Garmin Instinct Solar first look review: Rugged outdoor GPS sports watch powered by the sun

For quite a few several years I have been employing Garmin wearables to observe my operating, biking, climbing, and other out of doors functions, but I have never tried out one of the Intuition types. That transformed a few of weeks ago when Garmin sent out the new Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic, with beta computer software, for analysis.

Even though my key sort of workout is operating, I also trip my bike, hike, get on the elliptical, and engage in other sports activities. In addition, I appreciate fly fishing on the rivers of Washington State. In the previous, my Garmin solution use involved Forerunner, Fenix, and Edge devices, so I was curious about the Intuition as it took a little bit of a unique approach in regards to the enjoy layout and concentration.

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Right after much more than a 7 days with the Intuition Photo voltaic, I truthfully may well be a convert to the Intuition line for many good reasons. These include:

• Very long battery lifetime: Right after several years of employing wearables, I have understood that very long battery lifetime guarantees a gadget stays mounted on my wrist for the very long term. One or two-working day battery lifetime on a wearable is now unacceptable for my requires. The Intuition Photo voltaic features battery lifetime in GPS monitoring manner goes up to much more than 50 days, even presenting limitless in Battery Saver manner with solar exposure.
• Rugged layout: 100-meter drinking water resistance and MIL-STD-810G shock rankings ensure the Intuition is created to consider on just about anything. It has a fiber-reinforced polymer scenario and a scratch-resistant display that is set down from the entrance deal with.
• Exceptional out of doors functions: In addition to a plethora of usual functions like operating, biking, climbing, kayaking, yoga, and quite a few much more the Garmin Intuition supports fishing, tactical, boating, searching, area calculation, and much more out of doors-targeted adventures. The expedition manner supports a multi-working day activity with lowered want to charge with observe factors recorded after an hour by default.
• Practical display layout: A significant rationale the Garmin Intuition has a wonderful battery lifetime is the monochrome display. I have occur to love the prime proper circle, two-window layout, that presents vital facts at a glance. For example, though fishing it confirmed my fish rely, in coronary heart level manner, it demonstrates your latest coronary heart level, and in compass manner, it demonstrates the route in angles.
• Realistic price tag: The Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic begins at $399.99. Looking at all that this GPS sports activities enjoy has to provide, that is a truthful price tag.

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Specs

• Display screen: 23mm diameter 128 x 128 pixels resolution monochrome, daylight-noticeable
• Enjoy resources: Fiber-reinforced polymer with silicone band
• H2o resistance: ten ATM (100 meters)
• Bands: Supports Quickfit 22mm bands.
• Connectivity and sensors: Bluetooth, ANT+, GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO, Garmin Elevate optical HR, pulse Ox, barometric altimeter, three-axis compass, accelerometer, thermometer
• Battery: Rated for thirty several hours in GPS teaching manner or 38 several hours when employing solar charging. 24 days in smartwatch manner, and fifty four days with sufficient solar exposure. In Battery Saver manner with sufficient solar exposure, Garmin states the Intuition can realize limitless battery lifetime.
• Dimensions: 45 x 45 x fifteen.3 mm and 53 grams

Components

The Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic is not a slender and modern GPS sports activities enjoy, as it is targeted on giving a rugged gadget that excels in a variety of environmental circumstances for days and weeks. I’m personally a enthusiast of big watches and locate that the Intuition Photo voltaic will work perfectly on my wrist.

To be straightforward, I hardly seen that the Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic doesn’t have a color display. I have never identified color shows to be an vital element of a GPS sports activities enjoy. I just want a display that is quick to examine outside with a backlight available when wanted and the Intuition Photo voltaic presents specifically that.

The portion of the display that has swayed me in the direction of favoring the Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic is the smaller circle “2nd” display. I locate this highlighted area to be useful for giving important facts and generating it distinct what a one push of the GPS button will provide.

There are five buttons on the Intuition Photo voltaic, just like most Garmin GPS sports activities watches. The prime-still left button toggles the backlight with a push and keep launching the controls display. The middle still left button moves up though the bottom still left moves down. A push and keep of the middle still left button requires you into the a variety of configurations. You can also customize the hotkeys in the configurations to make the gadget optimized for your usage.

The prime proper button, GPS, will consider you to your preferred activites with a further push launching that activity. Even though scrolling by means of widgets you can also push this button to choose that widget and see much more detailed info. The bottom proper button, Set, serves mostly as the back button. Once more, this can also be customized with the scorching keys setting.

A Garmin Elevate coronary heart level keep track of is centered on the back. The traditional 4-pin Garmin connector is also identified on the back for charging the enjoy.

A silicone enjoy band, matching the color of the enjoy, is furnished. Two loops are existing on the bitter conclude of the band to maintain it securely on your wrist. Like the Garmin Intuition, Garmin’s 22mm Quickfit bands are also supported with this enjoy.

There are 4 versions of the Intuition Photo voltaic, with a variety of color solutions. These include:

• Intuition Photo voltaic: Graphite, Tidal Blue, Orchid, Sunburst, Flame Purple
• Intuition Photo voltaic – Camo: Graphite Camo and Lichen Camo
• Intuition Photo voltaic – Tactical Version: Black and Moss
• Intuition Photo voltaic – Surf Version: Pipeline and Cloudbreak

Enjoy computer software

To navigate the gadget, you push the five buttons. Transferring up and down from the enjoy deal with will scroll you by means of a variety of widgets available (solar depth, coronary heart level, My Day, notifications, temperature, pressure, ABC, previous operate, Human body Battery, and much more). The widgets are chosen in the configurations proper on the enjoy.

You can use the Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic enjoy to observe operating, biking, elliptical, open up drinking water or pool swimming, fishing, searching, MTB, snowboarding, snowboarding, yoga, rowing, and quite a few much more targeted exercises. The one sport missing that I would have favored to have observed is golf.

There are a huge number of configurations and customization solutions available for every single sort of activity. For example, in the operating application, you can customize up to 4 info screens in a structure from one to 4 fields with timer, length, tempo, pace, coronary heart level, cadence, temperature, elevation, compass, navigation, and other fields. I propose you invest some quality time customizing anything specifically how you want it and then be completely ready to tweak matters as you accomplish your activity and locate you want to perspective your info in different ways.

In addition to custom made info fields for every single activity, you can regulate alerts, vehicle-pause, laps, vehicle-scroll, and considerably much more. The experience can be fast and basic employing the defaults or as particular as you motivation with a little bit of time put in customizing the enjoy info fields and configurations.

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To get started on a operate, lift up your arm, push the upper proper button, choose Run, and then push the button yet again immediately after GPS is connected. Push the button yet again to pause. If you want to go on, push the button yet again.

There are many one of a kind functions you can observe with the Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic, and I had a wonderful time employing the Fish selection. Right after launching this activity, you choose to start out fishing and the enjoy will observe your GPS spot. You can manually mark places, set fishing timers, navigate to places, and much more. Because I was fly fishing on a smaller river though wading into the river, I started the working day, and then as I caught every single fish I pressed the GPS button two times to log the catch. Right after the working day was accomplished, I was equipped to see specifically the place every single fish was caught on a map. That specific working day I landed 19 rainbow trout so comprehensively enjoyed employing the Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic to observe the working day. I can not wait around to go fly fishing yet again and acquire a history of my catches to plan future visits.

Numerous other functions are supported, including navigation, and I plan to invest quite a few much more several hours exploring all of the abilities of the enjoy.

Smartphone computer software and web-site

Collecting the info is essential, but employing that info for monitoring tendencies, bettering functionality, challenging pals, and figuring out difficulty spots is also incredibly essential. Garmin offers the Garmin Hook up application for iOS and Android.

When you initial launch the smartphone application, you will see the My Day monitor that demonstrates your most recent training, coronary heart level, pressure stage, entire body battery, hydration, ways, flooring, slumber, energy in/out, pounds, yesterday’s stats, stats for previous 7 days, and much more. Solutions are available to pick out what is exhibited and in what buy.

Other tabs include problems, calendar, news feed, and notifications. Tapping on the gadget by itself gives you solutions for tunes, Garmin Shell out, text responses (Android only), functions, visual appeal, seems & alerts, activity monitoring, and considerably much more.

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On an Android smartphone, you can also fantastic-tune your good notifications by choosing the particular applications that will be permitted to send out notifications to your Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic. On iOS, you get no matter what notifications you have enabled in the iOS configurations so I personally favor the Android smartphone experience.

The Garmin Hook up web-site experience is incredibly identical to what you see in the smartphone software, with even much more ability to crank out stories, import or export info, set up connections to other apps (this sort of as Strava, RunKeeper, and MyFitnessPal), and much more. Very similar to the snapshots interface on the mobile phone, you have a dashboard on Garmin Hook up that you can customize.

I designed dashboard tabs for daily activity, operating, biking, and climbing since those are my key functions. Now with the Intuition, I am also doing work on a fishing dashboard to goal my future fly fishing outings. You can then customize the perspective that seems in your dashboard or pick out to bounce to a entire page perspective of the chosen info.

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Day by day usage experiences

When compared to the other Garmin wearables I have examined in excess of the previous few of several years, the Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic does not assist onboard tunes, Garmin Shell out, or Hook up IQ applications, enjoy faces, or info fields. For my usage, this doesn’t really subject, as I use my mobile phone for tunes and Garmin Shell out even now doesn’t assist my financial institution. Having said that, these may well be limits for other folks so be aware of what is missing on the Intuition Photo voltaic.

The new Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic supports some of the most current Garmin functions that I locate beneficial to knowing my health and perfectly-getting. These functions include Human body Battery, pressure monitoring, slumber checking with REM details, smartphone notifications with text response from an Android mobile phone, and much more.

A wearable I almost never have to think of charging that captures all of my daily activity, including slumber, and targeted GPS situations is refreshing and important to remaining on my wrist. When that wearable also supports my niche functions, this sort of as fly fishing, it is really tricky to beat. The Garmin Intuition Photo voltaic also can stay topped off with the sunlight, generating this one of the finest wearables for adventurists and athletes targeted on out of doors functions.