I've had this watch for a few weeks and I wanted to give a review because I feel this watch deserves one. First off, this is not going to be a technical review, more of an overview and my experience so far. If you are looking for a review that gives detailed specs. GPS accuracies, and types of activities that can be tracked, you might want to read another review. For most people just looking for an activity tracker, this watch might be a little overwhelming. While I don't go on long jogs or marathons, and I'm not into rugged mountaineering, I feel like this watch could definitely handle that. I was just looking for a watch to track my daily activity, walks or runs in my neighborhood, occasional tail hikes, sleep, pulse ox, phone notifications, and include things like weather, stopwatch, countdown timer, compass, and most of all have a great battery life. This watch easily delivers all of that. In fact, there are so many features in this watch, I'd say that most people might never try them all. I would suggest that anyone interested in this watch download the manual from Garmin's website and just look at what it offers. This watch is very light and comfortable. In fact, I'm amazed they were able to pack so much into this watch and I can barely feel it on my wrist. The band has a large number of adjustment holes in the strap. So, nearly everyone should be able to adjust it to fit comfortably. Many of my watches only have 8-10 holes in the strap and it can be hard to find an adjustment that is not too tight or too loose. The adjustment holes in this watch strap go all the way up to the watch itself. They also allow good ventilation, in case you sweat during a workout. The battery life in this watch has been amazing for me. I'm the kind of person who drains a watch battery in 1/2 of the amount of time it's supposed to take, and that is without including GPS activities. The first time I fully charged this watch, it showed a 27 day battery life. Without doing GPS activities, it will easily make it a full day and show 26 days by the next day. In my experience, the watch seems to calculate the remaining battery life based on recent usage. So, after a GPS activity, you might see the number of days decrease accordingly, like using an extra day or two of battery life depending on how long your activity is. But, sunlight will help with that. Garmin recommends that you give the watch 3 hours of full sunlight a day. While that would be nice, it's not really practical on a daily basis for me. But, in my experience, it's not really required either if you are just looking for a watch that will make it through the better part of a month without charging. What 3 hours of sunlight will give you is about 2% , or +1 day battery life. I like the fact that I can wear this watch and never worry about getting it scratched or damaged. Working outdoors, mowing, trimming, occasional chain saw use, this watch won't even flinch. It's very rugged and well built. I actually appreciate the fact that it does not have a touch screen. You can navigate through all of the menus and options, even with gloves on. Phone notifications are very prominent (they use a double-buzz for each one), so even while working outside, I can still feel it. I also have a Garmin Venu and I enjoy the full color touchscreen. But after using this watch, I realized that you don't actually need a full color screen. In fact, I realized how much I missed not having a watch with a display that was easily visible in any light and be always on. Yes, the Venu has an always-on screen option, but it is not very visible in sunlight and the battery life with that display on was extremely short. I like being able to look at the Instinct's display any time and see the time down to the seconds, and everything else I need without trying to tilt my arm just right or tap on the screen. One thing that I thought that I'd miss is the Garmin ConnectIQ store, which is on the Venu but not on the Instinct. But to tell you the truth, I don't miss it. I know you can get all kinds of unique widgets for your watch there, but a lot of them are just fluff. Everything you would typically need is already "baked into" this watch. The nice part about that is all of the widgets on the Instinct are Garmin widgets so you know they were designed specifically for your watch, and they will work. One item I have been missing that I think should be included with the weather is the current UV index. One thing that I did miss was the ability to make customizations to the Instinct watch from the Garmin Connect app. Nearly everything from the watch faces to the widget settings were configurable on the Venu from the Garmin Connect app. Most of the changes you need to make to the Instinct, you'll need to make on the watch itself through the settings menu. As it turns out, I like to tinker with the settings on watch, so it ended up not being a big deal after all. One trick I found in the settings to save a little battery life was to turn off the display light when I press a key. This watch is so customizable. You can even set the display light to come on when you press a key only after sunset, for example. But I just turned mine off because if you do need the display backlight, you can simply press the upper left button and it will come on. You can set the timeout for the backlight, but it will automatically stay on as long as you are interacting with the watch and pressing buttons. With 5 physical buttons, there is a learning curve with this watch. However daunting it might seem, within a day or two, I was intuitively using the watch and knew which buttons did what. The buttons are very solid and have a nice tactile click when you press them. The Control Menu, which is available in many Garmin watches, is a quick launch list of shortcuts to commonly used activities. This is fully customizable and can include things like alarm list, timers, do not disturb settings, find my phone, sync, and many, many more. It does have a flashlight shortcut, but it's too dim to be much use in anything except for close up in total darkness. Navigating through the Control Menu on the Instinct is slightly slower than my other Garmin watches because it is not a touchscreen and you have to scroll through the list of shortcuts to find what you want. But it remembers the last thing you used, and it will open with that item selected the next time you launch the Control Menu. The Control Menu on this watch can include more items than you can see on the screen at one time. That is not possible with the Venu because it has a fixed number of slots. The watch faces are very customizable. The default one has a graph on the top left-hand corner. You can use this for things like heart rate, solar charging levels, and so on. I use it to display a barometric pressure graph. And even that is fully customizable, to graph either the last 6, 12, 24 or 48 hours. There is a prominent circle on the upper right of the screen that can customized to contain things like the date, or current temperature, or heart rate, or altitude, or barometric pressure/trend, or moon phase, or many others. I use it to display the number of notifications currently on my watch. Notifications can be easily dismissed on the watch and they immediately disappear from your phone. Just be aware that it is the down button that dismisses the notification. It is also the same button used to scroll down though the notification content when you select the notification. More than once, I've accidentally dismissed the notification thinking that I was going to scroll down to see the additional content. I like the Sunrise and Sunset times, as well as the Moon phase with the moon rise and moon set times widgets. You can even include some of these details onto a watch face. I use part of the lower section of the default watch face to display either the sunrise or sunset time, depending on which comes next. I also include the day
