I hate my vivoactive three. Have any of you found something for exercise recording that you like better?

Hate this vivo active 3. Anyone found any thing better?

I have no experince with Vivoactive 3, but I am very happy with my Garmin Instinct. Having it about a year, and still excited with it like a kid.

The stopwatch runs continuously,

You can reset the stopwatch, when you stop it. Not sure about Vivoactive 3, but on Instinct when I stop the stopwatch, a reset (circular) symbol appears near the left bottom button, and pressing it resets the timer. In contrary to you, I find the possibility of keeping it running in the background without limitation, for a very good and a welcome feature.

the touch screen allows my shower to change my widgets

I'd recommend setting a hotkey for turning the touchscreen on and off. You can also try whether recalibrating the touchscreen would help with its sensitivity.

and it doesn't track my calories correctly.

How do you know? What's wrong?

I have logged 18481 steps for. 1300 calories burned total?!?

I have logged 18481 steps for. 1300 calories burned total?!

There is no direct conversion between steps and Calories as long as there is heart rate data available. The Calories burn depends primarily on the HR and the definition of HR zones, and then it is also dependent on your BMR, which in turn is calculated from your gender, age, weight, height, and activity class. So I do not think that 1300 Calories are impossible.

I have had a Garmin rep look at it and he agreed that the stop watch is not supposed to run and it does not allow resetting.

That sounds like nonsense. You can reset every stopwatch. You just did not understand each other, or he was not familiar with your model. On the following video the reset button is visible at the bottom part of the stopwatch screen of a Vivoactive 3:

I dont want a screen  lock as that makes the screen more difficult to access for activities etc.

Lock it only when you are under shower. Keep it unlocked during the activity.