Watch & Brew

Garmin

Garmin Instinct Solar, Tactical Edition

In the collection

A Garmin Instinct Tactical with a sage green case and strap, its monochrome screen showing the time and a battery gauge.

Every other watch here tells the time. This one does that as an afterthought, somewhere behind a battery gauge reading forty-five days and a GPS chip it will happily leave running all weekend. The bezel says SOLAR and the case back agrees, so some of those forty-five days are coming straight off the wrist in daylight.

It belongs on the site for the same reason the Timex does. A collection that only admits the watches that flatter it is not a record of what you wear, and this is what goes on when the day involves being outside for a long time and not caring what is on your wrist.

The transflective screen is the part worth pointing at: it gets more readable in direct sun, which is the exact opposite of every bright display made since.

Specification

Reference
Instinct Solar — Tactical Edition
Year
Not recorded yet
Case
Fibre-reinforced polymer, sage green
Movement
Quartz, rechargeable — GPS smartwatch, solar assisted
Display
Monochrome transflective, with the round sub-window at twelve
Water resistance
100 m, per the case back
Standards
MIL-STD-810G — thermal, shock and water, per the case back
Case back
Stamped INSTINCT SOLAR, MADE IN TAIWAN
Strap
Sage green silicone

Record

  1. Photographed for this site.