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.

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!

It depends on what you want/need. My Garmin Instinct E-Sports is still going strong and I wear it on occasion, but my “daily driver” is a fenix 7s Solar. Made the switch a few years ago because I wanted the golf elements of the 7 that the original Instinct lacked. I get 10-11 days on my fenix, but well over a month still on the Instinct. Been tempted to get an Instinct 2 Solar foe even more battery life.

I've had mine for near on 6 years. The battery is getting noticeably worse every week so I'm upgrading to an instinct 3 AMOLED. Cost over double the Instinct 1 and probably won't last 6 years but hey.

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.)