You guys can decide for yourself starting off with whats good about the instinct 2. First up, the form factor. It comes in two different sizes, a larger one, with 45 millimeter bezels and then a smaller one with 40 millimeter bezels and the weight of those two watches is really light. The small one only weighs 43 grams, whereas the larger one weighs 53 grams. The weight is light enough that you can wear this watch all day and its going to be comfortable on the wrist overall theres 19 different versions of the instinct too. You have the two different sizes, but then it also breaks out by whether the watch has solar capabilities or not. I have here the solar version. What that does is it takes the power of the sun and then charges the watch well get into how the solar feature affects battery life a little bit later. The bands are removable, you just need a paper clip or something narrow to push the pins out, and i like that option, because you can replace the bands with a better color. I find the colors of the solar version of the instinct to be a little bit. Bland, so i threw on these yellow bands in order to spice it up in order to navigate the watch. You have five buttons, two on one side and then three on the other side for an outdoor oriented watch like the instinct 2. I like buttons way better than touch screen watches some watches have both buttons and touchscreen, but sometimes i find the touch screen if youre sweating or its wet just doesnt work very well.
One of the biggest benefits with the instinct 2 and the instinct line in general is how rugged they are. I put the instinct 1 and now the instant 2 through a whole lot of abuse, more abuse than i put any other watch through in my life and its still going strong. If youre, someone who crashes their way through forests or scratches their way up rock walls or just really abuses your gear, then the instinct 2 is going to be a watch to take a look at. I alluded to battery life a little bit earlier, but battery life is another huge benefit with the insync too, if youre using the solar capabilities of the watch and are in smart watch mode, then you get unlimited battery life. That means you dont need to charge it at all the way the solar works for this watch is that you have solar panels over the entire face of the watch, but you have ones that are 100 efficient around the outside, so thats, where you dont have any Screen youre not going to see any information in that area and then for the other part of the watch. Where you do see information. The solar cells are 10 efficient. The numbers that garmin advertises for battery life based on solar capabilities, assumes that youre out and using the watch in full sunshine for about three hours a day. So if youre out using the watch in direct sunlight for more than three hours a day, then youre gon na get a whole much more battery life out of the solar capabilities of the smartwatch.
If you get the non solar version of the instinct 2 or just not using it outside very often, then youll get about four weeks of battery life, if youre doing an activity and using gps with the watch, the battery life goes down a whole lot. You get about 40 plus hours of battery life in gps mode. For me, i get about three weeks of battery life with the instinct too and thats with running hiking, going to the gym about five to six times a week. The battery life of the instinct ii is awesome. Not only is it super convenient to barely have to charge the watch at all when at home, but i love that i can go down a week, long trip and track that trip using gps and be able to get through the entire trip without having to charge The watch – the instinct 2 has a whole bunch of features including being able to customize the watch face through the garmin connect iq app. You also have incident detection. So if you turn that off and then you fall, it will detect that and send for help. You also have garmin pay with the watch, so using nfc. You can pay for things at the store that only works with the solar edition and theres very few banks outside the u.s that have garmin pay enabled you can also connect the watch to your phone and get notifications directly through your watch.
A lot of these features. I dont really use, like i said: garmin pay is not really available at a lot of banks outside the us and then i always have notifications turned off because i just dont want my watch buzzing all the time. Every time i get a text message a feature. I do use is that from the home screen, you can scroll through different widgets that give you information like weather, sunrise and sunset elevation and compass information, as well as your training, load and performance. You can get the superficial information really quickly at a glance as you scroll through. You can also click into each one of those widgets and get really detailed information like a multi day forecast for weather, the insync 2 is packed full of sensors. You have a barometer, a compass, heart rate, gps, oxygen, sensors, everything you need for a smart watch. The heart rate monitor on the back of the watch that touches your wrist is updated with the instinct too, and the heart rate sensor on the instinct tracks quite well. Heres a graph showing my heart rate, with the instinct too, compared to the instinct one. The chest drop, the instinct two stays with the chest: strap almost beat per beat, which is awesome because chest straps are known to be super accurate for heart rate, monitoring the gps chip thats in the insync 2 is the same one thats in the instinct one. So all of the great performance i saw in the instinct one has translated into really good performance with the instinct too, as well.
In any modern day, watch like sun toes, watches, garments, watches apple watches, youre, going to get really good gps performance unless youre in crazy tree cover or have a lot of high rises around like youre. If youre in a downtown big city that accurate gps is awesome because youre going to get great distance and pacing information and then have a really accurate breadcrumb on the instinct too, that you can navigate by with the insync 2, you basically have all the sensors. You need in order to accurately track plan and pace your different adventures, whether thats hiking running biking or swimming. The instinct 2 also has a lot of health features like vo2, max sleep tracking respiration and then training load effect and recovery time. Its a great watch to use as a fitness watch for tracking steps running and then your overall fitness planning its really hard to explain how many benefits there are with using a smart watch like the instinct 2 when doing an outdoor activity, but ive been using smart Watches for years now, while ive been hiking backpacking as well as doing other activities, and especially with hiking and backpacking, the smartwatches have been invaluable for me out on the trail last good thing before we get into some of the cons with this watch is the price It costs 350 for the non solar version and then 450 for the solar version, which is a half or a third of the price of some of the other, really high end smart watches from garmin getting into whats bad about the instinct too.
The first thing is mapping: while you can load a route onto the watch using the explorer app, that route is just going to be a breadcrumb on the watch. You dont get any features like contours lakes, rivers, trail names or other trails on here. Not having these mapping features really becomes an issue if youre, navigating off trail or on a trail that is unmarked with a whole bunch of different forks in the road. The next bad thing, which may not be a bad thing for everyone, is that theres no on device music with the instinct too, and this is a feature that i find im using all the time im listening to podcasts and music, while im at the gym or Going for a run, another bad thing that may not affect everyone is that if you are using this at the gym, theres no auto set mode, and i found that to be a super useful feature on the phoenix line of watches. I can do a set at the gym and then it automatically counts how many reps ive done and then goes into rest mode. Once i finish the set, i find it a very useful and good way for me to track what my rest time is between sets. So im not taking too little rest or too much rest. The colors may not be for everyone as well, because theres so many different watches out there. You only get about three different colors for each of the different versions.
So for the instinct solar here, theres three colors and theyre black gray and then dark blue. I like the more brightly colored instincts like the yellow ones or the lime green, and i really wish i could have gotten a bright orange one so, depending on which version of the instinct 2 you want, you might not be able to get the color that you Would like best youll, have to decide for yourself if missing a few features like music and mapping are worth paying less than half the price of garmins, fully featured watches like the phoenix and epics line. Go check out this video right up here.tjJrmz2Prcc
