Garmin Instinct 2S Solar Review: My Favorite Fitness Tracker

After I first examined a solar-powered Garmin a number of years in the past, the photo voltaic perform prolonged the battery life by just a few days. Now, each solar-powered Garmin I’ve examined has lasted greater than two weeks. As I used to be about to go away on a two-week household seaside journey for a protracted overdue trip, I naturally donned Garmin’s new Instinct 2S Solar.

This newest solar-powered model of Garmin’s well-liked backcountry Intuition collection is smaller and has a sharper show than earlier ones. Extra necessary, I didn’t need to cost it for 21 days. That was three weeks of a number of GPS-tracked actions per day, together with working, swimming, mountain climbing, snorkeling, paddle boarding, and boogie boarding. When you worth correct backcountry monitoring and never having to cost a battery, that is the most effective journey watch in the marketplace.

Enjoyable within the Solar

{Photograph}: Garmin

The Apple Watch has constantly dominated the smartwatch and health tracker marketplace for a number of years. However there’s one space the place it merely can’t compete: battery life. When you’re busy sufficient to desire a smartwatch, you’re busy sufficient to search out it annoying that you need to cost it on daily basis (generally greater than as soon as).

The Intuition 2S Photo voltaic makes use of a Energy Glass face to transform the solar’s vitality (as measured in lux) to battery energy. When you’re the sort of nerd who likes to examine your photo voltaic depth and the way a lot daylight your watch is uncovered to per day, you possibly can scroll down the watch face to search out this data from the earlier six hours, together with different helpful at-a-glance stats like notifications and step depend.

It’s sort of enjoyable to see your photo voltaic depth go up and down as you bike, run, or sit within the shade. However all I actually wanted to know was that with lots of direct daylight, the Intuition 2S Photo voltaic received fairly a little bit of energy. In my months of testing, I received as much as three weeks on a single cost. That’s lower than Garmin’s declare of fifty days, however far more than nearly each different health tracker. I by no means needed to put it in power-save mode, which might’ve prolonged the battery life by reducing the brightness on the watch face and disconnecting the watch from the paired cellphone. Three weeks is loads of time.

It’s particularly astonishing as a result of the Intuition 2S Photo voltaic is way smaller than earlier Garmin Instinct watches I’ve tested. The case is 40 mm, nearly 5 mm smaller than the frankly monumental unique Intuition; it’s about the identical dimension as my Apple Watch Series 7. It nonetheless has a monochrome memory-in-pixel show, however it’s noticeably sharper to me than its predecessor. Even with a 1.2-inch display, I can learn my notifications clearly.

Beat the Warmth

{Photograph}: Garmin

Because it debuted in 2018, the Intuition has been one among Garmin’s high sellers. It now is available in solar- and non-solar-powered variations; completely different particular editions, together with a tactical model with, er, “stealth mode”; and among the craziest colours within the sports activities watch market. Totally different colours can be found for various editions, so Garmin now has a “design your own” device on its web site to be sure you get the Intuition you need.