Garmin announce the expansion of its solar charging technology to the Instinct, fēnix 6 and 6S and tactix Delta adventure and multisport smartwatches.
Building on the success of the Garmin fēnix 6X – Pro Solar, the first solar charging multisport watch, these new editions offer a significantly increased battery life and new purpose-built functionality mountain biking, climbing activities and surfing.
Garmin fēnix 6 Series – Solar Editions
The fēnix 6S Pro Solar and fēnix 6 Pro Solar are the newest editions to the multisport GPS smartwatch line. Features include Garmin Power Glass™ solar charging lens and a customisable Power Manager mode, using the power of the sun to stay on and remain performance-ready for weeks.
fēnix 6 Silver with Black Band fēnix 6 Slate Grey with Black Band fēnix 6 Back with Black Band fēnix 6 Titanium Carbon Grey
The usual training features, onboard mapping, music streaming are all there, with some new activity profiles including surf, mountain bike and indoor climb.
Mountain Bike
The new “Grit and Flow” activity allows users to track the details of every ride with mountain biking metrics, plus specialised measurements that rate trail difficulty and how smoothly the rider descends, giving a unique score to beat next time.
Indoor Climb
The indoor climb activity profile allows climbers to track their sessions at indoor facilities. Metrics include the number of routes, vertical distance climbed, climbing time, difficultly of each route and more.
Garmin fēnix 6S Pro Solar
The fēnix 6S Pro Solar battery performance in smartwatch mode is up to nine days indoors and up to 10.5 days with sufficient solar exposure, while battery performance for the fēnix 6 Pro Solar in smartwatch mode is up to 14 days indoors and up to 16 days with sufficient solar exposure.
fēnix 6S Silver with Black Band fēnix 6S Light Gold with Shale Grey Band fēnix 6S Light Gold with Light Sand Band fēnix 6S Amethyst Steel with Shale Grey Band
The fēnix 6 Solar Editions also include Advanced Sleep Monitoring, which provides a detailed breakdown of user’s light, deep and REM sleep stages as well as Pulse Ox and respiration data. TopoActive Europe maps for outdoor adventures, ski maps for over 2,000 ski resorts worldwide and over 41,000 golf courses are also included out the box. The fēnix 6 series features Garmin Pay™ and on-device music storage of up to 2,000 songs, allowing users to sync playlists from several of the most popular music services, no phone required.
Garmin Instinct Solar
Instinct Solar offers an increased battery life, updated bold designs and new activity profiles, including two new activity-specific Instinct editions, Instinct Solar – Surf Edition and Instinct Solar – Tactical Edition.
Instinct Solar Graphite Instinct Solar Flame Red Instinct Solar Sunburst Instinct Solar Orchid Instinct Solar Tidal Blue
Instinct Solar can provide unlimited battery life with sufficient solar exposure in Battery Saver mode. Using Expedition Mode with sufficient solar exposure, Instinct Solar provides increased GPS functionality while still delivering over two months of battery life. The Instinct Solar series also boasts up to 24 days in smartwatch mode indoors and more than 50 days with sufficient solar exposure. Users can make these battery-extending changes on the fly through Instinct Solar’s incorporation of Power Manager.
In addition to Instinct’s already robust outdoor activity and health tracking, Instinct Solar now also includes Pulse Ox2 to gauge how well an individual’s body is absorbing oxygen and Body Battery to optimise body energy reserves through health monitoring metrics.
Garmin tactix Delta Solar Edition
The tactix Delta Solar Edition is the fourth generation of the tactix family. Built to military standards (MIL-STD-810), the tactix Delta – Solar Edition offers an extended battery life and a Power Manager mode able to provide up to 21 days indoors and up to 24 days with sufficient solar exposure.
Features on the tactix Delta Solar Edition include stealth mode, which disables location sharing and wireless connectivity, and a kill switch to wipe all user memory. It has an always-on 1.4” display, scratch-resistant sapphire lens, black DLC-coated steel bezel, black PVD-coated steel rear cover and all-new military-inspired black tactical nylon QuickFit® band with reinforced stitching and exposed black metal hardware.
With specialised tactical features as well as mapping, music, advanced training and the same smart features from the fēnix 6 family, the tactix Delta Solar Edition is built for demanding field use and everyday wear.
The Instinct Solar, fēnix 6 Series Solar Editions and tactix Delta Solar Edition are available now. The complete line of Garmin solar charging smartwatches also includes the fēnix 6X – Pro Solar and quatix® 6X Solar. Suggested retail prices start at £349.99for Instinct Solar, £649.99for fēnix 6 Series – Solar Editions and £999.99for the tactix Delta – Solar Edition. For more information, visit www.garmin.com.
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Coool! Thanks for that. For something seriously tough there is also the following from Casio G-Shock…
https://g-shock.co.uk/gpr-b1000-1er
cheers. happy trails
“sufficient solar exposure” – I’m guessing that’s not under my sleeve and/or on a night ride, i.e., a fair number of my rides 🙂 We’ll see how my solar watch (not G-Shock, not at that price) fares.
It’s good to see more solar things coming out; the less we rely on disposables the better.
I bought an Instinct Solar last Friday, very satisfied with it so far. If I had a gripe it is that the screen is quite small which I presume is to accommodate the solar panel surrounding it. It is about 2/3 the size of the screen on my Garmin 310xt, the viewable screen size is 23mm x 23mm. The size means that it isn’t to chunky and can be worn as day to day watch, something I would never do with the 310xt. However the b&w screen is easy to read, white characters on a black background, even without my reading glasses. Loads of functionality, once you work out how to find your way around and links very nicely to my Samsung s8 phone, all the notifications go to the watch as well. One thing I need to watch is the drain on my phone battery while I am out which may be due to the constant connectivity to the watch. On Sunday I fully charged my phone before going out for a 4 hour ride with a 1 car journey each way, when I got home the phone was down to 10%! I also use the Life360 tracking app so my wife can see where I am in case of emergency (a hang over from solo rides during lock down) and I know that this app seems to be battery hungry, so coupled with the watch may be why the phoned drained so quickly. I will keep an eye on this. Can’t comment much on what difference the solar power makes, but fully charged the watch showed 22 days worth of power, after 4 days with being out in sunshine for 5 or 6 hours each day it is now showing 20 days worth of power.