Preferred way of patching multiple methods in Python unit test

I need to patch three methods (_send_reply, _reset_watchdog and _handle_set_watchdog) with mock methods before testing a call to a fourth method (_handle_command) in a unit test of mine.

From looking at the documentation for the mock package, there's a few ways I could go about it:

With patch.multiple as decorator

@patch.multiple(MBG120Simulator,
                _send_reply=DEFAULT,
                _reset_watchdog=DEFAULT,
                _handle_set_watchdog=DEFAULT,
                autospec=True)
def test_handle_command_too_short_v1(self,
                                     _send_reply,
                                     _reset_watchdog,
                                     _handle_set_watchdog):
    simulator = MBG120Simulator()
    simulator._handle_command('XA99')
    _send_reply.assert_called_once_with(simulator, 'X?')
    self.assertFalse(_reset_watchdog.called)
    self.assertFalse(_handle_set_watchdog.called)
    simulator.stop()

With patch.multiple as context manager

def test_handle_command_too_short_v2(self):
    simulator = MBG120Simulator()

    with patch.multiple(simulator,
                        _send_reply=DEFAULT,
                        _reset_watchdog=DEFAULT,
                        _handle_set_watchdog=DEFAULT,
                        autospec=True) as mocks:
        simulator._handle_command('XA99')
        mocks['_send_reply'].assert_called_once_with('X?')
        self.assertFalse(mocks['_reset_watchdog'].called)
        self.assertFalse(mocks['_handle_set_watchdog'].called)
        simulator.stop()

With multiple patch.object decoratorations

@patch.object(MBG120Simulator, '_send_reply', autospec=True)
@patch.object(MBG120Simulator, '_reset_watchdog', autospec=True)
@patch.object(MBG120Simulator, '_handle_set_watchdog', autospec=True)
def test_handle_command_too_short_v3(self,
                                     _handle_set_watchdog_mock,
                                     _reset_watchdog_mock,
                                     _send_reply_mock):
    simulator = MBG120Simulator()
    simulator._handle_command('XA99')
    _send_reply_mock.assert_called_once_with(simulator, 'X?')
    self.assertFalse(_reset_watchdog_mock.called)
    self.assertFalse(_handle_set_watchdog_mock.called)
    simulator.stop()

Manually replacing methods using create_autospec

def test_handle_command_too_short_v4(self):
    simulator = MBG120Simulator()

    # Mock some methods.
    simulator._send_reply = create_autospec(simulator._send_reply)
    simulator._reset_watchdog = create_autospec(simulator._reset_watchdog)
    simulator._handle_set_watchdog = create_autospec(simulator._handle_set_watchdog)

    # Exercise.
    simulator._handle_command('XA99')

    # Check.
    simulator._send_reply.assert_called_once_with('X?')
    self.assertFalse(simulator._reset_watchdog.called)
    self.assertFalse(simulator._handle_set_watchdog.called)

Personally I think the last one is clearest to read, and will not result in horribly long lines if the number of mocked methods grow. But I don't find any of them particularly nice. Especially the multiple patch.object approach, which requires careful matching of the parameter order to the nested decorations.

Is there some approach I've missed, or a way to make this more readable? What do you do when you need to patch multiple methods on the instance/class under test?