camera control feature for iOS devices, which the Garmin Venu 3 lacks. This allows you to remotely control your iPhone camera from the watch, which can be very convenient for taking selfies or group photos.
When connected to an Android phone, the Amazfit Balance also supports notification quick replies for calls, SMS, WhatsApp, Line, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype, and Snapchat. Meanwhile, quick replies on the Garmin Venu 3 are only for SMS on Android.
Maps & Navigational Features
Amazfit Balance
Amazfit Balance is more well-equipped in terms of mapping and navigational features. You can download free offline maps or import route files for real-time navigation. The watch also uses dual-band GPS signals from six satellite positioning systems, providing more accurate and reliable GPS tracking.
Meanwhile, the Garmin Venu 3 comes with no maps or course navigation. You can navigate to a saved location or your starting point when doing a certain activity, but it uses compass guidance instead of maps or turn-by-turn directions. On top of that, the Venu 3 only uses three satellite systems, including GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo.
Battery Life
Garmin Venu 3
In terms of battery life, both smartwatches. are roughly comparable. The Amazfit Balance can last for up to 14 days with typical usage, while the Garmin Venu 3 is rated for up to 14 days in smartwatch mode. Below is the more detailed battery rating of both smartwatches.
Amazfit Balance
Typical Usage Battery Life: Up to 14 days
Battery Saver Mode: Up to 25 days
Accuracy GPS Mode: Up to 26 hours
Garmin Venu 3
Smartwatch mode: Up to 14 days
Battery Saver Smartwatch mode: Up to 26 days
GPS-Only GNSS mode: Up to 26 hours
Amazfit Balance vs Garmin Venu 3
Final Thoughts
Amazfit Balance
The Amazfit Balance's impressive array of features and capabilities, combined with its more affordable price point, make it a compelling alternative to the Garmin Venu 3. While the Venu 3 may have some unique advantages like the ECG app and Wheelchair Mode, the Amazfit Balance's extensive sports tracking, body composition analysis, and advanced navigation capabilities, all in a far cheaper package, make it a worthy alternative for many users.
If you like to read more on smartwatches, check out our other relevant guides here:
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Author
Naila Syifa
Content Manager at Synced. She crafts insightful content on the latest trends in technology, consumer electronics, and smart home gadgets.
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