Wearables are broadly classified into fitness bands and smartwatches, but I’m having a hard time putting a label on its latest Instinct crossover. Garmin calls it the Rugged GPS Multisport Smartwatch, and it seems fitting. Part of the Instinct series, the Crossover is a device that stands out from the herd – both visually as well as because of the features it brings to the table… or in this case, your wrist. Priced at Rs 55,990, it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted or light-pocketed, and requires some serious commitment beyond its drop-dead gorgeous looks. I try to summarize its pluses and minuses below.
what is good
- Right from the start, the Instinct crossover impresses with its looks. Of course, you might not like it if you don’t like chunky watches, but otherwise, it has a great Casio G-Shock vibe that’s undeniable. The crossover is actually a hybrid device that features physical watch hands placed over a digital display. The hands, along with the time markers, are luminescent and can be seen from over a mile away. Whichever way you swing it, it’s hard to ignore the Instinct crossover’s bold looks when sitting on one of the wrists nearby. Plus, it’s a design that shouldn’t look out of place no matter where you are – in the club, or inside the boardroom. Of course, it feels right outside the house, which is its natural habitat anyway.
- The Instinct Crossover is quite rough and tough and inspires confidence. Now I usually treat review tools with kid gloves, and avoid situations where they’re likely to be exposed to rough use. But the Crossover is designed to handle it, and its solid build made me feel confident enough to wear it on a recent trip abroad. It conforms to MIL-STD-810 military-grade standards as far as durability is concerned and is impervious to rain, dust, extreme temperatures, shocks, high altitude, and low air pressure as well. It is waterproof up to 100 meters.
- Despite its rugged build, the watch is surprisingly light and can be worn for long periods of time without weighing down your wrist. The straps are quite comfortable and do not cause any irritation on the skin.
- Thanks to the upgraded chip and support for multiple positioning systems, GPS tracking on the Instinct crossover is very accurate. In addition to tracking your outdoor runs and bike rides, the device offers advanced features like Trackback, which lets you revisit your steps. There’s also LiveTrack, a feature that lets emergency contacts track your location when you’re out on a run.
- While I’m on the subject of security features, there are others. There’s the Assist feature that lets you request help from your emergency contacts directly from the watch, and Incident Detection feature that uses sensors in the watch to determine if you’ve been in an accident during an outdoor activity , and alerts emergency contacts via SMS or email. Event detection can be turned on or off on a per-activity basis, although I really can’t understand why anyone would want to turn it off.
- There’s support for more than 30 indoor and outdoor sports modes, and everything from skiing, swimming, hiking, rowing and muscle strength training to basics like running and cycling are included. The health features include everything you’d expect – steps, calories, distance, heart rate, blood oxygen, stress and sleep. While most of these are fairly accurate in terms of the data captured, the displayed blood oxygen levels seem a bit finicky to me, though I wouldn’t really count that as a deal breaker.
- As far as the smart features are concerned, the watch displays notifications from a paired smartphone, with the analog hands automatically moving to the 9.15 time position so that you can read the digital display without any interruptions. There’s no way to respond to those notifications though, at least not when the watch is paired with an iPhone. Other features include standards such as weather, calendar, etc.
- The watch syncs to a smartphone using the Garmin Connect app, and you’ll also need ConnectIQ to download more watch faces, apps, and more. While I find the Connect app to be quite loaded and a bit overwhelming at first glance (more on that later), it displays a lot of data and trends on your physical activity… something that fitness enthusiasts will love. Can be used for, training for marathon or others who are generally interested in more insight.
- I think the battery life is pretty good. On paper, the Instinct crossover is rated to deliver up to 28 days, and they even have a solar variant (costing around Rs 6k more) that can last even longer . In real-life use though, with daily 30-minute GPS-based workouts in use, paired constantly with a phone and tons of apps throwing up notifications, the Crossover lasted me a week at the latest. Switching to intermittent syncing, this can stretch to 10-14 days, which is great. One thing to note is that if you have a lot of apps that push notifications to the watch, battery life is negatively affected as the watch hands move to the 9.15 time position for each notification. So restricting notifications can be a way to extend battery life.
- It’s also worth mentioning that since this is a hybrid smartwatch, the personalization options in terms of watch faces etc. are pretty limited, at least compared to regular lifestyle smartwatches. Just something to keep in mind.
what is not good
- The Garmin Instinct Crossover doesn’t let you store and play music from local storage, which seems like a miss considering it’s a premium smartwatch. It does come with music controls though, so you can control playback on the paired phone.
- The Garmin Instinct Crossover doesn’t feature a touchscreen, and the 0.9 x 0.9-inch monochrome reflective display, while easy to read in bright light, feels a little cramped for all the information it can display. Your interaction with the watch is via the five buttons on the side – three on the left, and two on the right. The nice thing is that the button-based interaction allows you to use the watch with gloves, but it’s not as intuitive as using a touchscreen and there’s a bit of a learning curve involved before you get used to the operation.
- The Garmin Connect app, as mentioned earlier, feels a bit dense and can be overwhelming for first-time users. It packs in a lot of data, which is both a good and a bad thing, depending on how you feel about it. However, it does take some time to get used to where each function, option and setting is located.. both in the app as well as on the watch itself.
Decision
The Garmin Instinct Crossover comes with a sticker price of Rs 55,990, and if you pay Rs 6,000 more, you can get the Solar variant that promises longer battery life. To put things in perspective, Rs 6,000 can get you a decent budget fitness watch these days. Of course, it’s not very relevant here. However, one thing is clear that the Garmin Instinct Crossover is not for everyone. If you’re into outdoor sports and consider yourself a serious fitness buff, it might be worth investing in. There’s no real competition for it except for the much more expensive Apple Watch Ultra. I haven’t tried it, so I can’t say how good or bad it is in comparison, but it seems like Apple has a long way to go before it catches up with Garmin in terms of adventure watches. The other day, while window shopping, I stopped outside a watch store window and saw a tagline that read “Looks good, tells time”. I couldn’t help but wonder how even basic fitness bands can do more than this. Applying this to the Garmin Instinct crossover, I think this watch does a lot more than your typical premium smartwatch, and its capabilities can even help you push your limits if you’re up for it.
Editor’s rating: 4/5
Pros:
- good looks, rugged construction
- comfortable and light
- Loaded with health, fitness and safety features
- solid battery life
Shortcoming:
- may be too heavy for some
- no touchscreen
- might not appeal to everyone
- treasured
