Garmin - Instinct

Must be a crap phone battery. My iPhone easily does 8 miles. But it sort of depends on how you use it. I don't need to look at a map very often, so the phone isn't doing anything, and might even be off if on a backpack. I just use it for nav, not tracking. For the tracking, I use an Instinct (an older one). I don't need the maps, and so the basic nav and timing features of the Instinct works great for me.

I wouldn’t be afraid of buying a Garmin watch for open water or pool swims. I have a first generation instinct since the summer of 2020. I’ve worn it everyday no matter what. If you don’t like the look of the instinct, I would look at either the Fenix, Enduro. The forerunner has a bezel but it’s not as raised I feel. Really any of their watches that includes the feature of a raised bezel I gravitate towards. For me, anyways, watches that don’t have that feature end up with a cracked screen like the venu and the vivoactive with the rounded edge of glass hasn’t lasted for me which is why I prefer that raised bezel. Garmin has always been good and replaced them for me in the past but once the warranty is done, there’s no more replacement. Hope this is helpful and keep going.

Garmin doesn't have much that's tailored specifically for swimming, except a watch called Swim, but we don't talk about that. I use my Instinct 1 and it does a good job in open water as well as pool laps. I wouldn't recommend getting that though because Instinct 2 and up have a better HR meter that works underwater.

Same, I bought my instinct 1 around the same time and have beat the ever loving shit out of it. No scratches, everything works, battery still lasts weeks. I finally had to replace the strap literally last week as it finally tore through at my usual buckle spot. $8 later from Amazon and it's brand new again!

Have you noticed a difference in Bluetooth range? My instinct 3 solar was terrible. Maybe 15 feet. Certainly not in another room or around a corner. My Instinct 1, Instinct 2, and especially my older Apple Watch had far better range.

I went from an Instict 1 to a Enduro 3 and can confirm with other comments that the design for the Instinct is certainly the worst of the others for the UI. The Instinct is meant to be more like a Gshock, just smarter, so it is meant to be minimal. The watch face selection by Garmin was mind blowingly awful for me too. I found a lot better selection, and way better customization opportunities from garmin.watchfacebuilder.com. A lot of great pre made ones and it's rather easy to copy an existing watch face and make it what you want. 30 day free trial is a lot of time to create a few and load to your watch. For a 6 day battery life, that is incredibly short. You might have unnecessary tracking turned on maximum or other settings.

I have an older watch, a Garmin Instinct 1st edition. Other than bad battery life it's been good - I can track my miles and elevation for the day as well as check my heartrate to see what zone I'm staying in. Pulling sunrise/sunset times from my phone is nice when I have signal. Coming from that watch, are there any other features that would be a big improvement going to the Enduro 2?

Yeah, I guess that's fair. Garmin has a much higher rate of turnover. Perhaps its too much to expect processor updates each time. I still see better performance out of those older watches vs. garmins newer ones, so something isn't going to plan. Its basically only with the mapping though. Maybe their maps are just too heavy. I thought Garmin were just trying to upsell by holding their maps off their lower priced offerings, but maybe they are just not optimized enough to run there. I'm in the market for a watch at the moment as I tried a pixel watch but miss the more advanced training data and the battery life is driving me nuts. The Forerunner 570 has just completely baffled me, and frankly put me off Garmin. It's significantly more expensive than the 965 here and seems like a significantly weaker offering. Waiting to see how much the Coros Apex 4 is going to cost, as I do a fair bit of multi-day hiking and would appreciate something a little more rugged. If it is too expensive, I'll be deciding between the 965, Pace Pro, & Nomad. Price of the Instinct has also just gone too high for me (I used my old Instinct 1 with the Pixel Watch for hiking, but the battery isn't what it used to be.)

Instinct if you wanna use it for anything outdoors besides running

Get a Garmin instinct 1 or 2 for like, $100-150 aftermarket (fbm, eBay refurb, etc). That is literally all you need to start running, with generous features and durability

I would definitely go solar too, I much prefer MIP displays, they're insanely visible in direct sunlight, and I don't like having to rotate my wrist to turn the screen on and with the always on display on the battery life is horrible compared to any other instinct. My instinct 1st gen easily gets 2 weeks after years or usage and with a fresh battery the 3 AMOLED will mabey last a week

I used a apple watch , then galaxy watch, then instinct gen 1, now I've got a Fenix 7S pro sapphire solar and it's been by far my favorite