Welcome to the latest video from ourselves. What were going to do is look at the garmin instinct watch, but very much as a smart watch as you may or may not know. A couple of weeks weeks ago i went and did a 25 mile walk with this gps using a gps watch to navigate me. So i went to a nice walk in northumberland, around kilda reservoir, and i looked at the outdoor navigation experience. A watch like this. The garmin instinct, or it was this watch, gives you and at the end of that video i said, im going to wear it for two weeks, just as a smart watch and then give you my overall view on using it as a smart watch and thats. What ive been doing for the last couple of weeks now before i start this bit of a review im going to say normally on my wrist, i have a garmin phoenix gps watch on my wrist, so normally im a phoenix wearer, but the last couple of weeks After my walk, ive been wearing this garment instinct watch. So a lot of the time when i refer to the plus points and negative points about it, i will have it be, referring as add to my garmin. Phoenix was because, to be honest, thats the experience im used to is that is that an unfair comparison it more than likely is because the garmin mic garmin phoenix, is actually three times the price of this garmin instinct.
So this is a third of the price of my garmin phoenix watch so really thats quite an unfair comparison. I need to get that out before i start so again it may be a little bit unfair, but again i dont know really what else i can compare it to so. First of all, the battery life on this gps watch is truly stunning. In the two weeks ive been using it, which include my 25 mile walking initially another two walks, one was just three hours and one was just six hours, um ive just charged it twice. I charge it right at the beginning and then i charge it halfway through my period so using it both for with the gps on when im, navigating and also as my smart watch to get that kind of battery life is second to none. So, im really pleased about that. The look and feel of the watch is really very, very nice, so its very lightweight 52 grams and its made from polymer its clean, looking and even on our gps training course were going to be out a lot. A lot of people have been commenting about it. They, like the look of it, they like the feel at it. I was actually in the lake district last weekend and actually somebody on the course actually went after the course and bought one of these gps watches. For myself, she liked the look of it. She liked the the the style that it was again its a lot smaller, its a lot more compact than what we see on the garmin phoenix, so its not quite as deep um, so its really um really nice.
So if youve got a slightly smaller wrist as i do, it looks very nice on the wrist so again again a lot of people. A lot of my friends know know what i do look whats on my wrist and actually a lot of them commented who really like this garmin instinct watch. So then lets get down to the nitty gritty of what i dont like on the garmin instinct watch. Theres only one thing that i didnt like on it, and that was a smart notification. So i dont even know this connects to your mobile phone via the connect app and you get your smart notifications, which means that when you get notification on your smart on your on your watch, you have to get a notification on the on the gps watch. So again, heres some notifications here these are backlogger notifications, so this gentleman has sent me a text message, its a sale on the website and something as well. So these are the notifications that will have appeared on my watch now on a garmin fenix watch. What happens is these flash up and this these flash up as well, so a notification flash flashes up because the screen is so small? The problem is you cant read that notification. So, in our case, if its bbc news app flashing up with some news headlines, it says bbc news and it doesnt tell you underneath what the bbc news headlines is in this case, if its a sale on our website, it flashes up the sales, but i dont Know i cant see what value that sale is.
I cant see whats being sold again. If patrick here has sent me a message, i cant see what that message is so therefore i can either do as ive done here. I can then go on to this menu. Im not going to do it and go into, but i can press this menu and go into it and look more in depth, but actually what i found i did was pick up my smartphone, so my smartphone was next to me. I pick up my smartphone and look where that notification was which for me kind of defeated the object of having a smart watch, because therefore it i couldnt see on initially what that notification was, and therefore i kept going onto my mobile phone now. The thing was some smart notifications, i care about and im in style and other ones i want. So i end up checking my mobile phone a lot more because it wasnt giving me as much information as i potentially want on that smart notification. So that was the only downside for this. What i found was it wasnt giving me enough information on that notification when it came on. So what did i really like about this gps unit? As ive already said, the battery life, the battery life, the look and the feel of the watch was second to none. The screen clarity, i think superior with this monochrome screen. Its really quite pin pinpoint its really very accurate and it looks absolutely stunning both indoors and outdoors.
I think it actually looks better when you use it as a smart watch. The screen quality is actually better than the phoenix was because youve got this really nice clarity. I also like, where were on the homepage. I love the home page layout now i know with the phoenix watch we can download different screens and we can do something similar, but by default, what a lovely home screen weve got. Weve got the time. Weve got the steps down the bottom got our battery life got the date and the heart rate again, because its off my wrist, its not the heart rate. If people dont know youve got a little heart rate monitor here its actually the charging port as well. On the back so again on that home page really, nice really clear gives me everything that i want without any any hassle, so really nice, clear screen the other thing as well. I love the accuracy of this. It utilizes the european galileo weve got great accuracy. Last weekend and youve seen the video note, we did a video of looking at the most accurate outdoor gps unit and also gps watch. I actually initially put this down at the bottom for accuracy. But again, if you watch that video youll see this performed very very well, it was kind of there with the phoenix watch. So a budget gps watch performed very, very well on the accuracy and thats because it utilizes the galileo.
So i was very impressed by the performance it gives us the other thing as well, which is negative and positive as well. Is i like how you can add the apps extra screen so again, when i start this off a couple of weeks ago? Things, like my heart rate, my my steps. I went on this, which is my day and i was looking. Alright ive done six flights. Ive done 3630. at first. I was a bit frustrated because ive done 3638. What is my target for the day? What is garmin give me a target. Initially i jumped onto the connect app and it would tell me straight away like i thought there must be something i can add to this. So i went into the setup its added a screen and now ive got a screen on there on the on here, which gives me my steps so theres my 3638 and theres my target for the day. Now i had to go into setup and add it really. Nice flexibility, but when youre in there theres lots of different pages that you can add a lot of press and default screens, which is brilliant but again, i need to know what i was looking for. So again: theres theres, something its like any gum, thats. So interchangeable. You need to kind of have a basic understanding of what youre looking for and then you can get there and find it so again, its not doesnt work straight out of the box, its a little bit confusing.
But once you know what you want, you can add those apps theres lots of things that you can do so again. Once you know what you want, you just need to add those into it and again just going through the screens. Really nice and simple my day. Theres my notifications, um my events, thats kind of gone into my pairing with my diary and theres the weather, which again gets the weather off my my mobile phone and again things like whatever page youre on. If you want to know more just press on there and theres my weather hour about hours so again, its really nice um, easy way to kind of get out of uh, get to navigate around um again the watch and then thats about a sunrise sunset. Okay, back to my my main page, so on any page, you can go into it more and get a little bit more, but the nice thing is, it does say around the edge what each of those paint what buttons are going to do. So if you are a little bit forgetful like myself, you can kind of look and go. Okay, abc menu makes sense, and you can see what each of them do and then you can see the up and down um, etc on the inside. So its really nice and easy to use so finally, the big question is: would i buy one? The answer is yes, i would. What im actually going to do is im not going to put my phoenix back on my wrist im going to continue to use this watch.
I really like it. I love the flexibility it gives me. I love the battery life. I love the clarity of the screen and now ive made a little bit more bespoke, giving me the information im wanting specifically step start and my targets, and this kind of thing now i realize i can add that extra flexibility im going to keep this on my Wrist and im going to wear it for another few, two or three weeks, because i really like the flexibility. I like the image it gives. A lot of friends have commented or last nights watch know some people dont want that largest larger watch on your wrist. I really like the functionality of it now. The navigation experience, i think, is where it falls down a little bit again. If you watch the video when i went for a walk, my map page is blank. I think the navigation experience on the phoenix is superior, but its three times more expensive, but i think just as a smart watch every day and you occasionally would use it to navigate with or to measure where youre going. I dont think you can beat this watch. Theres also a solar version of the watch, so this is the the basic one theres, also a solar version, which has black around the edge, which is the solar panels a little bit behind it, which improves it doesnt make it zero charge. You still need to charge it, but again with such good battery life.
Its not not one. Nothing to complain about so hopefully found this useful again. Have a look back at the video where i go for a walk with this gps uh watch and the the navigation experience it gives me.2WmiUALIHvI
