Garmin Instinct 2 Rugged Outdoor Watch, Graphite

After going back and forth from apple to fitbit, I decided to give this watch a try. The battery life is exactly as advertised and there’s lots of cool features for workouts and activities. I have zero complaints about the connectivity to my iPhone, as my watch notifications go off at the same time as my phone. I would definitely recommend this watch!

I don’t write a lot of reviews, but I thought I’d chime in about this. (Just a regular old customer here–no connection to Garmin or Amazon.) My point of view might be uncommon for Garmin owners: I actually don’t think of myself as a Smartwatch guy and have actually turned down free Apple Watches (as holiday gifts) on two occasions. No interest in texting on my wrist. I’m a “watch guy” in the more traditional sense–a big fan of mid-tier to high-end mechanical watches. But I wanted one techy watch for when I bike and work out and for a long backcountry hike where GPS was going to be necessary. I’ve owned this watch for a couple months now and have put it through its paces: swimming (it’s highly water-resistant), biking, lifting, and (as mentioned) in the wilderness. It hasn’t disappointed.

Set up is easy and intuitive: if you can handle using an iPhone, you should have no problem making your way through the process. Downloading the smartphone app on your device and syncing it is worth the trouble, in my opinion. Among other things, it will allow you to keep on top of software updates, control your music while working out (without having to touch your phone), and get whatever alerts (like texts or Ring notifications) you might want to opt into. I have it set up so that the Garmin app only seeks out my watch when I open the app—don’t want this thing constantly searching and draining my phone battery when I’m not even wearing the watch.

I do still fumble through the different buttons trying to remember what does what, but it is getting better. I usually only wear this for a few hours at a time a few days a week; if I wore it more regularly, I’m sure I would be far more fluent by now. And the good news is, you really can’t mess anything up by pressing the wrong button.

There’s tons of customization that you can do (during setup or just whenever) to rearrange the main screen, add or remove activities and options, etc. For an entry-level smartwatch, it’s impressively featured!

Battery life is utterly insane. I charged it before a 10-hour hike where the GPS was going the entire time–that was in early May. Since then I’ve worn it several times for many collective hours, sometimes in GPS mode, sometimes not, and I only had to charge it again today–in mid June. Granted, I power it down whenever I’m not using it, but still, you get a lot of time out of a single charge. I have the solar version, and I suppose that extends the battery life in a limited way—can’t say I’ve tested that or noticed strong evidence of it, but I’ll take Garmin’s word for it.

The GPS tracking feature works very well once you get it dialed in to your preferences, which isn’t tricky to do. If you get lost, you can flip to the screen where your track is: it’s just a squiggly line on the screen—there’s no map background on this plain-Jane, smaller, black and white display—but with pretty minimal brainpower, you can use it to retrace your steps, no problem. No chance of getting lost with this thing on, as long as you’ve got a signal—and I’ve never had any trouble acquiring one. Beyond that, just having it on your wrist as a trip computer, tracking how long you’ve been at it, how many miles you’ve covered, your elevation, etc, is really nice. It allowed me to provide very specific answers every time my kid asked “how many more miles do we have to go?” Note, though, that you’ll need to activate the GPS mode when you start your hike (or ride or whatever). And you’ll want to shut if off when you’re done in order to extend the battery life.

Nice to have the heart-rate and pulse oximeter features. Also reassuring to have the “incident reporting” feature, or whatever it’s called. Thankfully haven’t had to use it, but I’ve read positive customer reviews from folks who have. It’s a comfort to know that my wife will get an instant alert on her phone if I crash my bike, for example. And I believe the alert will include my exact location.

As for the watchy-watch stuff: this thing is very well built. It feels robust, but is as light as a feather. I mean, you can really forget you have it on, especially if you’re accustomed to wearing a luxury sports watch that weighs more than 100g. I haven’t tried swapping out the rubber strap, but I see no reason why you couldn’t put it on a NATO or something if you wanted to. The integrated strap itself feels like it’s good quality, though I imagine it will eventually need to be replaced after a few years of putting it on and taking it off.

The overall look is very rugged and “tactical.” At least with the black model, there’s nothing refined or luxurious about it at all.

The main thing I want to say about it as a watch per se is that the size is perfect, at least for me. A lot of these smartwatches nowadays are enormous: 45mm and super-thick. To me they look absurd. This one is about 40mm, which is by no means small, but it’s sensible and while definitely “sized” for a man, could work well as an oversized unisex option. Point is, when I’m wearing it, it just feels like a normal watch, proportioned like several of my other, mechanical watches—not like a giant wrist computer. It calls no attention to itself. The screen isn’t tiny or anything: the display is plenty readable. It’s not touchscreen, it’s not full color, you can’t watch videos on it—if you want all of that, look at a different model. This is one of those “everything you need, nothing you don’t” items. (Though, again, it has a pretty surprising array and number of features—most of which I’ve never used.)

Big fan.

un excelente producto, volveria a comprar, llega en tiempo, ha funcionado correctamente.

Lo compré porque estaba harto de la batería del Apple Watch, y honestamente las funciones que me importaban eran de fitness.

Este reloj es más preciso trackeando cualquier tema de fitness, tiene más deportes, la batería dura eternamente y lo mejor de todo es que es lo robusto que es.

Cons: el vidrio se ensucia fácilmente, yo le compré un protector y siento que quedó mucho mejor que el de fábrica.

Lo único que me gustaría adicional es que tuviera un cambio de correas.