One of the first things you notice about a watch is how it feels on your wrist. The Instinct’s new silicone band has just enough stretch to aid in both comfort and keeping the watch in place while performing strenuous activities like running, hiking, swimming, or weightlifting. Weighing in at 52 grams, it’s significantly lighter than the 82-gram Fenix 3 it replaced. The activity buttons are also flatter and more ergonomically placed on the Instinct series watches; the round, protruding buttons on the Fenix 3 would often inadvertently depress, starting an activity at inopportune times. If you don’t have time to browse through historic stats, that’s not an issue – the app will provide you with occasional ‘insights’ based on your lifestyle and workouts. For example, if you tend to take fewer steps on a Thursday, the app will nudge you to get outside and take a stroll before the day is out. The solar models are a little more expensive, but the photovoltaic material doesn’t have any effect on the look of the display, so it’s well worth considering the extra investment to avoid frequent charging.

There’s no microphone, so you can’t take calls or use your phone’s voice assistant from your wrist as you can with the Garmin Venu 2 Plus, but if you own an Android phone then you can automatically reject calls with a text message. Like many of the watch’s more advanced features, that’s easy to set up and customize in the Garmin Connect app. The experience of using these features is good on the whole, but can be compromised by the small nature of the screen. When you’re following a route, it’s just a simple line to your destination, with room to show off distance left to reach a destination. It also makes use of that secondary screen to clearly point you in the right direction. It would definitely be nicer to have a bigger screen at play here, but it makes good use of that smaller space to still make it a good navigating experience.The Camo edition doesn’t add any extra functions or apps, but has a camouflage patterned band and case.

This low weight has to do with the materials the Garmin is made of: 100% fiber enhanced polymers. Or in non-polite consumer language, plastic. This ‘plastic’ is not only light but also very strong and it feels nice – warm – to the skin. The 22 mm wide wristband is made of silicon with a fixture from metal. The glass of the watch face is made from Power Glass which is in fact Corning Gorilla Glass. Charging the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical Part 1 Although the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical with its green color might look like an 100% military outdoor watch, this is not the case. The whole Instinct family has a sports and training heart. It’s just a matter of pushing the right buttons. Pressing the GPS button brings me into the screen where I choose the activity that I prefer. In my case it is mostly running and biking but there are many to choose from. Pressing the GPS button again starts the activity. Like most sports watches the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical logs everything from distance to time to laps and of course heart rate. Pressing the GPS button brings me into the screen where I choose the activity that I prefer. Heart rate

In the first place I noticed that the ideal circumstances for the Garmin to use the solar panel are pretty rare in my outdoor life. The watch is most of the time on my wrist and it is moving everywhere. Seldom it is facing the sun in a way that the sunlight hits the solar panel to start charging efficiently. The Garmin Instinct 2 isn’t a single watch, but an entire series. First of all, there are now two case sizes to consider: the standard 45mm, and a new 40mm diameter model. The watch we tested here was the 40mm Garmin Instinct 2S, and although 5mm shaved off the case size might not sound like much, it makes the watch much more comfortable and practical for smaller wrists. When using the altimeter there are a few very important basics that you should know about how air and air pressure sensors work. The pressure sensor in a watch does not know whether a pressure change is the result of a weather change or a change in height. Imagine: You have your watch in the altimeter position and you spend the night in a mountain hut at an altitude of 2500 meters. While you are sleeping a low-pressure weather front is approaching. The pressure sensor registers this and the watch translates this as an increase in height. Without having moved a single meter, you wake up at 3000 meters. You will therefore have to keep a close eye on the weather when you are using the watch as an altimeter or as a barometer. On a bright clear day in late autumn and early spring I measured about 52000 lux with the lux meter and the watch facing the sun directly. These are ideal circumstances.

All Instinct watches have a similar case design, but as mentioned above, the Instinct 2 also has a more compact 40mm variant (the Instinct 2S). All watches are controlled using a set of five physical buttons around the edge of the case, which can be easily operated with wet hands or while wearing gloves. There's no touchscreen.

Instinct Series

The second one is that the Instinct is able to display the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid system and the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) at the same time. The third one is the Stealth mode that switches the storage and sharing of gps data off and turns the watches function to offline so no data is being transmitted. For me not being in military circumstances ever the tactical functies are not that useful but I can imagine that for people who are in tactical situations this can be key. Stealth mode turns the watches function to offline so no data is being transmitted. Charging the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical Part 2 At a launch presentation for the Instinct 2, Garmin said that unlimited battery life is a realistic possibility for someone like a lifeguard who works outdoors. Smartwatch and fitness features Smartwatch features

Accuracy-wise, step counts were a few hundred steps out from a Fitbit Sense. When you get into bed with it, you’re getting a breakdown of sleep stages though like a lot of Garmin watches, accuracy generally was a little off on recognizing sleep duration periods. Let me start with a bold remark: I have never been a great fan of Garmin outdoor watches. And… Garmin is not to blame; I am a small guy with small wrists and the Garmins that I tried in the past were just too big for me. I liked their function, for sure. With the Garmin Instinct series the US-based brand totally changed the ballgame for me. About half a year ago I gave Garmin a call and asked if I could do a review on one of the Garmin Instinct models. First they sent me the Garmin Instinct Tactical. Because of the release of the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical I decided to go for that solar powered model. Garmin was so friendly to exchange the watches and I continued testing. The Garmin Instinct Solar is light and not too big so it fits smaller wrist super. Size and weight The original Garmin Instinct has a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels. The 45mm Instinct 2 has a resolution of 176 x 176mm, and the 40mm Instinct 2S has a resolution of 156 x 156 pixels. Battery lifeBottom Left: ABC/scroll (ABC) button. Press to scroll DOWN through the widget loop and menus. Press and hold to view Altimeter, Barometer and Compass. So, the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical is a sports watch that measures and registers what we generally want. That is good. But what about its outdoor capabilities? Should be good since it is the TACTICAL version. GPS Garmin does not provide data on what the relation is between the intensity of the sun and the charging time but they do provide data on the effect of the sun onto the battery time. In all cases they calculate for how long the watch will keep on going when it is exposed to 50.000 lux for 3 hours a day. The data Garmin provides on the Garmin Instinct Solar tactical Outdoor Watch It is not my ambition to write a full manual about the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical but let me talk you through the functions of the buttons. This is quite basic and important for the rest of the review. As mentioned above, the main reason why I wanted to review the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical is because of the fact that it is able to be charged by the sun. The watch face is a small solar panel. Or in fact two layers of solar panels. The light gray area is a 100% solar panel that converts for 100% the sunlight into energy that is stored in the battery. The darker area is a 10% solar panel that is transparent for 90% because it sits on top of the display that displays all the numbers and symbols. As soon as sun rays hit the solar panel the watch starts charging. In the top left side of the screen a little circle – the Solar Intensity panel – shows the amount of sun that hits the Garmin. It is also possible to switch to a dedicated screen that shows how much light has been hitting the Garmin in the past hours. The solar intensity screen shows when and how much has been charged.