Garmin Instinct 3 Overview

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Video Transcript

All right, so I'm happy to proclaim that we finally have the Instinct 3 watches on the T.REX site. Now in some ways this doesn't feel like a massive upgrade for those of you that have the Instinct 2, but there are a couple of differences where they brought things a little bit closer together. In the past the Instinct 2 and the Instinct 2x were different sizes of the same watch, but they actually had very different feature sets. Now the different sizes of the different watches have basically the same capabilities.

They have flashlights, they have solar capability, they have basically the same stuff inside, but slightly more battery life and a slightly bigger screen on the bigger one, kind of like you would expect, and so you just pick whichever one of these you want based on the size of watch that you want. Simple, straightforward, easy, and as far as improvements go over the Instinct 2, the solar panel is now a little more efficient, gets you a little more power, and then the brains inside also a little bit more efficient save you a little bit of power. So I think that the big one here, if you were getting the amount of sunshine that you should normally get like as a human being, you could have this GPS turned on in expedition mode and still have basically unlimited battery power provided by the solar panel here. So the solar Instinct 3s are just going to give you more power for the same amount of sun and increased capability with the GPS devices as well. More GPS channels, more GPS positioning systems available to you, or GNSS satellite systems available to you, and just a little bit more power efficient.

However, Garmin has now complicated things a little bit by also providing an OLED version of the Instinct 3, which is kind of cool because the Instinct has been their indestructible, relatively affordable watch. And so now it's coming out with the modern OLED displays that a lot of smartwatches have. This now is a light emitting screen and it has three times the pixels so it's crisp and it's clear and it's color, something that screen never was before.

So now you have to pick between a black and white screen that is kind of lower contrast and a color screen that is high resolution and high refresh rate and high color fidelity and all that kind of stuff. But you lose the solar charging capability and the other cool thing about the solar watch is this screen is on all day, all the time. This is one of those things where it doesn't turn on until you rotate your wrist and the rest of the time it's a blank dead eye like a shark. So these are the two things that you have to choose between. Now I am wearing an old Fenix watch that has the always-on MIPS display like the Instinct and I love this thing because it's always on all the time. It uses an incredibly low amount of power even though this doesn't have the solar charging capability.

I just think it's a better screen for reading outside in the daylight than the OLED. But on the modern Fenix devices that have maps and the ability to run ATAC plugins and various things like that, the increased resolution and color fidelity of the OLED screen actually makes a lot of sense. If I were going to upgrade this to a new Fenix I would go with the OLED. Now when it comes to the Instinct though I kind of prefer the solar charging capability but we do have both on the site for you so that you can pick what you're looking for. Bright, clean, colorful display or better battery life, potentially infinite battery life if you're outside as often as you should be and an always-on display that looks a little bit more like a proper timepiece.

There is one other minor change that we have made here at T.REX ARMS. In the past we have offered the tactical versions of the Instinct watches which have a couple of slightly different features than the normal ones. So it has a lower backlight for those of you that are working with night vision. It has a stealth mode which is essentially just airplane mode but when you turn on stealth mode you see an icon of a stealth airplane instead of a regular airplane so you know it's stealth mode. And then there's a kill switch where you hold down a certain combination of buttons and it erases stuff off of the phone which is a thing that you do right before you get captured.

And then the other features are the ability to unlock the applied ballistics calculator which still costs money but it's a capability that the tactical watch has and the non-tactical version does not. And then Jumpmaster which is an app for people who do a lot of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. So if you need those features I highly recommend the tactical watch but if you are a regular T.REX customer you probably don't need to be paying extra for those features and we thought that the standalone regular watches upgraded with all these features but at the same price that we had the twos for is going to be a better fit for more people. Now these things also come in a bunch of other colors.

If you want different colors you can get those direct from Garmin. If you want the tactical version you can get those direct from Garmin. I'm not going to dissuade you from getting the bigger better watches but for the T.REX customer base we think that these are the best value for money. Instinct 3 has some increased capabilities over the twos particularly in efficiency over here and then in readability over here with the OLEDs and there's always going to be some good options available for you elsewhere but this is what we really wanted to focus on. And if you have questions about specifics of these particular watches you can always contact our customer support team, team@trex-arms.com and they'll be able to answer any questions related to you know why this orange doesn't match the orange on the the other Garmin products for example.