Hands on: Garmin Instinct 3 review: Instinctively a winner

Garmin Instinct 3: One minute review

As I begin our Garmin Instinct 3 review testing, I know this watch has a lot to live up to. After all, the Garmin Instinct 2 received a rare, coveted five stars in our official review. With a variety of sizes (from 40mm to the Instinct 2X Solar at 50mm), solar-powered and non-solar versions, a smorgasbord of fun colorways, and – my personal favorite – a hybrid Garmin Instinct Crossover, there truly was an Instinct 2 for everyone.

The Instinct 3 runs along very much the same lines, with a selection of cool colorways, a variety of sizes, and two key screen options. The smallest 40mm size is called the Instinct E, and is most reminiscent of the Instinct 2: there’s only the MIP (Memory in Pixel) option with no solar charging and no flashlight. In 45mm and 50mm sizes, you can choose between a bright, smartwatch AMOLED screen and a classic Garmin MIP screen equipped with Garmin’s Power Glass solar charge technology, offering ‘unlimited’ battery life in bright enough conditions, if you’re out and about with it exposed to sunlight for several hours.

It only really makes a big difference during endurance exercise on sunny days, when it can slow down the GPS mode’s drain on the battery life, but it’s nice to have. We got the AMOLED 45mm version to test in its cool, minty Neotropic colorway, but I do have a soft spot for the digital watch-esque MIP screens that the best Garmin watches used to use as standard. As is, this feels more like a Garmin Forerunner 265, with limited map capabilities, although the case design is still stereotypically Instinct.

The Instinct series has never offered the full-color topographical maps more premium watches in Garmin’s range have, and I was wondering if the AMOLED screen meant we’d finally see topographical maps on an Instinct, but there are no maps or touchscreen here. I suppose Garmin has to distinguish between the ranges and keep the Instinct’s price down somehow. I have recorded two workouts with the Instinct 3 so far – a run and a boxing session – and it handled both with accuracy, and was as intuitive to use as the Instinct 2. It was easy for me to replace my daily Instinct Crossover with this with barely three minutes of setup, seamlessly taking over with my sleep tracking, Body Battery and Training Readiness scores from my old watch.

Overall? As a pre-existing Instinct fan, I’m loving it. It’s fast, it’s bright, it looks fun, and most importantly, it’s useful. Yes, it’s chunky and plasticky, and if you don’t like the old design, you won’t like this one either. But it’s not a sleek metal communications tool: it’s a toy, and it’s best played with outside.

Garmin Instinct 3: Price and availability

• Instinct E starts at $299 / £259 / AU$549
• 45mm Instinct 3 starts at $399 / £349 / AU$829.
• 50mm Instinct 3 starts at $449 / £429 / AU$929

The Garmin Instinct 3 is available now on Garmin’s website and other retailers, slightly confusingly with five different prices, depending on which model you pick.

The cheapest Instinct E is available now for $299 / £259 / AU$549. The 45mm watch starts at $399 / £349 / AU$729 for the MIP Solar screen, rising to $449 / £389 / AU$829 for the AMOLED screen option. The largest 50mm watch with MIP Solar screen is available from $449 / £429 / AU$829, rising to $499 / £449 / AU$929 for the AMOLED screen option.

Garmin Instinct 3: Specifications

Below are the specifications for our review unit, the 45mm AMOLED Instinct 3.

Garmin Instinct 3: Design

• Chunky polymer casing
• Choice of screens
• Intuitive, unchanged Garmin layout

The Instinct 3 builds closely on the design legacy of the Garmin Instinct 2, and the casing looks mostly the same. It’s got loads of colors, it’s roughly the same thickness, roughly the same weight (with just a gram of difference between the 45mm Instinct 3 versus the 45mm Instinct 2), and it’s still got five buttons and similar bezel indentations. The main differences are the metal accents, the new AMOLED screen option, and the flashlight, neither of the latter are available on the smallest Instinct E.

The new AMOLED screen is clear and bright, and seems at first glance to have a faster refresh rate than slightly older AMOLEDs like the Garmin Epix Pro 2 and Garmin Forerunner 965, although I’ll have to confirm that’s the case in my full review. I like the default watch face layout, although this is easily changed, and navigating around the watch with the five-button control interface is intuitive for me (a regular Garmin user) even if my Apple Watch-wearing fitness writer, Stephen Warwick, was offended at the lack of touchscreen.

While Garmin’s Forerunner, Venu and Fenix watches have adopted the hybrid of buttons and touchscreen, it’s another feature missing from the Instinct 3 to keep it affordable. The same could be said of the chunky ‘fiber-reinforced polymer’ (read that as ‘thick plastic’) casing, with slim metal accents the only thing separating it from being too childish for some users. Metal screws give it a rugged edge.

Functionally, the heart rate and skin temperature sensor array has been given a slight upgrade, with the watch now sporting the more accurate Elevate Gen 5 instead of Gen 4. The universal Garmin proprietary charger remains the same, only with a newer USB-C cable instead of USB-A, as is standard with most Garmins now.

Garmin Instinct 3: Features

• Almost all of Garmin’s wellness features
• New torch is useful
• Basic directional maps

For the uninitiated, opening a Garmin watch and scrolling down with the ‘down’ button provides a list of wellness, navigational, and quality-of-life widgets. Outdoor-focused widgets range from the weather, sunrise and sunset times, and a compass shortcut to your sleep tracking information. Wellness stuff includes your last completed workout, sleep, Body Battery and your Training Readiness score. As a watch tailored to the great outdoors, all the functionalities you expect can be found here and the list can be customized as usual to suit your needs. Climbing a mountain? Stick the altimeter at the top. A keen marathon runner? Choose the ‘Race Calendar’ widget.

It’s fun, intuitive and acts like the watchOS 11 widget stack, but less flashy. I found most of the usual Garmin stuff there, but some premium features like Endurance Score and Hill Score were missing. They would have been nice to have. As previously mentioned, there’s no topographical maps functionality either, just basic directional guidance, but there have never been maps on an Instinct watch, and most of the time directions are all you need. You can, however, still retrace your steps with the ‘TracBack’ feature, along with a slew of other navigational tools.

Hardware-wise, the new torch is very useful: it comes in four intensities and a less dazzling red option, just like the torch on the Garmin Fenix 8. I’ve already used the red light on an evening run and the white light to help me stumble my way to the bathroom at six am. In the morning, you’ll get a daily digest, Garmin’s ‘Morning Report’ detailing information on your sleep, the weather, your Training Readiness, and a motivational message. Garmin’s been doing this for a while and it’s refined the feature over the last couple of years. Its long battery life means you won’t shy away from wearing it to bed.

• Our performance section, final scores and verdict will be added after around two weeks of testing – watch this space!