{"id":488983,"date":"2026-02-19T00:36:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/488983\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T00:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:36:19","slug":"i-walked-7500-steps-with-the-apple-watch-ultra-3-vs-garmin-venu-4-and-the-winner-surprised-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/488983\/","title":{"rendered":"I walked 7,500 steps with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs Garmin Venu 4 \u2014 and the winner surprised me"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Venu 4 are two of the best smartwatches<\/a> in 2026, but which is the more accurate fitness tracker? To find out, I walked 7,500 steps with the Apple Watch Ultra 3<\/a> on my left wrist and the Garmin Venu 4<\/a> on my right wrist.<\/p>\n

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is Cupertino’s premium, tough-built smartwatch with a heavy price tag of $799<\/a> to match its impressive specs. The Garmin Venu 4, meanwhile, is the Kansas-based gadget-maker’s answer to the popular Apple Watch Series 11<\/a>, with a starting price of $549<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While the Venu 4 is arguably Garmin’s smartest smartwatch under $1,000, it can’t match the smarts of the Apple Watch Ultra 3. However, Garmin offers a more comprehensive set of fitness training and recovery tools. That said, when it comes to fitness tracking chops, these two devices are evenly matched.<\/p>\n

The Venu 4 already has a walk test win over the Apple Watch 11<\/a>. Will it keep the streak going against the pricier Ultra 3? Read on.<\/p>\n

I walked 7,500 steps with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs Garmin Venu 4<\/p>\n

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\"Close-up\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Dan Bracaglia\/Tom’s Guide)<\/p>\n

To keep this head-to-head between the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Venu 4 fair, I synchronized their tracking modes before departing on my one-hour and four-minute walk. Meanwhile, as a control for distance, elevation, and pace data, I turned to the trusty Strava app<\/a>, running on my iPhone 16 Plus.<\/p>\n

To ensure as accurate a step count total as possible, I manually counted, noting every hundred steps taken with a click of my old-timey tally counter. Find out how the fitness-tracking accuracy of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Venu 4 compares below.<\/p>\n

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Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs Garmin Venu 4: Walk test resultsSwipe to scroll horizontallyApple Watch 11 vs Garmin Venu 4: resultsHeader Cell – Column 0 <\/p>\n

Apple Watch Ultra 3<\/p>\n

Garmin Venu 4<\/p>\n

Control<\/p>\n

Step count<\/p>\n

7,411 steps<\/p>\n

7,534 steps<\/p>\n

7,500 steps (manual count)<\/p>\n

Distance<\/p>\n

3.98 miles<\/p>\n

3.94 miles <\/p>\n

4.04 miles (Strava)<\/p>\n

Elevation gain<\/p>\n

287 feet<\/p>\n

220 feet<\/p>\n

229 feet (Strava)<\/p>\n

Average moving pace<\/p>\n

17 mins 34 secs per mile<\/p>\n

16 mins 29 secs per mile <\/p>\n

16 mins 12 secs per mile (Strava) <\/p>\n

Average heart rate<\/p>\n

129 bpm<\/p>\n

126 bpm<\/p>\n

n\/a<\/p>\n

Max heart rate<\/p>\n

159 bpm<\/p>\n

165 bpm<\/p>\n

n\/a<\/p>\n

Total calories burned<\/p>\n

523 calories<\/p>\n

447 calories<\/p>\n

n\/a<\/p>\n

Device battery usage<\/p>\n

1%<\/p>\n

5%<\/p>\n

n\/a<\/p>\n

I walked 7,500 steps (manual count) during my roughly one-hour and four-minute walk around Seattle, Washington. Confirming the accuracy of my manual count, Strava noted a similar step count total of 7,520.<\/p>\n

I’ve done dozens of these tests, and as a general rule of thumb, a smartwatch step-count tally that’s within 100 of the control is a very impressive feat. So, before jumping into the result of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. the Garmin Venu 4, it’s worth giving props to both smartwatches for their precision when it comes to the primary metric of comparison.<\/p>\n

Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.<\/p>\n

That said, the Garmin Venu 4 is closer to the control data, not just when it comes to steps taken, but also elevation gain \u2014 the Ultra 3 was quite generous here \u2014 and average moving pace.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Close-up\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Dan Bracaglia\/Tom’s Guide)<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting that both Strava and Garmin provide moving and elapsed averages, while Apple has just one pace metric, which I’m guessing reflects an elapsed pace (given that it’s slower).<\/p>\n

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Heart rate data between the two smartwatches is similar enough to not keep me up at night, with Apple noting a slightly higher average and Garmin measuring a tiny bit higher maximum.<\/p>\n

When it comes to GPS battery life, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 smoked the Garmin Venu 4, using just 1% during the walk compared to 5% for the Venu 4.<\/p>\n

Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs Garmin Venu 4: And the winner is…<\/p>\n

\n

\"the\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n

In this head-to-head fitness tracking accuracy test between the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Venu 4, the Garmin comes out on top as the (slightly) more accurate wearable (for this one walk, at least).<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, both devices calculated step count totals that are within 100 steps of my actual count, which is extremely impressive. The Venu 4 was just a tad closer. Overall, though, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Venu 4 each performed with enough accuracy for me to confidently recommend either.<\/p>\n

Need some help choosing between the two brands? Read my explainer on Garmin vs. Apple Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More from Tom’s Guide<\/p>\n

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\"Google\n<\/p>\n

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Follow Tom’s Guide on Google News<\/a> and add us as a preferred source<\/a> to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Venu 4 are two of the best smartwatches in 2026, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[64,63,213,105],"class_list":["post-488983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gadgets","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}