The Garmin Instinct Tactical watch had been on my radar since it was released in late 2018. It is probably the type of watch that you would imagine a special operations soldier to use, but in reality they probably would not be permitted have something that would be susceptible to information/data compromise. For example, see this article for how GPS and fitness data compromised a forward operating base.

 

Nevertheless my search for a watch had requirements that appealed to tactical/military applications. I was looking for a watch that had a tactical flavour with features found on other GPS smart watches like:

• Enough battery life that did not require frequent charging;
• Enough battery life in GPS mode sufficient for a weekend of navigating;
• A wide range of GPS satellite compatibility (GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO);
• Features for noise and light discipline;
• Ability record usage information like steps, calories, heart rate;
• Fitness for purpose and durability for hard outdoor use; and
• Accessibility through mobile apps.

 

I have recorded my findings and applications of the watch after three years below:

 

The Garmin Instinct is a feature rich watch. In addition navigation, the features of this watch are best described through “activities”, “widgets” and “fields”. I spent hours going through all the menus and reorganizing all the different widgets I wanted quick access to.

 

You customize the watch and its interface with several options and choices in “activities”, “widgets” and “fields” . For example, I have set my watch on the watch face to show my heart rate, predicted sun down / moon up, time date and battery remaining. I could have also set it to a mock analog watch face. These options and other options can be inputted into the different “fields” in preset lay outs. 

 

Widgets are other interfaces that can be programed into a list of interfaces that you can scroll through. For example, I set up my watch so one of my buttons scrolls through a digital compass, a summary of my steps and heart rate, weather and moon rise and moon set. These can be re-arranged and other widgets can also be inputted. I opted for only a handful so I can easily cycle through the widgets selected. Other widgets and options include smart phone notifications, music control, calories, timers, alarms, storm warnings and etc.

 

Activities are preset and custom modes you can activate on your watch. They operate until they are turned off. There a long list of preset activities that include but are not limited to, running, cycling, hiking, strength and military freefall. Most of them have GPS enabled.

 

You can create your own activities in which you can select from presets of layouts and then assign widgets or other interfaces to the fields. For example, I created an activity preset called “Night Nav”. The first page I have five widgets four widgets showing GPS signal strength, time of day, sunset and sunrise. The next page shows the current coordinates and distance remaining to waypoint. The third page shows compass and bearing in degrees. The last page I created shows a navigational page like you would see on a Garmin e-trex 10. where you can see your position relative to way points and bread crumbs you have left.  The possibilities for these fields and widgets for activities are too numerous to get into. I spent a whole night setting it to the way I wanted. 

 

The Garmin Instinct watch pairs with two mobile apps made by Garmin.

 

The Garmin Connect App is an interface that allows you to access settings, data and gives you prompts like how you fair in terms of activeness compared to your bracket of sex/age. This is useful and shows you your daily statistics including your sleep statistics (broken down by type of sleep), heart rate, stress, calories burned and etc. Your activities are also displayed with a map of your route and other information like speed, elevation and other details.

 

The Garmin Explore App is supplemental to the watch’s GPS navigation. You can program waypoints on your phone using the app, and those waypoints and routes are uploaded to your watch. You can do these in your watch as well, but the app is more self intuitive. You can also cycle through your waypoints and routes on the explore app a lot more intuitively than you can on the watch. This is useful if you need to punch in more than 2-3 coordinates. The Explore App is also useful administratively because it is convenient when you want to delete waypoints will show you where the waypoint is located. This saves you from guessing  based off of an obscure label you may have provided years ago.

 

This watch was designed with navigation in mind. 

 

One of the main features it has is a true digital compass. The on board compass does not require satellite signal to operate. This is unlike some other GPS units where it is not a true digital compass and the compass requires the user to be moving and connected to a satellite to give an accurate heading (for example the Garmin e-trex 20x). I can confirm the compass is not as accurate when compared to a purpose built base plate compass. Typically I see a variation of 3-5 degrees. But it suits its role as a general navigation aid just fine. It is also important to note that you can set the compass to true north, magnetic north, grid north and custom north (where you set your own declination). This is a good feature and I generally set it to the geographic location after looking it up online from time to time. Even with this it is typically 3-5 degrees off of what my actual compass provides.

 

The GPS performs as you would expect, depending on the types of satellite service you select, your location, and terrain features you have reasonable access to signal. Anecdotally I had the following observations with respect to signal and performance in these settings:

• At home in a two story house – no signal to little signal.
• In the forest under trees, tents and tarps – good signal / best signal most of the time.
• In an open field – good signal / best signal most of the time.
• In a car – good signal / best signal most of the time.
• In urban areas on street – okay signal, sometimes limited, more GPS drift than normal.

You can select conventional GPS or the European / Russian satellites as well (Galileo and GLONASS), this can be useful depending on where you are operating and the elevation of where you are operating. I generally only use GPS to save on battery life.

 

Most GPS usage is done through an activity like hiking or a custom preset. It can be set up so that you are provided with your coordinates, or a visual representation of where you are and where your destination is. It does not have maps that can be uploaded. 

 

Another feature that at anytime, the user create and save a waypoint at their current location by holding down the GPS button. This is convenient when you need to mark a location you want to return to. An example would be if you were on a hike and wanted to stop and leave your rucksack behind to explore unburdened. 

There are many other navigating features that I have not gone into.

 

Before I made my purchase, I read quite a few reviews online. Some users had indicated that their battery life was not as advertised and fell short of 14 days in smart watch mode, and 16 hours in GPS mode. Despite this, many of the reviews qualified that Garmin did honour their warranty and provide them with a new watch that met the specifications advertised.

 

You generally get more battery from having watch faces that are not as active (the analog watchface), dimming backlight, turning off notifications, turning off GLONASS/Galileo, reducing the information recording refresh rate and other features. 

 

With this in mind, I did NOT disable GLONASS/Galileo and I recorded my battery life observations during my first few months using the watch.

 

Feb 9, 2020 at 12:00 am – Full Charge (5/5)

Feb 13, 2020 at 8:00 pm – fiddling with buttons, 30 minute of activity, lots of GPS marking (4/5)

Feb 16, 2020 at 5:00 pm – No activity since Feb 13, 2020 (3/5) 

Feb 18, 2020 at 4:00 pm – No activity since Feb 13, 2020 (2/5)

Feb 20, 2020 at 8:30am  – Before activity (2/5)

Feb 20, 2020 at 8:30 am – 1.5 Hours of GPS activity until (0/5)

Feb 20, 2020 at 2:00pm –  Low battery notice 45 minutes more of GPS activity until dead battery.

 

May 14, 2020 at 12:30 pm – Full Charge (5/5)

May 15, 2020 at 12:50 am – 12 Hours, 20 minutes of GPS activity (0/5)

May 15, 2020 at 1:26 am – Dead battery –  Just smart watch usage from last entry

 

June 19, 2020 at 3:00 pm – Full Charge (5/5)

June 27, 2020 at 2:40 am – after five hours of GPS activity and normal watch usage (2/5)

June 28, 2020 at 9:43pm – after 30 minutes of GPS activity (1/5)

 

Anecdotally, my watch had no trouble reaching 14-16 days in smart watch mode without charge, but appeared to fall short of the 16 hours of GPS battery life from fall charge. This is probably due to the features I have turned on that consume more battery. I suspect if I optimized all the settings I could probably get close to 14-15 hours of GPS usage on one charge.

 

I have used the watch in the following applications:

 

Weekend hikes / camping trips – As my main navigating tool in addition to a hand held compass. I had to be disciplined in turning the GPS activity off to preserve battery. It falls just short of being able to leave the GPS activity on for 8 hours of hiking each day without charging.  Enabling the less accurate Ultratrac feature would probably be able to a few days of hiking at 8 hours each day, but I have refrained from using the same. Whenever possible, I provide the watch with a bit of charging from a compatible battery bank to get through a weekend.

 

A day hike / night hike – Same as above, used with a hand held compass as main navigating tool. The battery life was more than sufficient to leave on for the whole hike. The tactical edition has the lower backlight setting that does not wash out night vision. The watch also features a stealth mode which mutes the backlight to the lowest setting and turns off the heart rate sensor which would otherwise we a flashing green at the back of the watch. This is a great quality of life feature for when noise and light discipline is required.

 

Coordinate Quick Reference / Advance Party / Leader’s Recce – This watch really shines when it is used to mark/reference waypoints and not used as the main navigating tool. It is very convenient. I have used it to quickly mark points of interest that I can return to with friends. For example, I have used the Garmin Instinct to approach a target area during the day setting waypoints  just short of my destination, only to return at night to the same way points with full context and benefit of seeing things during the day.  When reporting back to my peers, I am able to refer back to the waypoints I have marked along with their coordinates for debriefing/determining follow on actions. It is also very useful for having your coordinates readily available so you can put the same over the radio.

 

As a fitness tool – I have used the watch to track my runs around the neighbourhood while it records my heart rate, speed and performance. The watch and Connect App generate a report after each activity with insights as to improvements or shortcomings. The watch is also compatible with the MyFitnessPal App which allows you to manually record calories consumed from food and drink. It is also compatible with Strava, another popular app that records running/hiking/biking data.

 

As an everyday smart watch – This watch also excels as a ordinary smart watch. It has a reasonably long battery life that doesn’t need to be charged for about two weeks when no activities are done. It has quick access to timers, alarms, weather and smart phone notifications. It can even respond to texts as you would expect. 

I was attracted to this watch over the other tactical variants like the Tactix Bravo and Tactix Charlie because it was significantly cheaper and the polymer construction was more resistant to wear and tear. Most photographs of Tactix watches I saw for sale second hand had plenty of dings and scars. The polymer construction of the Garmin Instinct is tough and has no material scars despite the hard use I have asked of it.

 

I have carelessly banged the watch into doorways moving at full speed countless times. I only cringed the first few times because I was concerned the watch would be damaged. I have since got past that as I concluded that the watch can withstand more impact than other watches. 

There was also no issue with using this in salt water and in hot springs. 

 

The only item that failed on the watch was that one of the strap keepers on the watchband broke after being snagged on something. 

 

The Garmin Instinct has a respectable battery life in smart watch mode, but I wish it had enough for about 48 hours of GPS usage so I can get through a weekend of non-stop activity. It should be noted though, that at the time of writing, there are two solar models that with the right conditions and sufficient lux can reach up to 38 hours and 48 hours (Garmin Instinct Solar and Garmin Instinct 2 Solar).

 

Some users have reported that the silicon watch band irritates their wrist and produces rashes. I have experienced this but it generally went away after a few months. In my mind, my skin probably got used to it.

 

A final concern is the security / data integrity of the watch/apps it is paired with. In 2020 Garmin was compromised by ransomware which disabled the functionality of the connect app and Garmin accounts. This was a minor inconvenience, but it suggests that the information recorded by your app/watch may not always be secure. 

 

I use my Garmin Instinct Tactical daily. It currently performs all the tasks that I need it to and more. I wish the battery life was a little better under GPS activities, but I have been able to work around that by using it judiciously. I am strongly considering the Garmin Instinct Tactical Solar and the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar. 

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 Edit December 2024: I wrote this article in 2023 but it had failed to upload. I have since obtained the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar and am pleased to report that it has increased battery life and the novelty of charging via solar.