If you’re comparing smartwatches, there are many features and specifications you can use to classify and differentiate them. Perhaps the most important is battery life. It determines how long you can wear and use your device before you need to take it off to recharge it. It also determines how long you can explore the outside of your home without being connected to an outlet, unless you bring a portable power station or portable charger. The fact is that battery life largely determines how you use a smartwatch, and if you don’t want to be forced to charge it often, you’ll need something with a reasonable battery capacity. Check out Garmin’s excellent selection of long-lasting smartwatches, with unique solar-powered models that can be charged by, yes, sunlight.
Standard Garmin smartwatches like the Venu offer about 4 to 12 days of battery life on a single charge, depending on usage. The latest Apple Watch, Series 11, lasts about 24 hours on a single charge, which is much less. You can extend this to 38 or 40 hours in low power mode, but it’s still less than two days maximum. Then you look at Garmin’s solar-powered models, like the Instinct 3 Solar, and the difference is stark. Instinct 3 can last up to 28 days of typical use with solar charging and GPS active – 40 days with GPS off. With the built-in GPS running all the time, battery life drops to around 150 hours. But there’s no denying that Garmin models have a huge advantage, especially if you spend a lot of time outdoors hiking and exploring. Solar trickle charging is something Apple just can’t beat with its current designs. That’s not the only thing a Garmin watch can do that an Apple Watch can’t either.
How Garmin’s design philosophies differ from Apple’s
For those who spend more time at home and want a sleeker option, the Apple Watch makes sense. It doesn’t matter if the battery needs to be recharged every evening, because there is always an outlet nearby. So, when it comes to abilities and needs, your lifestyle plays a role. And if you look at some of the main reasons why people choose the Apple Watch over other options, like Android smartwatches, a lot of it has to do with design, software, and experience, all of which Apple is second to none.
Garmin’s smartwatches, while loaded with bells and whistles for outdoor activities, are aimed at a very different audience. Additionally, while the Apple Watch’s health tracking is best-in-class compared to other standard touchscreen options, Garmin offers a host of specialized tracking and monitoring tools that are invaluable for someone with an active lifestyle. Garmin watches actually beat the Apple Watch for some fitness users.
The Instinct 3 Solar can monitor daily movement, HRV status, heart rate, stress, body stats like sleep and recovery, blood oxygen, breathing and much more. In fact, many of these sports trackers and modes are designed for more extreme activities, while the Apple Watch can measure body stats during basic exercises, such as running and swimming. Someone who never ventures into the wilderness won’t necessarily need or use most of what Garmin devices offer, and that’s okay.
How does Garmin solar technology work?
Garmin’s solar technology, as featured in the Instinct 3 Solar, is described as “Power Glass” charging. This means that the crystal dial, the glass that you look through to see the components of the digital watch inside, harvests solar energy at all times. Indeed, inside the “power glass” there are thin, transparent photovoltaic cells that capture ambient light. If you compare electric glass to solar panels, you will notice that most solar panels are generally opaque. Even though it is transparent, Garmin does not recommend using a screen protector on the Power Glass crystal.
The crystal is essentially the built-in panel that generates power to charge the battery when there is reliable access to sunlight. As with most solar technologies, charging efficiency depends on the amount of available sunlight and nearby obstructions, such as tree canopy and other shadows.
This is a fairly recent design. Some of Garmin’s older devices use a different form of solar charging, like the Fenix 6X Solar or the Instinct 2 Solar – the previous generation of the Instinct – which had a special ring around the screen to capture light, rather than the whole crystal.
