Garmin - Instinct Solar

Im still rocking the instinct solar gen 1. I love it for hiking/camping and having a backup gps which i can upload my .gpx maps to it. Or use it for the day paddleboarding and kayaking.

I use a gen 1 Garmin Instinct Solar

Garmin Instinct Solar. It's durable. I've had mine since '21 and use it at work, working on cars, backpacking, and yard work. Wear it every day, never take it off except to charge.

1 solar also works in the water. It's not super accurate. If you care about HR the HRM-pro or better (if in a pool environment) the HRM-Swim. Instinct is great but the 1Solar doesn't have save and download so I use my 5X in the pool most of the time. I use my Instinct open water. Neither watch is better or worse in the pool. Laps are accurate unless I do something dumb like swim more than 10m underwater per length. Even swimming non traditional strokes it's accurate on laps and swolf.

Most people coming from apple go vivo active or venue. Venue being closest to a smart watch. Personally, I'm a instinct guy. Although I'm wearing a Fenix today since I didn't charge my Instinct for 2 weeks and it died before bed. I've swam tens of thousands of meters (more like hundreds but..) in pool, open and salt water with my Garmins. Done free diving (only to about 40ft, I'm not very good) and press the buttons regularly sub surface. I've also done cliff jumping with every watch, and haven't lost a garmin to water intrusion. I would definitely select a 100m rated model for water sports. Any watch can fail but I've had 6 garmins and none have. I also had a bunch of Casio and Timex over the years and not one failure.

I use a Fenix and and instinct. 100% accurate in the pool unless I'm doing under/overs (15m under, 10 over, 15 under, 10 over) then it will miss some laps. Most people aren't doing the legal 15m pullout (I do it to circumvent no underwater swimming) so this isn't an issue. Other than that, as long as I'm stroking with my arms, it rarely misses a length. I've had an Fenix 2/3/5x in the pool and mostly use my Instinct in open water because I don't mess with a HRM (wrist is fine, I don't care that much for the OWS and if I do I use my HRM pro).

Fantastic watch and value. Easy to read screen (monochrome mips) and great battery life. Definitely worth it.

Personally, no. I use other devices for maps. Seems like a watch is best as a backup. Instinct is great. Last forever, is accurate, rugged and fairly cheap.

Instinct Affordable, great for those activities. Incredible battery life, to the point I'm annoyed when I have to charge it every other or every 3rd day on longer (active trips, like backpacking and bikepacking) because I go a week normally. Readable (monochrome) in any light. Also has an oled screen if you prefer it.

OP don’t go out of your budget for a Garmin; unless you *really* need the features, it isn’t worth it. You don’t say what your needs are but assuming you’re a runner (as you’re planning on a forerunner 265), why not look also at the forerunner 165 or even the forerunner 55 (currently on offer here in the UK direct from Garmin at £140)? I started with a forerunner 35 which took me through Couch to 5k and beyond. It was great, did all that I needed and nothing more. I only upgraded to an Instinct (Solar v1) when I decided to swap my daily G-Shock for a Garmin. And I still now wear it all the time.

I use it mostly for sports tracking, specifically indoor swimming. \- It's accurate when we talk about tracking lengths, if you're swimming "stable". Then it's counts lengths without mistakes. \- If you suddenly have to switch the style, e.g. you swim freestyle, but then you have to slow down, change to breaststroke etc, your watch will go crazy and there will be some hallucinations on the report for example extremely fast lap time gets registered... But it requires some strange situation to happen (like someone appearing on your lane, but having way slower tempo than you). Unfortunately I haven't found a way to fix this, even manually in the mobile/web app. \- HR sensor is well... unreliable? I don't know, I never compared it with some serious device like Polar HR strap. But today I was swimming 2000m with moderate pace, tempo was mostly very stable. And look what has been registered: [https://imgur.com/a/IpPNEfl](https://imgur.com/a/IpPNEfl) The only explanation for this, is that I didn't put the watch tight enough, and after some time of swimming it repositioned itself and started monitoring HR more correctly than for the first 15 mins. In general I still like it. I like the oldschool, high contrast display, it's not flashy, distracting AMOLED. Battery life is very good. It's quite comfortable because it's rather still a lightweight watch (I have 45mm version).

This! I have a Garmin instinct Solar and I can’t wear it all the time because it starts rubbing my skin off. lol

I don’t have the dilemma cause I just kept both lol But I don’t really wear my garmin instinct in the winter because it doesn’t fit very well under long sleeves. As for the data my whoop picks up sleep and naps better and it does a way better job of adding a workout after the fact if you forgot to start a workout. My garmin data is off if I forget to start it before.

While I agree having come from a Garmin instinct solar with incredible battery life. The pixel watch 4 needs to be charged every ~2 days and has fast charging. So take it off, pop it on the charger, have a shower and it's back to 100%. It's seriously impressive.

Not sure if it'll fit all your needs but I got a Garmin Instinct Solar as I also didn't care about having a "smart" watch with a bunch of apps and features I wouldn't use. I personally love it. It was on the cheaper side since it doesn't have a touch screen and all the features the higher end watches have. I believe it can control your music, at least skip songs, but im not 100% on that because I don't use that feature personally.

Oh yeah and you can connect to the free Garmin Connect app which will log all the data from your watch. It also has some free training plans.

Same. I still rock an original instinct solar. Love having all the basic stuff and the solar is super helpful. If I needed maps I have a forerunner 955 as well.

We have the Garmin Index S2 scales. I wear a Garmin Venu Sq and my husband has a Garmin Instinct Solar. TBH we would not buy anything else!