Been using this for a few months now and it’s absolutely fantastic. Upgraded from a Fenix 6 Solar, which served me well for a good number of years but I was only getting 5-6 days battery life with sleep tracking. In fact sleep tracking was draining the battery by about 4-5% per night and the solar aspect was a bit of a gimmick and didn’t really do much. This watch I get over 2 weeks on a single charge and still have a good 25% remaining. That’s doing all my workouts including running 20+ miles a week, sleep tracking every night and just general daily use. I don’t use it as a smart watch as such so it’s not connected to my phone 24/7, I only do that when I sync my watch or download watch faces.
The solar I’ve yet to try as I got it in November but I’ve heard good things so will update my review after the weather warms up.
GPS is very accurate and that’s not using the multi band either. HR is pretty good, better than my Fenix 6 but I use my chest HR monitor most of the time. Flash light is a nice addition, which I use quite a lot for many different tasks. I also find the health/fitness tracking more accurate than my Fenix 6 too. Such as the V02 Max, training readiness, body battery, HRV status and recovery time etc.
Overall very happy with my purchase. Highly recommended.

Excellent take on the fitness tracker using LCD rather than battery hogging displays. Totally configurable set up for whatever exercise you want to do with a ton of other “nice” features, weather etc.

Default mode shows 28 days battery life, this includes constant heart rate and sleep monitor through the night. Looks like constant O2 monitoring reduces that by about half and of course constant, built-in GPS will knock it down to about a day.

App is very much no-nonsense compared to say Fitbit, but it goes in-depth on the stuff that may be of interest and “seems” accurate as far as these things go.

It’s also a very nice aesthetic and isn’t like the old LCDs and not pixelated at all. It doesn’t have a touch screen and relies on four buttons around the bezel which is a blast-from-the-past but not really a problem and also means the glass and bezel doesn’t have to be a particular shape for ease of touch.

The display is illuminated by pushing a button and it has a slightly blue glow, it’s easy to see the screen in the dark but it’s not backlit like the colour screens I’ve gotten used to. This isn’t a problem but might seem weird if you are used to modern smart watches.

I am enjoying the Garmin ecosystem and app, the battery life is amazing and it’s very quick to charge when depleted. I’m into the aesthetic.

If you’re looking for mainstream, maybe not for you but if you aren’t keen on charging your watch frequently and do like the aesthetic it’s grea

Just upgraded to an Instinct 2 after my 7 year old Forerunner 235 finally gave up. I was previously exclusively a runner but wanted something with more multi-activity options.

Positives:
– LOADS of activity recording options (20+) which you can select to add to the watch from the app.
– LOADS more data available that the Forerunner 235, particularly background data throughout the day, but also lots more performance tracking data.
– Easy setup and fast syncing with the app.
– Basic controls pretty simply to master.
– LONG battery life which is great for longer endurance events.
– Tough construction.

Negative:
– Screen slightly smaller than the Forerunner, although the watch looks less comically large if you’re wearing it through the day.
– Because there are some many activity recording options some take a while to master. I did a weight session and it was a bit fiddly to log individual sets (which it does), but this is far superior to the ‘run/ bike/ other’ option previously.