Bli plusmedlem

Without touchscreen

Review: Garmin Instinct 3 - Truly smart watch with extra long battery life

With the Garmin Instinct 3, you get a watch with really long battery life that you can still install apps on. But it has other drawbacks.

Elias Nordling
Published

In recent years, Garmin has consolidated its range of smartwatches and sports watches into a single platform, while maintaining a large number of product lines with different target audiences. This means there are a large number of different watches from them, making it difficult to determine what sets them apart beyond marketing.

The Garmin Instinct 3, for example, is marketed as a rugged wilderness watch for those who enjoy hiking in the mountains and similar activities. However, it has the same system as the smartwatches in the Garmin Venu series or the running watches in the Forerunner series, to name just two of Garmin's many product series.

One thing that differentiates the various models is how many buttons they have. Despite the system being the same, you navigate with one, two, or as here, up to five buttons. You also need the buttons, as the Garmin Instinct 3 is one of the few smartwatches in Garmin's family that still lacks a touchscreen.

Only buttons

You control the watch entirely with the five buttons. On the left side, there are buttons to turn on the screen (it also turns on when you lift the watch to your face), an up button, and a down button. On the right side, there is a select button and a back button. Additionally, all buttons have shortcuts to different functions when you double-press or long-press them. 

If you have had a Garmin watch for many years, you might think this is the obvious way to navigate and you are uninterested in a touchscreen. If you come from another smartwatch, button control can be an insurmountable obstacle. I think it works quite okay, and what is an obstacle for me is more how the functions in the watch are organised. The focus is on getting directly to a certain function rather than selecting it in a menu, and this means you really have to memorise all these shortcuts and remember the difference between, for example, pressing, double-pressing, and long-pressing the select button. All three activate workouts, but to varying degrees of jumping directly to the last selected workout type, and sometimes it takes several attempts before I manage to dig out my desired workout type from the watch. Functions that do not have a quick shortcut on the buttons require quite a bit of pressing around to activate. Button control hides any sluggishness in the system's response because you still can't press the buttons faster than the circuits in the watch can work.

The Garmin Instinct 3 actually comes with two different types of screens. The one I am testing has a bright and colourful OLED screen that works well even in sunlight. There is also a variant with an e-paper screen, which is always on but does not have built-in lighting, works well in outdoor light but gives poorer results indoors or in the dark, with paler colours. The variant with an e-paper screen also has the additional advantage that the screen is equipped with solar panels so it can be charged in ordinary sunlight. The watch is also available with a 45 or 50 mm case, and for that matter with 40 mm, but then it is called Instinct E.

Garmin states that the Instinct 3 with an OLED screen and 45 mm display has up to 18 days of battery life, while the larger model has 28 days. With solar cells and if you live in a sunnier country than ours, the watch basically never needs to be charged. I actually get even longer battery life than that, and it's impressive because the 45 mm variant I'm testing isn't even particularly heavy on the wrist.

Related articles

Withstands tough conditions

The Garmin Instinct 3 has a design and marketing as an extra durable watch. The screen is made of unspecified hardened glass but is recessed to protect it from impacts from flat surfaces. The frame is made of fibre-reinforced plastic and aluminium. The watch is waterproof up to 10 atmospheres, which is more than enough for swimming and shallow diving. An interesting feature is the flashlight, a strong LED directed to the side that you can activate by double-pressing the screen button.

Anyone who has used a newer Garmin watch will recognise the system. The interchangeable watch face is indeed customised to the model, but from there you scroll down among widgets for things like weather and health metrics, and you can edit which widgets are displayed. The watch measures everything you would expect, such as heart rate, sleep, steps, altitude, heart rhythm, and more. You can also use the watch to make payments with Garmin Pay, which is supported by many Swedish banks.

If you think that a watch must be able to install third-party apps to truly be considered a smartwatch, then the Garmin Instinct 3 is a smartwatch. You need to install the Garmin Connect IQ app store on your mobile, where you will find both apps and watch faces, both paid and free apps. The selection of apps is not huge, I count 120 that can be installed on the watch. They are mostly more niche apps, and several apps available for Garmin are not supported by the watch. For example, you cannot install Spotify and listen to music with the watch.

Another feature associated with smartwatches is the ability to receive and perhaps even respond to notifications on the watch. The Garmin Instinct 3 has neither a microphone nor a speaker, so you cannot receive calls or dictate notifications with the watch, but you can read notifications from the apps you have chosen on the watch, and if they are messaging apps, you can reply with pre-set messages where you can choose which ones should appear on the watch from a list of pre-written ones where you can add your own if you wish.

Garmin's watches often have quite a hefty price tag, and this also applies to the Instinct 3. The price starts at 4850 kronor for the solar model with a 45 mm case and then increases to 6050 kronor if you want an OLED screen and a 50 mm case. It's not exactly a watch with a luxury feel that you get for that price, and control with buttons without a touchscreen is not for everyone. But having said that, it is truly a watch that manages to combine everything you expect from a smartwatch with excellent battery life.

product reviews watches wristbands garmin instinct 3 garmin product tests

Latest reviews

Top How-tos

100 latest articles