
Garmin - Instinct Crossover - Standard Edition
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Based on 1 year's data from Mar 17, 2026 How it works
Liked most:
5
0
"I'd had the instinct crossover for a few years before I bought this and it's still in utterly perfect condition ... 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."
"Can take hard knocks like G-Shock and still function."
"very rugged"
6
0
"30 day battery life ... solar option I'd like to upgrade to which will net essentially unlimited battery life if you're outside or in bright light often enough"
"huge battery"
"max battery life ... it gets up to 28 days of battery with notifications turned off"
1
0
"GPS tracking for hikes including good ascent tracking"
Disliked most:
0
1
"as a swimmer I felt not worth for only swimming so I send it back"
"sometimes miss laps"
Mine as well, max waiting time on my Crossover 7 seconds, which is nothing.. ..even 30 seconds is almost nothing, I'd say.
if you don't care about colourful screen, I highly recommend one of the Instinct (2, Crossover or 3), I personally use Crossover standard (but I should get Solar version) 2 years already, battery is still the same (2 weeks recording running 2mil, and walking 1mil daily, and strength 4 times a week). I really hope for the next version of the Crossover, but no signs of it for now 😔
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.
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.
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.
Garmin offers most of these: accurate hr depends on you - but yes the current sensors are good and work well for most people, but also may depend on the activities you want to track. all garmins are at least 5atm - which is good for swimming and other low pressure/speed water sports. They do also offer 10atm (high speed/pressure water sports) and full dive watches (closest you will get to water proof as include inductive buttons). sleep yes - make sure spec says sleep score and ideally sleep coach - though is like this for all current models - not only see quality but can get detailed breakdown of the sleep score components. Body Battery (BB) - yes all do but this is an assessment of your energy levels not necessarily your health. The new health status metric which monitors your HR, HRV, respiration, skin temp and pulse ox (spo2)) across time is a more accurate measure of health status. Recovery - garmin does this in a couple of way - most current garmin's provide an estimate recovery time - which is an estimate of how long until your body has recovered so that can gain max benefit from next hard workout - will adjust based on any activity done, your stress levels and sleep quality. can see this value on the watch at any time, including the ability to add as a watch face data point. Post activity you can do a recovery mode - before saving your activity press the recovery HR option - will now track your HR for two minutes while you rest - then press save when done. If you go into your activity and go to the stats section under HR it will show the recovery HR value i.e. 10bpm (what you HR went down during those 2 minutes). Of course for the activity you can see the HR chart fo the the tracked activity. If you wanted to track your HR for the 2 minute recovery period you can save the activity and then launch a health snapshot - this tracks your HR, pulse ox (spo2), respiration and stress for a 2 mins and provides average hrv metrics for that period - putting this into a pdf file you can download, see on phone/web etc. Workout HR zone - yes get visible and audable notification - can also get an audio note. Can have it set as an alert or can set it as a workout screen in which case adds a screen showing zone in green with other zones in red - so very easy to see when in or out of zone. (note can do this with other metrics too like pace, cadence etc). yes can set max/min alerts too. But think its pretty similar in terms of alerts. Pace indicator - yes - can set from 1 to 8 data fields per tracking screen (how many may depend on model and screen size but most now do 1-6 fields - though guage fields can reduce it by 1-2 fields depending on whether using 1 or 2 guages and screen size), and can do from 3 to unlimited (as such) tracking screens (depends on model). Can set up pace workout screen, or pace guage on tracking screen or just pace data fields (i..e. current pace, last lap pace, avg lap pace etc etc etc). See the data fields section of watch manual to see data field options. Watch face horizontal - stock garmins offer ones where hour is above minutes - but if you don't like the options there is always the garmin connect iq store (app on watch for some models, app on phone or web browser: [https://apps.garmin.com/](https://apps.garmin.com/) so you can have a look to get idea of options - there are also some other 3rd party sites where you can also get other 3rd party watch faces from). All garmins offer abnormal HR alerts and offer the ability to set HR alerts for an activity (can set these for each individual activity type and for models that offer activity copy action can set up multiple copies of same activity with different HR alerts making it quick and easy to select which one you want without having to go in and change the alert values).. all current garmins have very accurate gps. Sub £600 -- covers most garmins on offer. Depending on what types of activity you do and what sort of features you want, and whether want mic & speaker. But would suggest looking at the vivoactive, forerunner, instinct and fenix ranges as that probably is more in line with what you want. Basically gamrin health features (except ecg and baseline temp) and smart features (except offline music) are the same - its really the fitness features and training metrics where they really differentiate and even then its getting way closer (i.e ..not much difference between a venu 4 and forerunner 570).
you would need to check re saving points of interest, but in regards to offline maps, ability to save routes and then have them overlaid on the offine maps etc pretty much most brands now offer this functionality - would stick with amazfit, huawei, garmin, coros, polar and suunto models for best features around this. I know that with garmin instinct and fenix (and its variants) and the FR variants with offline maps you can save points at any time. In fact the fenix/FR with offline maps can even create a route on the watch from a saved point on the watch - very useful if you save hunting points and want to get from one point to the next and don't have a pre-planned route, or even decide you want to break off a route short and want to get back to the start - no need to retrace your route, or have to follow a bearing line to it - the wach can create a route back to the start. For the garmin's that don't have offline maps, note there are 3rd party apps like komoot that can provide the similar functionality as suunto, coros, polar, amazfit and huawei i.e. create an offline route on app/web and sync to watch with offline map section. Note that the fenix/instinct garmins come with built in hunt functionality - [https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-EECCAC99-90D6-4AB1-9A3A-EC433D3365E2/EN-US/GUID-135067A5-7E0B-4467-A79C-D084B20D1DE1.html](https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-EECCAC99-90D6-4AB1-9A3A-EC433D3365E2/EN-US/GUID-135067A5-7E0B-4467-A79C-D084B20D1DE1.html)
as you main focus is swimming I would stick with a garmin (the 5 buttons ones so a forerunner, instinct, fenix (and its variants like epix); suunto, polar or coros. Having the buttons enables you to swap data tracking screens while resting to check stats. as to which is best will depend on the swimming stats and features you require.
I have s11 and garmin crossover, and s11 is just smartwatch. Garmin is complete training computer.
Lots of good info here. I’m a fan of my Instinct Crossover. I like the hands and g shock esque style. Has all the Garmin suite of features including navigation etc. Battery life is great…weeks!
Works pretty well for tracking steps and sleep as maintains my hrv tracking. I put on my Instinct when doing an activity (or record on my edge when on the bike). Then connect app seems to keep it all combined, but the vs5 is not true up compatible so it’s not perfect. I keep my instinct as my primary wearable.
Instinct crossover if you want a hybrid watch that tracks your HR halfway decently for sports. I love that it's an analog watch with Lume most of the time, but when I need it, it's a fully digital (amoled) display giving me all the training info I need in a glance.
It's a rugged watch for sure. The article is more like a summary of the garmin advertizing. Three points you need to evaluate for yourself: If you need maps and want something beyond plastic watch in the looks department, look at the enduro line. The display is also quite limited in terms of pixel density, which has nice retro vibes but is limiting in other respects. Also, the Instincts I had were always a bit sluggish to respond compared to forerunners or Fenixes. It saves power also by using a slower processor than the top line. The last bit to consider is that the 2x rocks the elevate 4 sensor, which is not the latest and greatest but ok sensor for HR and health functions. Other than that, GPS and other measurements are top of line. For the Instinct series, there is actually no change here with the Instinct 3, [the main point between i2x and i3 is the better mip display](https://runningwithrock.com/garmin-instinct-2x-solar-vs-instinct-3-50mm/)
Garmin Instinct Crossover, it's also the watch I wear all the time and use to track my running, for camping/hiking, and such. If you just want to tell time get a cheap Timex tbh
That would be sweet. I had to quit wearing my watch at night (Instinct Crossover) because I realized having something like that on my wrist was waking me up at night. I'd love to have sleep stats again.
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