Garmin 010-02293-10 Instinct Solar, Rugged Outdoor Smartwatch with Solar Charging Capabilities, Built-in Sports Apps and Health Monitoring, Graphite

If you're looking for a sport smart-watch to listen to music while you run, navigate throughout the city or install apps, then THIS IS NOT YOUR WATCH. To put it simply and give you a better feel for the watch, I'm a rock climber, amateur alpinist and during COVID took up running as part of my training routine. Me choosing this watch came down to the following points (in order of relevance): battery life, cost, and long-term usability. As an alpinist, the need for charging a device can be crippling, particularly GPS-enabled ones. The watchs' battery lasts for 13 days on the basic setting, meaning it registers your heartbeat, daily activities (steps, floors, etc) and utilizes GPS without connecting for a charge for a long time (with Sleep PulseOx disabled it can last close to double that and in battery saver mode even longer). Of course, activities such as running, skiing, and others (it comes with preloaded activities but you can create your own custom ones) use up more battery, but you can set up different power modes so that the charge lasts longer. Moreover, I've had a simple Casio solar for the last 10 years and never changed the battery, so no way was I buying a 1-day-charge watch after that. Regarding cost, I got it during Presidents Day sales for 320-ish, which to me is a steal for this watch. If you are the kind of person who wants all the Instinct Solar has but wants street maps and more customization, then you may need to spend more cash on things like the Enduro or the Phoenix lineup, both of which come at twice the cost or more (do your research on those). The Instinct Solar is a basic watch in terms of looks and visuals (black & white screen, breadcrumb navigation, only a few preloaded watch faces), aimed mostly at giving you many features for outdoor adventures and sports while not wasting resources on useless gimmicks. In my case, running is only part of and not the focus of my training so, while valuable, things like VO2max are not a must-have, whereas wrist-based blood O2 readings can give me an approximate idea on the field (this is NOT a medical device). Regarding long-term usability, it comes down to one simple fact: these things are expensive. The reality is, unless you are made out of money, you cannot buy one of these every year, be it the Instinct or any other smart-watch. In my case, I wanted a device that can function on the mountains without worrying about whether it will make it on a single charge or die midway. I wanted something that has GPS capabilities but doesn't break the bank or needs a replacement for a while. Solar charging makes it a tough contender for this price range. Overall, if you want a basic do-it-all adventure watch that won't set you back too much but can be used for more than just extreme terrain, this is an excellent product. If you are looking for a more running-oriented or activity-tracking device, Garmin has other line-ups, more affordable than the Instinct Solar and with specific features for those activities. The only problem with this watch is the learning curve, but there are youtube guides to simplify it.

I'd been wearing a garmin forerunner 230 for about 6 years and had a much less impressive 1st gen garmin step tracking watch before that. Nothing can compete with Garmin battery life and the forerunner had all the metrics I liked to gush over. I'd tried cheating on it with the galaxy active watch, but it was a quick, disappointing fling. Then for Christmas, my husband got these for us. I'd said for months that the instinct (the solar in particular) would be the only watch worth upgrading to because of improved battery life and a built-in altimeter. He helped me make the transition and I haven't looked back. (He has also never been one to stick to a smart watch for long, but I've only seen this leave his wrist once or twice for charging.) As a runner, I've been blown away with the changes having a built in heart rate monitor has made in my training (the 230 didn't have a heart rate monitor like its 235 twin). And I've found the feedback accurate enough for my purposes. The altimeter is significantly more accurate than relying on my phone metrics (I live and run in the mountains). And as expected, the battery life is phenomenal. (I've charged it 2x in 2 months. I don't use many phone/internet features, but I run 4hrs/week.) As a runner, there are a couple drawbacks that I might figure out how to remedy with time. 1) The top issue is that there isn't a "lap" button. So, if you're used to having that on the go, you have to pause the workout, tell the watch to register the pause as a lap end, and then start the workout back up. This could be a pain if you enjoy "free-style running" and using the lap function throughout OR you use the lap button to move forward with your preset workout. 2) I'm not a fan of the activity screen when running. The metrics shown are pretty minimal and not terribly useful, but I just click to the screen I'd set up and that's fine. 3) Watch faces are limited to four layouts and you pick what is displayed. I miss my old watch face, but I've adapted to that as well. I really like that I can display moon phases in the circular spot at the top of the display. That circular spot is the reason watch faces are limited. It's part of the screen and of every watch face and metrics screen. 4) The band is not my favorite. Now that I'm working with heart rate, getting a proper fit is crucial. The band that comes with the watch is comfortable and secure, but my ideal size is between two of the notches and I haven't found a remedy for that yet. Also, I don't sleep with my watch on. The nub that holds the piece securing the strap can kind of make it a pain to get the watch off because it'sgood at its job. 5) The watch won't freak out if you are in an activity and start driving. This can be both good and bad. If you want it tracking your drive, it's great. If you forget to stop the tracker after a workout, you'll blow all your pr's out of the water... 6) Just pressing the back button while in an activity doesn't stop that activity. It will, however bring you back to the home/time screen and continue tracking. For someone hiking or running many miles, this could be a plus. For a short run, you can end up in the car scenario mentioned above pretty quick. I know I listed quite a few cons, but honestly, it is top notch. My husband also loves it and loves tracking our hikes with it, which it does very well. I have to drive to where I run. So I have to take my phone and wallet with me regardless of what my watch can do. If I was walking out my front door to go for a run, my needs would be different. Having a watch that could store music and a credit card and make an emergency call or text would be higher on the priority list. But for an adventurer in the boonies, it's absolutely perfect!

Do not trust the alarm feature to wake you up for critical events. I overslept by about an hour when the watch updated overnight. After software installation the watch powers itself off AND MUST BE RESTARTED MANUALLY BY PRESSING THE POWER BUTTON. I got lucky it happened on a weekend. Update 1/26/2024: I believe the watch reads 100% full BEFORE a charge cycle is actually complete. Instead of taking it off charger as soon as it reads full(usually an hour to charge from 50 to 100), I let it stay plugged in for 4-5 hours. Now battery life is just like new, dropping approx. 6-7% per day when not getting any sun. I recharge it every Sunday evening and the battery is consistently between 48 and 52 after seven days use. Maybe Garmin released an update? I don't know. Update 12/2023: About two months ago the watch suddenly went from going 2 weeks on a charge to just 4-5 days. I researched a bit, ended up doing a factory reset and it was back to normal for 2 weeks. Now it's acting up again, consuming about 1% of the battery per hour. I know it's software related because the reset worked for a while. I Contacted garmin support. Since it's out of the 2 year warranty they offered to exchange it -- for $140 plus tax!! No thanks. They basically said "well tough luck, call us if you change your mind." Original review: I spent probably 10 hours watching tutorials and reading reviews before making the purchase. Color touchscreens look nice and eliminate the need for instruction manuals with all of their detail, but I was looking for something simple, rugged, and affordable with great battery life. Solar charging was just a bonus. I was not going to be tied to plugging a watch in every night. The user manual is huge and the five button controls mean a lot of functionality must be memorized. I didn't want to wait months for a big sale and purchased at about $55 off msrp. Still seems like a good value.

Not as fancy as something Bond would wear, but MacGyver could work wonders with the functionality! Working in park maintenance, I’m usually outdoors with chainsaws, hand tools, and small and heavy equipment. Subsequently, I wanted something rugged enough to be a work accessory, and versatile enough to integrate tech into something as fundamental as a watch; this Garmin does all of that. The biggest features I use are the weather and sunset time widgets, as my work on the job site and at home on my farm are dependent on these conditions, and being able to glance on the fly helps me adapt my schedule in real time. Having this information on my wrist means I can access it easily without having to dig out my phone while sitting in a Bobcat or Excavator, or fishing underneath my chainsaw chaps. The most handy feature by far, however, is the Area Calculator, which uses GPS to measure job sites and determine how much fertilizer and seed I need to order, and it really helps me stay on top of planning and budgeting. The Alarm also keeps me on schedule, as the vibration and sound combo wakes me up before dawn better than any other watch I’ve owned. Being able to set recurring alarms from the app on my phone also makes this a breeze, as I can adjust my daily wake-up time, and also go back to analyze how much sleep I’ve gotten throughout the week. I’ve had the Garmin Instinct Tactical for a month and a half now, and only had to fully charge it twice (other than when I topped it off to 100% when it arrived). I suspect I will need to charge it less during the summer months when I’m out in direct sunlight more, given the solar charging capability. I also feel naked without it on my wrist, as It’s become so invaluable I rarely take it off. I’ve added aftermarket protection in the way of a “screen protector” over the face and a rubberized ring around the outside of the case; so far even flush cutting stumps and digging through the mud hasn’t so much as required a quick wipe down to look as good as new. If anything changes, I’ll update this review, but for me this watch is perfect, and the price was great. I can’t recommend it enough!

It is a great watch promising excellent battery life. If it has what you need for activity apps and usage, it may be for you. Here are two reasons I returned it and exchanged it via Amazon for the Fenix Pro 6x. One, the breadcrumb tracking on the Instinct is OK, but just OK. It shows a track, and that is about it. You can set the Pan/Zoom from .2 miles at a minimum to infinity(?) as a max, but at say, 2 miles the display is small enough as to render the perspective very small, and a .2 miles I question its usefulness, after all, I can see that far most of the time. So I went with the Fenix because it has actual mapping and the display is much larger. On the much touted battery life because of the solar charging (see any online review, written or on YouTube) and this is the strong point, and it was for me too in making the purchase. But here is the caveat. Solar charging only works outside, and in bright sunlight (True, you can set the battery saver in different modes (as you can in the Fenix non-solar) to extend the battery life beyond belief. But that does limit your app use. And, if you live in PA like I do, and 5 months out of the year at least you are wearing sleeves, then what usefulness is the solar charging? Watch the video reviews. These are all done outdoors in places where there is abundant outdoor sunshine. Add to that the fact that where I do most of my hiking, under tree cover, and again the solar charging becomes much less of a sales point for me in my location, or any other location where I might travel to hike (think Glacier National, the Black Hills, Appalachian National Forest, New Hampshire, etc.). Also, when just doing my normal walks in bright sun the solar is only a benefit about half the time because the watch needs to be facing the sun - so when walking in a direction when the watch is on the shaded arm - well, you get my point. In sum, the solar charging would really only benefit me mainly in the summer, when doing fairly long bicycle rides. And that has become a lesser activity for me at this time in my life anyway. Other than that, it is a fine device for what it is designed to do, if it suits your needs. But I felt that I could get a much better device with real mapping, the Fenix 6, without a very usable function for me, the solar charging, at not too much more (if you call a couple hundred dollars not too much!) money, and just stick with connected charging. Thanks for reading.

You can read other reviews for normal features that normal people think about. I hesitated buying this for a long time because I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't let Big Brother listen to every sound in my house and I don't even carry a personal surveillance device when I'm out doing my workout. So how is this watch for us privacy sensitive people? Not bad. I can say conclusively that you do not ever have to "download the app" or even have a creepy phone involved at all. This means that you can be 100% sure Garmin is not getting reports about your wherabouts and activities. Do you really want the history of your sex life sold to marketing ghouls? Well if you have a HRM attached to a modern surveillance phone you should assume that is what's going on. Where exactly do you go on your workouts will obviously be sold to the highest bidder but possibly, technically - you should assume with hardware like this - where you go ever. I've never hooked this up to a phone or interfaced this watch with any other system. I did manage to mount its memory as a file system using Linux. This provides some pretty raw access to the "data" but what one can do with that (in private) seems to be quite a project. But that's not bad. Most devices like this these days do not let you, the ostensible owner, access the data directly and require you to be involved in predatory schemes you'd rather avoid. My main complaint (possibly fixable with connecting to the magic app) is that while there are dozens of "activities" built in, it seems I do a lot of things that are not popular (windsurfing, rollerskiing, speed skating, etc). You can make your own activities (and I have) but I find it difficult to squeeze out the exact information I'd find useful. For example, "XC Ski" is a thing, but why no max speed or cadence on that sport? That's something that would be extremely helpful to know (we know from canoeing that it's possible; the hardware can do it). Another thing it definitely could do but I can't get it to do is show me a live map of my current workout. I can stop the work out and check the map to see if I've taken the wrong trail/road, etc, but then I need to start a new one just for checking that. All of that could be operator error or problems not known by people with the much richer interface of a phone, but that's where I find it limiting. My only other issue is sometimes it takes a long time to get a GPS fix. My only advice for that is take the watch off, set it down, go do something else for a minute and it is usually good when you come back to it. But wearing it and moving around, even a little, can prolong the fix by many minutes. Overall i've been astonished at how good the GPS is. It's not sub-centimeter or anything, but when I do an out and back workout, I can go out 5km and when I come back the 10km mark is well within 50m of where I started. I have some turnaround points now that I go to regularly that are usually within 10m. The controls are pretty sensible given how challenging it is to design an interface that supports so much functionality. I was skeptical about this watch when I bought it but now it's a critical item and I'd replace it immediately if I lost or broke it.

Okay let’s start out that I purchased the watch about a month ago. I absolutely love this watch. The Garmin Instict Solar proves to me daily why I purchased it. With a max life of about 17 days, the watch has plenty of juice to last quite some time! I love the controllability of it and I feel like I’ve been able to get a good handle of it’s features. It’ll alert me when the batter is low as well, I know some people wondered if that was a feature. The only cons I’ve noticed, because let’s be clear.. that’s why you are all reading my review: 1. The battery sometimes dies faster but that has a lot to do with how many notifications it receives. The higher amount of emails, Facebook, texts, etc that I get in a day, the more battery gets used (makes sense) 2. Solar charging is slow. Like not even worth it kind of slow. Unless you’re outside working as a farmer or landscaper all day- I’m not sure that the solar charging is a right option for you. That’s it. Just two cons. Not too shabby! With an iPhone, you can’t send responses to messages, but I’ve heard you can with androids. That actually has been nice because it has allowed me to focus more on my job and I can filter out what (or who) I actually want to reply too. Using the watch for GPS usage (I’m a bicyclist) uses a good amount of power. I one thing I’m happy I’ve noticed is when starting up an activity, you should wait outside and acquire GPS connection prior to clicking start on your activity. This can be done by creating your workout, and the watch takes about 30-60 seconds to find GPS and then you’re good to go. It will notify you by saying GPS (with a check mark) I’ve had very minimal issues with its tracking capabilities between itself and STRAVA on my phone. I use Garmin Connect all the time. It’s their app used to monitor weight, heart rate, stress, exercise, steps, sleep, and all that extra jazz. It’s provided me with a lot of data that helps as well. Final thoughts so far: It’s my first smartwatch. It does exactly what I need it to do for me. Very happy with it and will update in the future.

I'm extremely happy with this watch. I have had 3 watches prior to this that could be considered smartwatches. I had one of the early Pebble watches, which I really liked. It was simple, could run a few apps at a time, but importantly it was reliable, and the battery lasted for about a week. Then I had one of the Fitbit smartwatches. I had not had good luck with Fitbits, between my wife and I, we had already had 4 or 5 various Fitbits fail on us; but we enjoyed the fitness challenges with friends. The Fitbits were lasting a few days at most between charges. The Fitbit smartwatch that I had lasted maybe a year before it broke, and the battery life seemed to be declining as well. We tried Samsung Galaxy smartwatches next, and while those had the most capability in terms of features of anything so far, they only lasted about 2 days on a charge, and after a year, only about a day. My wife's Galaxy failed in less than a year, and I was worried about mine, it didn't seem like it was really intended for rugged use. I decided to go over to Garmin, and I have not regretted it. This watch is built like a tank, the battery life lasts for 3 weeks or more, even without any solar charging. It doesn't have the touchscreen functionality, but I find I don't miss that at all. If anything, I think I prefer using the hard buttons on the side, as my big fingers had a real problem with accuracy on the Samsung smartwatch. I have used Garmin products for a long time as an outdoorsman and aviator, as well as in the military; and this watch upholds the sterling reputation for quality and reliability that I expect from the company.

Peu importe l'usage que vous souhaitez faire avec une montre intelligente, cette montre peut tout faire. La montre est pas fait cheap, le design est superbe et elle est confortable à porter. Pas encombrante ou lourde sur votre poignet. Il y a tellement de réglages et de possibilités avec cette montre que c'en est impressionnant. Et pour ceux et celles qui ont commenté comme quoi elle est compliquée pour rien, je leur répond ceci; Prenez le temps de lire votre guide et vous allez vite comprendre comment ''jouer'' avec et comment la mettre à votre goût avec les réglages que vous aimez et en moins de 2 semaines, vous allez vous en servir les 2 yeux fermés! Les gens veulent toute tout cuit et tout de suite et sans efforts de nos jours. À ce prix-là, cette montre vous offre une panoplie de réglages et gadgets, il est donc normal que prenne plus que 30 minutes pour voir et comprendre tout ce qu'elle peut accomplir. Personnellement, cette montre est le meilleur investissement pour ma santé et un excellent outil motivateur ! Ça ne fait pas 5 jours que je l'utilise pour écrire tout ceci. Je l'utilise chaque depuis Juillet 2022 et j'ai zéro regret de mon achat, au contraire, plus je l'utilise et plus je l'adore. Le GPS est sur la coche ! Y a pas de comparaison à faire avec les autres montres plus bas de gamme et plus ''à la mode'' à 200-300$ genre Fitbit Versa ou autres. Overall 6 étoiles sur 5 !

Pros: 1)Ligereza. 2) Fácil configuración. 3) Buen diseño 4) Interfase muy intuitiva 5) Carga Solar buena, lo expuse al sol directo por un par de horas y logro cargar un porcentaje interesante de batería por lo que es una buena característica para salir de algún apuro en caso de no contar con el cargador. Contras: 1) Me decepcionó un poco la duración de la batería incluso si le desactivo el Bluetooth para que no se enlace todo el tiempo con el teléfono. 2) Por el color de la caja y la correa (Blanco) tiende a ensuciarse de inmediato y muy fácil. Tuve que comprar otro extensible que resista más al suciedad por uso.

Me encantó, no es un reloj touch, es un reloj a prueba de todo. y lo mejor es su durabilidad y calidad.

Not an activity without it!! best gift from me to me!

You have what you want for all kind of sport functions Perfect for rugged environment like Himalaya hiking Design is smart for lady too . Very good Size for my small wrist Long Battery life and solar is really an advantage for mountain areas -hiking