Garmin Instinct 2X Solar Rugged GPS Smartwatch Built-in Flashlight Solar Charging Capability Multi-Band GNSS Graphite

Two months in, and I'm loving this daily wear. I have a large watch collection, but wear this tool watch every day because it reminds me to do my daily workouts, track my progress, and learn about more features every week or so. If I was a hiker, the GPS and crazy long charge, with solar recharging, would make it the life insurance policy you didn't know you needed. Even as someone who sleeps at home and doesn't want to turn on the light and disturb my partner, the built-in flashlight is fantastic. It is used daily. Home screen layouts are flexible, easy to change and the app on my phone synchronizes automatically, allowing me to easily see calendar items on my phone. Read more

So I previously owned the $300 Garmin Vivoactive 3 HR. The first year I was in love and obsessed with fitness. They have a 1 year warranty. WELL just after the 1 year mark my band broke...on the watch head, cheap plastic. Support didn't do anything to help. So I used a soldering iron to melt it back together. Slowly the 2nd, 3rd, AND 4TH connector on the watch head broke off. I created a live social media event smashing my watch to pieces with a hammer. Also spent about 3 years wearing my broken, melted watch negatively attacking all Garmin posts and social media. I hated them with a passion. Haha anyways moving forward, I decided to give this a shot since comparable brands didn't match up. Couldn't be happier. It's actually notably durable, I've never needed to connect my cell phone (which I prefer). Looks awesome, tracks all my fitness stats and I have a historical record on the watch of it all. With all the health features enabled and no smart features turned on, battery lasts like a month. Turn off consistent smart OX recordings it lasts 40+ days. The solar feature is nice, you'd think with me getting 15k steps outdoors every day you'd never need to charge but it still slowly depletes. Coolest functional feature for a dude, it has a flashlight! I'd recommend it, but if one of the bands breaks, Garmin better keep a lookout for me because I'd probably do something that would wind me up in jail. Read more

I wasn't sure where to start, but I have to say this is the coolest and most useful gadget I've purchased in a long time.. It’s far more than a fun toy (which is what I expected); it provides high-level utility for daily life. I'm genuinely impressed by the functionality, especially the built-in flashlight, the navigation capabilities, and the outstanding solar-powered battery life. This has become a must-have piece of gear for me. Sad I waited so long to try one out! Read more

Just what I wanted. Tough and durable, with notifications. I tried other watches but scratched the touch screens up so went with the buttons and don't regret it. I can get 22 days on full charge. More if in the sun quite a bit. And the built-in flashlight is a game changer. Read more

This is the perfect activity watch/smartwatch for me. It can’t call or text from the watch itself, but those are features I rarely used on my Apple Watch anyway. It’ll still show you if you have a text, call, or any other notification but is geared toward being more of a great activity watch than a phone on your wrist. What’s great about this is how jam-packed with features it is. They took a ton of stuff that previously was only available in the fenix and epix watches and brought it to this instinct 2x solar. It has sleep tracking, activity tracking (with customizable screens for each activity), training readiness, heart rate, vo2 max, blood oxygen level, etc. Most apps charge money for the amount of detail this watch and app give you about your day to day and activities, but there’s no subscription on this. It’s all free And it constantly checks heart rate. My old Apple Watch would check periodically but you could never glance down and see what the current hr was without tapping on the icon and waiting. With this watch it constantly is reading heart rate and keeps a graph showing the history (which you can have show on the watch face if you want). The battery is awesome, something like 40 days with how I have mine set up. And the solar charging actually works. I’ve heard that past versions it didn’t help all too much, but this one it really makes a difference. I added 2 days to my battery life from just a few hours in direct sunlight. The only places where this watch is lesser are the display and the navigation. If detailed maps and touch screen/oled screen are important to you, then go with the fenix or epix models. The navigation on this watch can be useful as it includes the trackback feature where it’ll guide you back on the path you came in on, line-of-sight tracking (keeps you on path if you have to go like down in a valley or around an obstacle where you might lose sense of direction), and you can even pre-load courses to follow later. However, it’s a pretty bare-bones navigation map. It has a pointer for your watch and a line showing the path and that’s about it. The epix and fenix watches have nicer displays, color, touchscreen, and more detailed maps which help a lot with navigation but you also sacrifice a significant amount of battery life for those features. And they’re double the price of this one. All in all, I think this is the perfect middle point for a watch. It has all the features from the top of the line ones that I need, along with crazy battery life and a decent price. If you don’t need detailed navigation but want great gps and activity tracking at half the cost of some of those other watches, this is a great option. Read more