Close to the smartwatch I'd actually want
By Abby Turner, Melbourne ยท
I keep coming back to the Instinct because Garmin understands something Apple doesn't: some of us don't want to charge a watch every night.
The AMOLED version gives you a much nicer, brighter screen than the old monochrome Instincts. The trade-off is battery, which drops compared with the solar memory-in-pixel ones, but Garmin's numbers for this are still measured in days rather than hours, which is a different world to the Apple Watch. GPS and heart rate are there, and the case is resin, so it shrugs off sanitiser.
45 mm and 14 mm thick is chunky. It'll catch on sleeves, and I'd notice it under a gown. Gorilla Glass rather than sapphire, which is fine for most people but the screen is quite exposed.
At US$450 to $500, it's for people who run, hike, cycle and want proper fitness data without babysitting a charger. If all you want is the time and a stopwatch, the GW-M5610U does that for about a third of the money.