Instinct Crossover Solar

Garmin Instinct Crossover Solar, the battery life is insane

Instinct crossover 2 solar because it’s cool, I can beat the shit out of it, and it has everything I need. It’s a little bulky but works.

Agreed. I have the instinct crossover solar edition and am lucky to get 3 weeks. I don't use the GPS often either.

That's the watch I have (instinct 3, solar tactical), It's fantastic, wife has one of the AMOLED versions. It's no worse than the AMOLED for looking at all the stats, as long as you don't absolutley need bright colors for some odd reason. The battery life and always on screen make it a clear winner for me. I use it for sports tracking (Mainly runs, hikes, gym and cycling) and checking my recovery needed. I can't see anything more you'd ever need in a watch, just seems perfect. I'd had the instinct crossover for a few years before I bought this and it's still in utterly perfect condition, battery is still amazing. I work a physical and messy job, and I've worn it to work every day expecting it to get rather messed up. literally looks brand new, and i've accidently scraped it down brick walls and all kinds of sillyness. I only upgraded because I fancied trying out a solar one and loved the look of the tactical.

Garmin instinct crossover, 28 days battery life, 50 without constant hr measurement. Instinct 2x and instinct 3 solar 50mm have 40 days battery life, 70 without hr. And solar charging.

Check whether this reality. My crossover says I have 51 days battery life when the hr sensor is switched off, but in real life, it's about 33 days. Still amazing, but less.

Watch Concept: I use the Instinct Crossover, best hybrid watch on the market. Use: telling time, alarm, notifications and breadcrumb navigation while hiking. Nothing else.

I appreciate the craftsmanship in mechanical watches, but it's really just jewellery to me. I prefer functionality more. So I mostly use the Garmin Instinct Crossover, which has physical watch hands which I love and only have important notifications on.

Crossover is my main one.

The MIP display watches have the best battery life.

take a look at the garmin instinct crossover - its basically an instinct with the full tracking capabilities of the instinct, but with mechanical hands - the solar versions give you a pretty long time between charges too.

would look at the following brands as in most countries they generally provide an ok to decent level of support, and they all offer good battery life: Garmin, Coros, Polar, Suunto, Amazfit, Huawei. Most models offered are at least 7 days between charges with a lot offering +14 days and some like the garmin instinct 2 or 3 solar series can potentially offer unlimited battery life. If it needs to be a wear os watch then you are limited by OnePlus watch 3 (but don't like what I have recently seen from their support services); ticwatch (durability issues in the past not sure what the current models are like) - but they will all gvie up to 5 days / and then Samsung GW Ultra ( up to 3 days - and I personaly refuse to buy their products anymore as their service support is woeful and they do not stand behind their products despite their bold advertising claims).

for wear os you need to look at the OnePlus Watch 3 -- its up to 5 days running wear os, but you can boot up its own os which gives you up to 12 days (using this does mean no access to any wear os features and that includes nay installed wear os watch faces, but as health and fitness tracking works fine with either os) - its pretty easy and quick to swap between the two - so can usually get around 5 to 8 days depending on how/when you switch between the two os (note not a good idea if you plan to swim / wear while doing water sports - while it has a 5atm rating OnePlus is currently not honoring it). Ticwatch has a couple of models that can offer up to 5 days and extend way past that buy using their essential power system which turns features on/off and extending battery life - not that this and the 5 days is reliant on use of dual screen which is a plain lcd screen. They are also large watches and previously durability and updates have been issues (not sure if they still are). Then you could go for watches that offer similar functionality but are running their own os - depending on the watch and the size you can get anywhere from up to 5 days to potentially unlimited battery life (garmin instinct 2 or 3 solar models 45mm or 50mm - same with the instinct tactix models - of course based on getting enough sunlight to recharge and based on usage habits - but at very least will give month to months between charges). Look at brands from garmin, ccros, polar, suunto, amazfit, huawei and potentially fitbit. The best will fit your other requirements as they all meet your battery life requirement. If you want +5 days AOD, even then a lot of the models from these brands will cover it - especially the larger case sizes i.e. +45mm. i..e I have a Garmin Epix 2 which is now +4 years old (haven't yet found anything that is way better and worth the upgrade despite checking regularly) - I generally charge it once a week (usually between 40-55% when I charge) and that includes 30 to 60 mins of gps activity every day (minimum) and usually a couple of extra hours of gps every weekend. Also includes a variety of indoor activities (no gps, but during these activities the watch screen is set to AOD on).

rock climbing - would suggest sticking to garmin or coros as those are the only 2 that provide that functionality. Note its limited to only a couple of models on coros, whereas on garmin its on most models. Haven't had a coros so can't comment much on it. Re Garmin - you would have to manually adjust your sleep schedule but its pretty easy to do via the app - so a bit of a PITA but not a deal breaker. You want something fairly durable if wearing while on duty - so would suggest either the coros vertix series (maybe nomad - don't know much about it) or the garmin fenix / instince series. Advantage of coros and fenix is the built in offline mapping for hiking.. Would give the edge to garmin in terms of the hiking and fishing as their built in aps for this are just better. (note that if using the instinct 3 amoled you can install a 3rd party offline map option, however no offline music option). Garmin Fenix does include offline spotify (assuming you have a sub), whereas as Coros offers your own mp3s only.

the best watch is the one that best meets your needs and is a price you can afford. Also note that apple watches are locked to iPhone and cannot work with android; and similarly wear os (pixel, samsung, oneplus, ticwatch etc) are locked to android and cannot work with iPhone. Should also look at garmin, coros, polar, suunto, amazfit, huawei and fitbit - will all work with either android or iPhone. Best option might be to talk about what you want out of a smartwatch from a) smarts, b) health, c) tracking fitness - talk about what types of activity and level of data; d) any of useful info - i.e. battery life, torch, offline maps, scuba diving, tracking golf, shootiing, hunting, track flight hours, climbing (indoor or outdoor), high speed/pressure sports like surfing, kite boarding etc etc. These days you name it and their is likely an option that will cover what you want - its just the cost where you may have to compromise.

I think you need to understand HRV - to take a HRV recording you have to be inactive as being active impacts your HRV, hence while it will only show stress during the day for inactive periods - if being exercising it will only show it a certain period post activity as that impacts HRV too, so has to wait for your ANS to recover from the activity before it can start to show it again. If any watch is showing you HRV during active periods its giving you garbage as they don't understand how your ANS is impacted by activity. All day stress is really only useful in terms of looking at your daily average as a trend - there are too many factors that can otherwise impact it. If you want more info about the stress metric and HRV would suggest starting with Firstbeats white paper on the stress metric (considering they are the first ones to introduce that metric). Re the HR - were you actively tracking an exercise session or just looking at the HR widget - if just looking at the widget track an activity as in 24/7 mode its running at reduced power for HR, when tracking an activity it pushes up to full power mode.

actually technically the apple watch doesn't measure HRV continuously - it only measures it every 2 to 5 hours and it will take the readings more frequently when you are sedentary or in specific conditions like when you are sleeping, or when AFIB mode is active (this can increase the HRV tracking feature to every hour or so). But the during the day readings are of very limited value - its the variation to the trend over time that is way more important. The really important HRV readings are those that are done during your sleep period as there are less factors that can influence the readings. This is a line worth reading - it is potentially biased as his showing why his software is better - but the underlying concepts are valid. And while it has been updated , as its a couple of years old now and hence why the original data didn't include apple watch cause at that time their HRV was absolutely useless, and since then all of the brands have also improved their HRV reporting etc (garmin's for example is now continuous during the night) - it doesn't change the underlying message / principle. Taking readings during the day is of very very limited use.

As you say you understand how HRV and ANS work then you should understand why there are gaps in Garmin's Stress readings and shouldn't be surprised by them, but as you stated you were surprised, it made me assume that haven't fully researched the subject / grasped how HRV and ANS work. PS - can't remember if I stated already that for garmin you can get a direct HRV reading at any point by running the 2 min health snapshot - this will show your the HRV value on the watch - but can't display on the watch face (at least not with standard watch faces). Can pull up at any time via the health snapshot app or the health snapshot widget. But coolest thing is the ability to see a list of them in connect web - the individual reports are all pdf, but the web shows a list of them and you can also see a list of main attributes (customizable) so can your RMSSD for each recording so pretty easy to spot a trend from this if performing them regularly at a specific time. \[Within the PDF file it also includes a SDRR value\].

I am fully aware you can pull HRV during a workout (mine is set to) and know the reason - but that is very different to pulling during 24/7 where far more factors are at play than there would be during a workout. Also its a bit painful to use that activity HRV data as while its logged in the fit file the garmin connect app/web doesn't currently show that data, which of course means you have to use a 3rd party app - and currently I can't be bothered to mess around with multiple apps. And yes most garmins running the elevate 4 or 5 HR Sensor still offer the HRV during workout (for main activities). Note that if the watch offers the performance condition data metric, which can set on data screen and get alerts for it - and while its not a purely HRV related - it does include HRV along with pace and HR to provide a real time assessment of your deviation to your baseline VO2max. And while I know this is more than just HRV I feel that to a degree its sort of incorporating what HRV logging does i.e .how your body is adapting to the training load of that session. Worth noting that all of the 4 fitness brands - garmin, coros, polar and suunto all only do HRV as overnight not during day (Suunto does offer resources which is sort of like garmin's body battery and also sort of does take stress (based off hrv) into account) - for the same reason - too many drivers could be impacting it; Coros does offer a manual record too like Garmin does. Also when you think about it the purpose of Apples all day HRV is around recovery - the other brands provide a host of other metrics that do a similar think i.e. Garmin's recovery metric; training status, and training readiness --- basically providing that data is an easier to use , simplified format (and all include HRV as part of the data that is used to determine their values).

HRV logging - its on in case I ever need it /want it - if you don't log it you can't go back and get it. Yes needs chest strap as optical HR generally isn't accurate enough to get an accurate R-R interval detection. Apps - garmin connect app store only shows the apps that are available for you watch. What I loved about the connect iq web version is you could see all the apps and then send a message to a dev to extend to your model as generally they didn't always update for new models. However since they have stupidly closed the web version of the store its now much harder to find those apps (use web search now). Alpha HRV wouldn't help you anyway as it also requires a chest strap in particular the polar h9 / H10 or garmin hrm pro. They tend to only recommend these straps as these have been validated by platforms that do HRV during an activity and thus are known to provide accurate r-r intervals. Performance Condition: [https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-2CF5620C-E585-4E0A-9CC3-9565533EEE4D/EN-US/GUID-7556D1C8-1685-43B9-A091-D43D2F719F1F.html](https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-2CF5620C-E585-4E0A-9CC3-9565533EEE4D/EN-US/GUID-7556D1C8-1685-43B9-A091-D43D2F719F1F.html) V4 does have it has a metric, so you could pull it in as a data field on your tracking screens on the watch. But that is about as good as its going to get unless you go chest strap. Always find its a compromise finding right watch - and as already stated don't really know of any watch that does what you want - as stated tech's not really there yet to set it up the way you want. Samsung features require latest samsung phone (though its normally possible to sideload onto other android phones but can be slightly challenging) - also they have heavy region locks so would also need to know that its not locked in your country/regioni cause if it is then there is no joy - can't do what you can with garmin where ccan spoof to unlock feature and once unlocked will work anywhere (i.e. ECG).