Garmin Instinct, thoughts and options please.

Loving my orange one!

Anyone know how to disable barometer in certain apps?

Surfing and kiteboarding produce some bonkers elevation data!!

Good to hear, not used a smart watch though do use a Garmin 130 on road bike

anyone got that NEWSU code to work ?

It expired a couple of days ago.

They are back at Millets at £220 with 15% of use ICE15.

I took mine off Thursday morning as I went Christmas partying and put it back on this morning expecting to charge it but no – an empty battery indicator but its plugging away!

Arrived this afternoon, seems pretty easy to setup. Only bit I can’t work so far is seeing email as a widget. I get mail when it comes in on gmail and can read then, but there doesn’t appear to be a mail widget to view later, like there is with text messages. Any pointers ?

Orange (red) one arrived the other day. Couple of runs with it, just one niggle.. incoming calls only show the phone number, not the contact name. Same for you?

^ I haven’t noticed as have had notifications switched off most of the time, as been at work anyway, with laptop and mobile to hand.

Anyone worked out what the ‘track me’ feature is all about ?

Nope, haven’t had chance to really get to grips with much of it. The reason I bought it was for the breadcrumb trails – I’ve pushed a course to it and try it out tomorrow – though I suppose it’ll work like any non-mapping Garmin, ie fine when there’s an obvious turn coming up, but 50/50 for forks so you end up running a fair way up the wrong one until you realise you wanted the other. Still, better than stopping and digging the phone out.

IIRC, only displaying the incoming number and not the name is how my 520 does it too, though it does show the name for Whatsapps.

Mine shows the callers name. iPhone SE if it makes any difference.
The Bluetooth connection has been perfect compared to my Edge 25 which was 50/50 at best.
Would be nice if the ‘move’ prompt was disabled when driving, I guess that would require the phone to tell it I’m driving when it connects to the hands free kit. In all reality I’ll probably just turn it off as usually if I’m not moving around, it’s because I have no choice.

I found it for Android, mine was the same.

In settings go to app permissions, contacts then you see the list of apps which have permission to view the contacts. Turn Connect to on. Voila, names appear on the Instinct.

The strap is a bit fiddly, isn’t it, with the second band needing to locate into the strap itself – keep pulling hairs out my arm !

I’ve got a nice navy blue quickfit strap off Amazon for £12… it looks great against the orange face and seems more comfortable than the official Garmin quickfit strap…..

Didn’t realise the Instinct had the Quickfit connection, thanks

Thanks Kryton, sorted 👌

Followed a course on my lunchtime 10k today, for the first time. All the widgets are different in course mode which is annoying. COuldn’t see my km pace. Back to the settings!

@iainc

The supplied strap isn’t quickfit.. just pop out the pins, take the supplied strap off… refit the pins alone and then it’s ready for the quickfit strap. I’ve got 2 official Garmin quickfit straps and 2 Amazon jobs; the Amazon ones are more comfortable…..

ah, thanks for that, will have a look, cheers

Santa came good and I got my Instinct today. I likes it, not overly bulky and seems relativity easy to use. Although it took a while to turn the “Move” notice off.

A question for other Instinct owners-

I went for a run the other night and my elevation went a bit scatty. It had me drop below sea level 2 or 3 times and as a result added about 600ft to my 400ft run. Do I need to turn something on or off? Or is it just a random glitch?

TIA

Check the altitude is being autocalibrated with the gps. Even with that on, I can get weird readings if the weather is changing (low pressure). There might be a way to correct the elevation data (to a base DTM) in the web version of Garmin connect – I don’t think that will also fix associated stats though, eg calories burned etc.

I’ve pushed a course to it and try it out tomorrow

Probably a silly question, but how do you do this? The user’s guide is really rubbish 🙁

2 Amazon jobs; the Amazon ones are more comfortable

Quite a few on Amazon…which brand did you go for mikertroid?

Hello instinct owners….

Quick question – if you use the GPS + galileo option during activities (as opposed to purely gps), do you find the battery life terrible?

Garmin say the battery should last 16 hours in gps mode. when I tried with GPS +galileo it only lasted something like 5 hours, just wondering if this is to be expected or a bug in the garmin firmware.

In gps mode it looks like it will go the full 16 hours. I was expecting some increase in power consumption using galileo, but not 3 times the power usage.

It is running the latest firmware (v2.80)

EDIT – stupid question

if you use the GPS + galileo option during activities (as opposed to purely gps), do you find the battery life terrible?

Didnt think Galileo was fully operational yet? I use GPS + GLONASS on my Instinct and hadn’t noticed any battery life issues with that

^ What he said.

Didnt think Galileo was fully operational yet?

not all the satellites are running yet, I think there’s something like 25 out of a total of 30 up and running.

I wouldnt have expected a lower number of satellites to affect the battery life on the impact though, but maybe if it was spending most of its time trying to find a signal it might.

Will switch to gPS + glonass and see how it goes.

What software are you all using to load new courses into your instincts. Garmin connect appears to only work for roads, it doesn’t show footpaths or bridleways. Thanks

Garmin explore app on android seems OK for creating courses to follow footpaths etc, but I havent used it extensively to see if its riddled with the usual garmin bugs.

Duh…

Haven’t created any courses yet, but I have downloaded some as GPX from Wikiloc, Strava etc. They’ve worked fine, forest/mountain tracks, and across open ground (no path).
I don’t have Garmin Express (or whatever it’s called), so upload to COnnect website, then sync to the watch using the phone app.

Talking of sync, it often doesn’t. Have to turn off the watch, restart the phone, eventually it syncs, though real time HR is displayed in the app. COuld equally be a phone bug.

Have to turn off the watch

Sorry, can’t help re syncing but, dumb question, how do you turn off the watch?

On a side note fwiw, I’ll add i prefer the cheap replacement straps…they are slightly more stretchy than the genuine straps and ive found this helps keeping the watch in place on your wrist

Top left button press and hold then gps button to confirm

Cheers plus 👍

Did anyone one consider the Vivoactive 3 over the instinct? Considering both but the £45 price increase of the Instinct for similar features isn’t really convincing me.

Vivo active 3 has more features/functionality than instinct, payment features, vo2 max estimates, colour screen etc.

But instinct has better battery life (looks like it will last twice as long as vivo active 3), is tougher and more water resistant than vivo active3

And obviously there is a styling difference.

vo2 max estimates

Available on the phone app from the Instinct data.

looks like it will last twice as long as vivo active 3

12-14 days for me.

Cant find the boring colour one for cheap at the moment though so prce difference is close to £100. Millets have the orange for £220 but want to be able to wear it for work and that is a bit bright. So it is almost full retail which is £100 more expensive than a Vivoactive 3.

Tried the Vivoactive 3 but it isn’t great. The touchscreen isn’t ideal so thinking the instinct would be better. Do the button get pressed when flexing the wrist when riding at all or are they suitably protected?

I’ve caught the lap button a couple of times (winter gloves) but they are pretty well protected.

Touch screen would be far worse IMO.

I really like my Instinct, it’s my daily watch and my phone is always on silent now.