Garmin Instinct 2X Solar, Rugged GPS Smartwatch, Built-in Flashlight, Solar Charging, Multi-Band GNSS, Graphite

This is the perfect activity watch/smartwatch for me. It can’t call or text from the watch itself, but those are features I rarely used on my Apple Watch anyway. It’ll still show you if you have a text, call, or any other notification but is geared toward being more of a great activity watch than a phone on your wrist.What’s great about this is how jam-packed with features it is. They took a ton of stuff that previously was only available in the fenix and epix watches and brought it to this instinct 2x solar. It has sleep tracking, activity tracking (with customizable screens for each activity), training readiness, heart rate, vo2 max, blood oxygen level, etc. Most apps charge money for the amount of detail this watch and app give you about your day to day and activities, but there’s no subscription on this. It’s all freeAnd it constantly checks heart rate. My old Apple Watch would check periodically but you could never glance down and see what the current hr was without tapping on the icon and waiting. With this watch it constantly is reading heart rate and keeps a graph showing the history (which you can have show on the watch face if you want).The battery is awesome, something like 40 days with how I have mine set up. And the solar charging actually works. I’ve heard that past versions it didn’t help all too much, but this one it really makes a difference. I added 2 days to my battery life from just a few hours in direct sunlight.The only places where this watch is lesser are the display and the navigation. If detailed maps and touch screen/oled screen are important to you, then go with the fenix or epix models. The navigation on this watch can be useful as it includes the trackback feature where it’ll guide you back on the path you came in on, line-of-sight tracking (keeps you on path if you have to go like down in a valley or around an obstacle where you might lose sense of direction), and you can even pre-load courses to follow later. However, it’s a pretty bare-bones navigation map. It has a pointer for your watch and a line showing the path and that’s about it. The epix and fenix watches have nicer displays, color, touchscreen, and more detailed maps which help a lot with navigation but you also sacrifice a significant amount of battery life for those features. And they’re double the price of this one.All in all, I think this is the perfect middle point for a watch. It has all the features from the top of the line ones that I need, along with crazy battery life and a decent price. If you don’t need detailed navigation but want great gps and activity tracking at half the cost of some of those other watches, this is a great option.