Garmin Instinct 2S Solar - Review 2023

Garmin has a wide range of smartwatches and “smart-ish” watches.  Some of their lower-end watches are barely water resistant; they also have higher-end options that cost even more than the Apple Watch Ultra.  Their middle-of-the-road Instinct 2S Solar watch stands as an excellent smart watch with a good water resistance rating and plenty of the features you’d want from a smartwatch but comes in several hundred dollars cheaper than the newest smartwatch released from the major players in the market.

Through downloading an app on compatible smartphones, the Instinct 2S Solar can do many of the exact same things you’d do on a smartwatch from the exact same company as your phone.  The Instinct can receive texts and alerts, use a contactless pay system with participating providers, activate safety features, display events from your smartphone’s calendar, and more!

The watch also carries a plethora of health-tracking related features such as heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep score, to name just a few.  In the exercise and athletics areas, the watch can track all kinds of activities, exercises, and athletics.  Whether you want to track your daily runs, your daily swims, or your yoga workouts, Garmin’s Instinct 2S Solar can do it.

The battery life is also far superior to other smartwatches, partly due to its ability to use solar charging, but significantly due to a potential downside for some, which is the monochromatic display.  It works great in sunlight, but that means only one color.  For users that don’t mind sacrificing that color, the battery life can last much longer than most smartwatches.  Turning on battery-saving modes, capitalizing on solar power, and limiting use to certain features can extend the battery life of the watch from less than a day to several weeks!

Its water resistance is comparable to the other smartwatches on the list, though it doesn’t boast the certified recreational diver’s rating that the Apple Watch Ultra does.  That said, if you’re spending less time in the water and more time on the land off-the-grid as a part of your recreational routine, the Garmin Instinct S2 Solar is a great smartwatch for a decent price.