While Garmin claims the watch will also charge from indoor light, I checked the solar intensity meter as well as my UV exposure when inside, and it was nil. Solar charging is a supplement, not a replacement, for plugging your watch into an outlet. It was not helpful for my mental health to get up in the morning and find that insomnia had kept my Body Battery at an 8 out of 100. Unfortunately, that was before a pandemic overtook the planet, so I didn’t find myself checking these metrics very much. I’ve found Body Battery to be useful, back before I thought there were things I could do to improve it. New additions to the Instinct Solar also include a pulse oximeter to measure your blood oxygen levels while sleeping, and Body Battery, a Garmin-specific metric that measures your energy levels with an algorithm that takes into account your activity, stress levels, sleep amount and quality, and heart rate variability. (The answer was SUPing, but only because it tracked distance in miles rather than meter segments.) I delayed our lake crossing by several minutes trying to decide whether paddling a loaded canoe was more like SUPing (stand up paddle surfing) or Rowing, two activities you can track on the watch. But the Instinct Solar on its own has plenty of other functions. The Garmin Solar also comes in new surf and tactical versions, which have features specifically for those respective uses, like tide data and a dedicated surfing activity tracker. I also had to run several miles back to the car for little errands, like, oh, forgetting to fill out the permit for our site. To find our quarantine-partner family in the woods, we hiked on a trail, paddled a canoe back to the car, loaded it up, and paddled back. Right after the Instinct finished charging, I strapped it on my wrist and took off with my family for a camping weekend.
#GARMIN INSTINCT SOLAR HOW TO#
On most watches that have a multi-button system, it always takes me a few days to remember how to use it. I like the Instinct’s retro look a lot, and I also-eek!-like the button instructions. It points out which button lets you start GPS and which one is the menu. It's waterproof up to 100 meters, and I don't worry about accidentally knocking it against canoes or my car door.Īround the basic black-and-white memory-in-pixel display, which you can customize with different face styles and display metrics, is a thick bezel printed with instructions for Garmin’s five-button system. It takes up most of the real estate on my small wrist, but it's still comfortable, not to mention durable and robust. I measured the face to be 1.75 inches across and 0.25 inches deep. Still, it does make my favorite sports watch even better. After more than a week of testing, I’m not convinced solar charging adds as much power as Garmin would like me to think. This year, the company debuted a successor: the Instinct Solar, which has a Power Glass face so it can recharge from the sun. After all, it keeps you from getting lost in the woods and it doesn’t empty your bank account. Since its debut, the Instinct has become an extremely popular Garmin tracker. So many other great fitness trackers fit the sleek, minimalist aesthetic that the chunky Instinct seemed out of place. But as with dad sneakers, Kraft Singles, and Pete Davidson, I have yet to meet anyone else who likes it. Why would you get one with half the functionality?
#GARMIN INSTINCT SOLAR SERIES#
Garmin already makes a fantastic series of backcountry watches.
#GARMIN INSTINCT SOLAR FULL#
But I ended up skipping a full review because, at that time, I wasn’t sure about the watch’s value proposition. When Garmin first debuted the Instinct in 2018, it instantly became my favorite sports watch.
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