I'd sell my Vivoactive 3 in a heartbeat to buy the Instinct if it supported Connect IQ. Why in the world would they design a $300 watch that was incompatible with Connect IQ?
Perhaps because of the little size of the memory? The lack of connect IQ will really be a dealbreaker for a lot of people. And for a monochrome display, the battery should last much longer.
I agree with RobMontgomery , moreover, the way I understand this watch is as a direct response to Casio G-Shocks, simple yet functional and roughed, something that wouldn't fail on you, the addition of a development framework such as an App Store like CIQ introduces the possibility of third party bugs, bugs that could impact your battery life and possibly crash your watch.
The other and more technical thing to take into account is the screen, all of the several CIQ watches that Garmin offers pretty much share the same screen specs, a colourful single one, to add support for the Instinct would mean a completely new format, the watch faces and apps that are available wouldn't fit, there's no colour, the resolution is very low and more importantly there's a second mini screen.
This watch really doesn't fit the CIQ profile and it doesn't need to, if you really need this feature Garmin already offer loads of other watches with it, this watch is a simpler watch, like I said, think of a G-Shock with GPS and advance tracking systems.
The other and more technical thing to take into account is the screen, all of the several CIQ watches that Garmin offers pretty much share the same screen specs, a colourful single one...
Actually not true. CIQ supports "square" watches like the vivoactive and fr920, "tall", like the vivoactive-hr, semi-rounds like the fr23x/630/735, rounds, with two different screen res, non wearables like the edge family, the GPSmap66, Oregon 7xx, etc. The Edge 130 is monochrome.. CIQ is supported on around 40 different devices these days, with varying color depths.
But I agree with the low res (128x128) screen and the mini-screen could be an issue,with the mini-screen being more of one, in how to address/use it in an app. The lower res can be addressed with less complex displays with less data on the screen.
I like this Instinct. Lack of CIQ is not an issue for me. So far I did not find much use for it besides for some watch faces which I always ended uninstalling again to come back to Garmin's stock ones. I was waiting for Casio to make a ProTrek watch with HR and GPS for trail run tracking.... now Garmin is basically making just that. Even better. I have high expectations for the B/W display to offer better visibility than Garmin's other color higher res displays. Take a look at the comparison pictures here https://www.pocketnavigation.de/2018/10/garmin-instinct-test/ comparing the Instinct's display with the Fenix. The bad visibility of the Fenix and 935 display has been one of the reasons why I haven't been using them as my daily watch but only for workouts. I hope that with the Instinct this will change. I prefer to see my time well as opposed to seeing it in color or HR...
If I hadn't already purchased a Fenix 5, this would have been perfect for me, as the VivoActive 3 in the bottom of a lake just wasn't rugged enough for my day to day use. I think this hits the sweet spot between ruggedness, battery life, features, price and function. The VA3 has features and price, but the ruggedness suffers, especially the band. I am no wannabe pro athlete, so the Fenix 5 is too much device for my purposes, but I am not trading it in for this.
BTW I don't care about color, it is just a frill. Give me my data. As long as the included watch faces have a large enough font for the digits for easy reading, I'm good. Everything else important to me is accuracy, ease of use, and visibility of data.
Only disappointed in the VO2 Max missing, but really no big deal IMHO.
Not having CIQ is a selling point for me. It is a gimmick that I only used to change watch faces (which slowed down the Fenix 5 and drained battery). Plus the screen on the instinct is by the far the best I have seen from Garmin as you can actually see it without having to turn the back light on. Garmin Hit a home run with this thing and leaving out CIQ and the screen turns that home run into a grand slam in my book!!
I'd sell my Vivoactive 3 in a heartbeat to buy the Instinct if it supported Connect IQ. Why in the world would they design a $300 watch that was incompatible with Connect IQ?
Clearly I am not a fan of CIQ, but maybe I am missing out. What Apps/Widgets do you use it for? The one thing I can see missing is if you use a Stryde Power meter for Power and not just as a distance/pace foot pod. That requires CIQ.
Imagine your phone without the app store (apple or android). Some users would be perfectly happy just having the built in apps. But most want to customize them. Sure, the options aren't as broad on Garmin devices, but same reasoning applies.
For many, these watches already do every thing they want. So no need for CIQ. But if you want a more customized layout of data fields, or connect to devices like Stryd that aren't directly supported in the device, CIQ can be a huge selling point. For me, it is being able to connect to my Garmin Alpha Dog tracker to see where my dog is with a glance at my wrist, and customize distance alerts that aren't supported on the Alpha unit itself. And do this while recording an activity. Something no Garmin device offers built in. This lets users customize there watches in ways that Garmin can't even dream of.
Everyone is different, everyone has their likes and dislikes. For me, I despise the CIQ store. Everything I’ve used, even from Garmin, was either very slow or very buggy. I like the baked in items on the Instinct and was happy when they didn’t include CIQ it.
