That was three weeks of multiple GPS-tracked activities per day, including running, swimming, hiking, snorkeling, paddle boarding, and boogie boarding. It now comes in solar- and non-solar-powered versions; different specific editions, including a tactical version with, er, “stealth mode”; and some of the craziest colors in the sports watch market. less than when Mat tested it last year), and it offers plenty of sport-specific features – Touchless Transition is particularly useful for triathletes – but the Instinct 2 will cover you for a lot more day-to-day wellbeing monitoring as well as other activities.

Instinct 2S Solar | road.cc Review: Garmin Instinct 2S Solar | road.cc

If you don't have a route and just need to get to a location but you do have the coordinates, you can enter those into the watch and then follow the arrow which will be routing you directly to get to the location. The watch remained comfortable throughout, and sat comfortable against our skin as the temperature rose – something recorded by the watch’s built-in thermometer. The original Garmin Instinct was a brilliant sports watch, but its chunky, utilitarian design meant it wasn’t one we were inclined to wear it as a regular timepiece. Sure, you can upload routes, but with limited detail visible on-screen, you might have a hard time following them. Plus, in the power manager, Garmin gives you the ability to adjust the settings to extend the battery life further.

For whatever reason, the Instinct 2 non-Solar actually outperformed the Solar – this despite the Solar unit getting plenty of sun according to it (all of the solar pictures in this post were actually taken immediately following this ride).

Garmin Instinct® 2S Solar | Smaller-Sized Rugged GPS Smartwatch

The solar charging capability is also impressive, but there's no doubt that it's a lot of money to be spending without getting proper maps. The screen’s small sub-window provides a useful directional arrow to help you get your bearing, but the lack of information on-screen means you’ll have to really pay attention to make sure you’re going the right way. I wore a Shark digital watch (complete with velcro band) as a kid, and the 2S Solar’s buttons are a lot more intuitive than the scaled-back buttons on other smartwatches.

You can also take your pick from standard or solar models, the latter of which uses Garmin’s Power Glass to gather energy from the sun and extend battery life.

Instinct 2 vs 2S: Which one is right for you? Garmin Instinct 2 vs 2S: Which one is right for you?

You've got 'Straight Line' which is a direct route back to the start, and TracBack which takes you back to your starting point by retracing your route. When I first tested a solar-powered Garmin several years ago, the solar function extended the battery life by a few days. Oh, also note that *anytime* I say “Instinct 2”, I’m talking about the entire Instinct 2 series product line, so the Instinct 2, Instinct 2S, and the solar variants of both. Keep your experiences going with up to 51 days of battery life in smartwatch mode with solar charging. Essentially these are categories with the Solar editions where if you spend 3 hours per day outside in 50K lux conditions (sunny, but not crazy sunny), you’ll get forever battery life.First up is on default watch faces, where it’ll show as a little timeline graph on the upper left side. Given there’s no cellular onboard the Instinct series, you’ll need to have your phone handy and within Bluetooth range. The Instinct 2’s monochrome memory-in-pixel (MIP) display is a sensible choice – clearly visible in all lighting conditions and modest in its power consumption – but it does have one significant drawback, and that’s navigation. The Instinct 2 will also track yourrespiration rate, which is useful during workouts and at night, when it can be a handy indicator of how deeply you're sleeping. The Garmin Instinct 2S is a hardy multisport GPS smartwatch that has an amazing range of activity-specific profiles.

Instinct 2 review | TechRadar Garmin Instinct 2 review | TechRadar

Meaning, the point of doing a Health Snapshot is having control over when these values are gathered (to minimize outside factor variations), such as always doing them 10 minutes after waking up. Because Garmin Pay is password protected—you enter a quick four digit code—it probably took the same amount of time. The watch face has a monochrome memory-in-pixel display and inside this, there is a little circular block displaying relevant information as you maneuver around the watch menu. Santander is really the only one in the list that stands out as being a common bank, so I don't really see the feature being useful for many right now.That said, it’s nice to have a backup payment system if I forget my wallet at home or want to grab coffee when my wallet’s zipped into my shirt and buried under three layers of camo. With all of these specific profiles, you can really customise the watch so you have the metrics you need on each of the data pages. Alternatively, if you take your training even more seriously and aren’t sold on the Instinct 2S – because of its lack of detail in mapping functions – then take a look at the Garmin Fenix 7 (pictured above).