Design & Build Quality
As the name suggests, this watch is a crossover between a tough outdoor watch used by sports enthusiasts and adventure travellers and a regular smartwatch you can pair with your smartphone. While the smart features are hidden within the internals and software, the outdoor touch can be felt all over the aesthetic and build quality. You get a high-quality metal frame that is wrapped in lots of insulation and plastic. Thus, making this model both shock and thermal-resistant while also giving it water resistance of up to 10ATM.
The fit and finish are top-grade, and the watch easily passes the MIL-STD-810 durability standards for electronics. You get a nondescript watch face with physical hour markers and watch hands. The bezel is covered in a separate soft-touch plastic seal that covers five physical buttons scattered around the watch face. The buttons are easy to reach and let you access various functions, like GPS, timers, the watch menu, and other programmable features.
An energy-efficient black and white display is hidden beneath the watch's hands, which displays all sorts of relevant information, like the battery life, a full-size calendar, ambient temperature, GPS directions, and even your own heartbeat. You can use the above-mentioned buttons to easily change the layout of the display, as well as change the information on display. The watch band is made from the same flexible and rugged material that is used on the watch face, so you don't have to worry about your wrists getting scuffed during outdoor adventures.
Smart Features
Since this is a smartwatch, you also get lots of basic and advanced features expected from such an offering. For example, you can easily check your notifications and messages through the watch's face as long as you are connected to your smartphone. It also supports digital payments through Garmin Pay, which is an NFC-based payment system developed by the brand.
Other smart features expected from a hybrid smartwatch include a full array of GPS tech, ranging from regular GPS tracking and turn-by-turn navigation to more complex functions. Like TracBack, which allows you to find your way back to a starting point, and Reference Point, which lets you keep track of a specific location relative to your own position. There is even a Tactical Edition, which adds dual-format GPS, night vision compatibility, a special stealth mode, and even a kill switch to completely shut off any outgoing or incoming signals.
As expected from a modern smartwatch, the Instinct Crossover also host a wide array of health-tracking sensors and algorithms, which let you track your sleep quality, blood oxygen levels, variable heart rate, and VO2 Max stats, among other parameters. All of this information is stored on the watch itself and can easily be transferred to your smartphone via the Garmin app or other third-party health-tracking platforms.
Solar Charging
The truly special feature of the Garmin Instinct Crossover is the in-built solar charging mechanism that comes with the aforementioned Solar Edition. This system can charge your battery to usable levels in just 3 hours, as long as you have up to 50,000 lux ambient light available. This is enough to power all sorts of smart features and GPS tracking for up to 70 days at a time, as long as you keep charging the watch each day.
Even if you don't have access to enough light for this feature to work properly, you can always enter a special battery-saver mode, which only focuses on analogue features like the time, date and stopwatch to ensure that the watch functions for a near infinite amount of time before needing a full recharge. Thankfully, even without solar charging, the in-built battery is still powerful enough to deliver up to 28 days of use on a single charge. If you use GPS all the time, this will go down to 110 hours, which is still more than enough for most people who live an active lifestyle.
Price & Availability
The Garmin Instinct Crossover is available from Garmin's website, official retailers, and other third-party platforms like Amazon. You can get it for a starting price of $500, with the Solar Edition costing $550. The brand hasn't revealed any information about the Tactical Edition, but we will keep an eye out for when and where it pops up for sale.
