Garmin - Instinct Solar Smartwatch 45mm Fiber-Reinforced Polymer - Graphite

Good watch does everything I need and more. Love the battery life and solar charging. The only thing I’ve found to be lacking is connectivity to iPhone regarding music controls. It will work but not always this could be user error but everything else works great.

I’ve had all sorts of Fitbit products since December 2014 from the simple clip on pedometer (Zip and One) to the ionic watch (died just out of warranty) and Charge 4. I did not want to go to the Apple Watch as I preferred the in depth weekly status reports of Fitbit and did not want to answer phone and read text messages on a watch. I also liked my Cassio GShock Atomic Solar because I never had to charge or change batteries, but it did not do any fitness tracking, I did some research on fitness tracking watches in terms of long battery life. I was amazed when I found out about this watch. It may not be the best looking watch out there, but it does the job. I have it set up with a watch face looking a lot like my Cassio except that it also shows heart rate and steps. The Garmin Connect app provides excellent reports of steps, heart rate, sleeping, exercise summaries, stress SPO2, body battery, etc. The weekly and monthly reports are even better than Fitbit reports. I retired my Fitbit Charge, which was reporting unrealistic flights of stairs and went back to the old Fitbit One clip on pedometer just to keep up my basic tracking (over 14000 miles since Christmas 2014), but not he Garmin is my new go to tracker. Technically, this watch with all tracking turned off could go almost forever with solar charging, but then it would be an overpriced Cassio GShock. I don’t mind occasionally charging the watch with USB charger cord. Still beats charging a watch every couple days. One hang up I have is that I cannot customize swimming pool lap length to anything under 15 yards. The average backyard pool is not that big. I wish Garmin would allow users to customize pool length to 28, 32, or 36 feet. I tried doing a backyard pool swim and my 100 plus laps (approximately 3/4 mile ended up registering as about 7 1/2miles. It seems like that could be tweaked with a software update. When I track a walk on the Garmin, the miles are a lot more accurate than when I was tracking with Fitbit Charge 4. Of course, that would be expected since Garmin has been in the GPS navigation systems for years. The Garmin also feeds these tracked activities into my Runkeeper app.

After two years I still love this watch. It is a great "watch" that also lets me receive notifications. It does many of the other fitness tracker type things as well. I has physical buttons (not touch screen) so you can use it when you've got gloves on or doing something physical where the sweat on your hands/fingers make operating touchscreens difficult. It also has a basic LCD type display so the battery lasts A LONG TIME. I get 10-14 days with everything on except for SpO2 running -- on a single charge - which was the major benefit for me --- I don't want to have to charge by watch nightly. If you bring it down to "battery saver mode" (so kinda just a normal watch mode) - as someone who works outdoors, the watch will basically work indefinitely because of its solar panel. So in general their markets is 100% accurate after over 2 years of testing... If you turn on SpO2 I think I get maybe 4-7 days of battery life... I just don't use that feature much... The only complaint that I have with this watch -- which is known by Garmin and they keep trying to fix it with this series of watches -- is the barometric sensor... It is both in a bad location and I think has some software issues. As a result you'll get inaccurate "flights climbed" statistics (I'll get a notice saying I've gone up 10 flights of stairs today, when I know my elevation change has been maybe 3 flights. This also results in an inaccurate altitude (but always within say 100 feet plus or minus -- and for my work that is 'close enough')... Also also incorrect "storm alert" because it thinks the barometric pressure has dropped a lot when it really hasn't.... If very accurate altitude or flights climbed is important to you - be sure to look into the many reviews, articles, and even documentation on their offical website for details... But since those specific things don't matter to me, its a non-issue and likely is for many others...