Garmin Instinct 2X Solar - Tactical Edition, Rugged GPS Smartwatch, Built-in Flashlight, Ballistics Calculator, Solar Charging Capability, Coyote Tan

Two months in, and I'm loving this daily wear. I have a large watch collection, but wear this tool watch every day because it reminds me to do my daily workouts, track my progress, and learn about more features every week or so. If I was a hiker, the GPS and crazy long charge, with solar recharging, would make it the life insurance policy you didn't know you needed. Even as someone who sleeps at home and doesn't want to turn on the light and disturb my partner, the built-in flashlight is fantastic. It is used daily. Home screen layouts are flexible, easy to change and the app on my phone synchronizes automatically, allowing me to easily see calendar items on my phone.

So I previously owned the $300 Garmin Vivoactive 3 HR. The first year I was in love and obsessed with fitness. They have a 1 year warranty. WELL just after the 1 year mark my band broke...on the watch head, cheap plastic. Support didn't do anything to help. So I used a soldering iron to melt it back together. Slowly the 2nd, 3rd, AND 4TH connector on the watch head broke off. I created a live social media event smashing my watch to pieces with a hammer. Also spent about 3 years wearing my broken, melted watch negatively attacking all Garmin posts and social media. I hated them with a passion. Haha anyways moving forward, I decided to give this a shot since comparable brands didn't match up. Couldn't be happier. It's actually notably durable, I've never needed to connect my cell phone (which I prefer). Looks awesome, tracks all my fitness stats and I have a historical record on the watch of it all. With all the health features enabled and no smart features turned on, battery lasts like a month. Turn off consistent smart OX recordings it lasts 40+ days. The solar feature is nice, you'd think with me getting 15k steps outdoors every day you'd never need to charge but it still slowly depletes. Coolest functional feature for a dude, it has a flashlight! I'd recommend it, but if one of the bands breaks, Garmin better keep a lookout for me because I'd probably do something that would wind me up in jail.

Beautiful watch. Incredible battery life and having enough functions. It is a wonderful alternative to aw or before G shock. My last watch is aw Ultra. So boring charging every one or two days.

Bought this for my son who is in the Army. He is in basic training/Ait and needed a durable watch for the rigorous training they endure. This watch has all the bells and whistles yet still has the look of a basic black watch so it doesn’t stand out. Very durable and the functionality is quite impressive. My son was so thrilled to get this watch and he was equally impressed with all of the tools available to him in a watch! Highly recommend!

"I’ve been using the Garmin Instinct 2X Solar for a couple weeks now, and it has exceeded my expectations. As someone in the military, I need gear that is reliable, and this watch delivers on every front. Top Features for Duty: Built-in Flashlight: I use this feature constantly during night missions and tasks. The red light is particularly useful for areas where white light isn't allowed, making it perfect for maintaining light discipline. Solar Charging: Being stationed in the desert, the solar charging is a lifesaver. It noticeably extends the battery life and keeps the watch powered up even when I'm away from a charger for long periods. Size & Comfort: Even though I have a thinner build, the watch fits very comfortably on my wrist. It doesn't feel bulky or get in the way during daily tasks or training. Training & Performance: As a longtime fan of Garmin’s training features, the run tracking is my favorite. Whether I’m doing long-distance runs or interval training, the data is accurate and helpful for tracking my progress. Verdict: If you need a rugged, tactical smartwatch that can keep up with a demanding lifestyle, this is it. It’s the perfect blend of a dedicated fitness tracker and a reliable field tool."

In the past couple of years I've had three different expensive name brand watches die on me. Frustrating and expensive to say the least. I really like all the features you get in a smart watch. I particularly like the health metrics and work with those every day to help myself keep in shape. So just fed up with the fancy, colorful smart watches that keep dying on me. I figured I'd go down a different route. I settled on the Garmin. I've had this for about six months now and have submitted it to some pretty rough treatment. I hasn't scratched, it still looks great and when fully charged it has a 29 day battery life. No more taking my watch off every night to charge it. Garmin did this by not going with a color display on the watch. It's a sacrifice I've been happy to make. I don't have to give this watch a second thought no matter what I"m doing. My other smart watches I was worriend about the screen getting scratched mostly. But most of the time I just don't want to be worrying about the well being of my watch. With the Garmin I never have to. This comes with what to me has been a very nice phone app. So I really do get all the basic functionality of those "fancy" watches. But here's the thing. If I'm going to a function-which doesn't happen a lot in my life-where it's a dressy even. Well I've got all my nice pre-smart watch watches that I can put on for the event. I'm basically really happy with this watch. With one caveat. For me I get very frustrated with how many buttons I seem to need to push to get anything done. There are a ton of options and features on this watch. If you're somebody that does well with that sort of thing then you'll probaby be right at home with accessing all the features. For me I'm regularly going to watch Youtube tutorials to get to certain features. Which is tedious at best. After six months I'm still trying to get comfortable with accessing all the things this watch can do. You may fare better in that department. To sum up. This is a great rugged watch that I also think is great looking. I got the orange model. The battery life is bliss. I charge this (it charges quite quickly) and then I'm set for almost a month. This did cost about the same as I paid for my other "premium" watches. But from a performance and durability perspective I feel like I've more then gottn my money's worth.

Purchased the instinct solar 2X and was IMMEDIATELY sorry I didn't buy one sooner. If you like double or triple sensor outdoors/solar watches the solar instinct line is 99% perfect. Durable, subtle, low profile, and light weight. The only downside is you have to charge the 2X every ~40 days if you get an hour or two of sun per day. You can also go for ~3 days of activity with the battery saver and GPS tracking on during movement. I hear the 3 solar is even better on battery, solar, and legibility. It's also nice because it is very smart, but feels kind of early y2k dumb, using the watch does not feel like another screen to steal you attention span. It's just an excellent timepiece and fitness tool. With the 40 day battery mode, you will get text/call notifications, weather, constant heart rate, health stats, morning report, step count, sleep track, altimeter tracking, compass, daily alarm, stop watch/timer, and of course a tiny bit of red light use (seriously awesome to have a tiny red light at night to not ruin your night vision but not need a room light). When doing outdoor activity, you can set up or download .gpx files to form a course/trail to navigate with turn by turn directions. It is perfectly light weight to keep the map in your bag and just look at the watch if you lose the trail.

This is the perfect activity watch/smartwatch for me. It can’t call or text from the watch itself, but those are features I rarely used on my Apple Watch anyway. It’ll still show you if you have a text, call, or any other notification but is geared toward being more of a great activity watch than a phone on your wrist. What’s great about this is how jam-packed with features it is. They took a ton of stuff that previously was only available in the fenix and epix watches and brought it to this instinct 2x solar. It has sleep tracking, activity tracking (with customizable screens for each activity), training readiness, heart rate, vo2 max, blood oxygen level, etc. Most apps charge money for the amount of detail this watch and app give you about your day to day and activities, but there’s no subscription on this. It’s all free And it constantly checks heart rate. My old Apple Watch would check periodically but you could never glance down and see what the current hr was without tapping on the icon and waiting. With this watch it constantly is reading heart rate and keeps a graph showing the history (which you can have show on the watch face if you want). The battery is awesome, something like 40 days with how I have mine set up. And the solar charging actually works. I’ve heard that past versions it didn’t help all too much, but this one it really makes a difference. I added 2 days to my battery life from just a few hours in direct sunlight. The only places where this watch is lesser are the display and the navigation. If detailed maps and touch screen/oled screen are important to you, then go with the fenix or epix models. The navigation on this watch can be useful as it includes the trackback feature where it’ll guide you back on the path you came in on, line-of-sight tracking (keeps you on path if you have to go like down in a valley or around an obstacle where you might lose sense of direction), and you can even pre-load courses to follow later. However, it’s a pretty bare-bones navigation map. It has a pointer for your watch and a line showing the path and that’s about it. The epix and fenix watches have nicer displays, color, touchscreen, and more detailed maps which help a lot with navigation but you also sacrifice a significant amount of battery life for those features. And they’re double the price of this one. All in all, I think this is the perfect middle point for a watch. It has all the features from the top of the line ones that I need, along with crazy battery life and a decent price. If you don’t need detailed navigation but want great gps and activity tracking at half the cost of some of those other watches, this is a great option.