After I first examined a solar-powered Garmin a number of years in the past, the photo voltaic characteristic prolonged battery life by just a few days. Now, each solar-powered Garmin I’ve examined has lasted over two weeks. As I used to be about to depart for a two-week household journey to the seashore for a long-awaited trip, I naturally donned the brand new Garmin Photo voltaic Intuition 2S.
This newest solar-powered model of Garmin’s fashionable Backcountry Intuition sequence is smaller and has a sharper show than earlier ones. Extra importantly, I did not must cost it for 21 days. That amounted to a few weeks of a number of GPS-tracked actions per day, together with working, swimming, mountaineering, snorkeling, paddleboarding, and boogie boarding. If you happen to worth correct backcountry monitoring and do not must cost a battery, that is the perfect journey watch available on the market.
enjoyable within the solar
Photograph: Garmin
The Apple Watch has constantly dominated the smartwatch and health tracker marketplace for a number of years. However there’s one space the place it simply cannot compete: battery life. If you happen to’re busy sufficient to need a smartwatch, you are busy sufficient to seek out having to cost it day-after-day (typically greater than as soon as) annoying.
The Intuition 2S Photo voltaic makes use of a Energy Glass face to transform the solar’s power (measured in lux) into battery energy. If you happen to’re the type of nerd who likes to test your photo voltaic depth and the way a lot daylight your watch is uncovered to per day, you possibly can scroll the watch face to seek out that data from the earlier six hours, in addition to different helpful data. at-a-glance stats like notifications and step rely.
It is type of enjoyable to look at your photo voltaic depth go up and down whenever you’re biking, working, or sitting within the shade. However all I actually wanted to know was that with a number of direct daylight, the Intuition 2S Photo voltaic had fairly a little bit of energy. In my months of testing, I obtained as much as three weeks on a single cost. That is lower than Garmin’s 50-day declare, however excess of virtually every other health tracker. I by no means needed to put it in energy saving mode, which might have prolonged battery life by lowering the brightness of the watch face and disconnecting the watch from the paired cellphone. Three weeks is a lot of time.
That is significantly wonderful as a result of the Intuition 2S Photo voltaic is far smaller than the earlier one. Garmin Intuition watches that I examined. The case measures 40mm, virtually 5mm smaller than the frankly enormous authentic Intuition; it is about the identical dimension as me Apple Watch Collection 7. It nonetheless has a pixel-memory monochrome show, but it surely’s noticeably sharper to me than its predecessor. Even with a 1.2 inch display, I can clearly learn my notifications.
beat the warmth
Photograph: Garmin
Since its debut in 2018, the Intuition has been certainly one of Garmin’s prime sellers. It’s now out there in photo voltaic and non-solar variations; completely different particular editions, together with a tactical model with, uh, “stealth mode”; and a number of the craziest colours on the sports activities watch market. Totally different colours can be found for various editions, so Garmin now has a “design your individual” software on its web site to make sure you get the Intuition you need.
