Instinct Suggestions List

You buy a product knowing it’s current features but like anything, after using it you can come up with improvements and suggestions based on the watch and what is was designed for. Since we have a plethora of topics here, ideas and suggestions are all over the place, so I figured I’d create a topic to help people organize some of them.

So, below I’ll post a few suggestions based on my experience. If you agree with a suggestion (whether with me or anyone else), +1 it so Garmin knows. Post yours and let’s see what happens.

I’ll begin:

1. Timers- Give the user the ability to reorganize the Timers or have it automatically sort based on length of time (longest to shortest or vice versa).

2. Stopwatch- There is more than enough room to put the time of day. A lot of waste room on the SW screen.

3. Setting GPS- Unless I’m missing something, you have to set the GPS and it’s connection type per activity. It would be nice to set it on one (GPS or GPS/GLONASS or GPS/Galileo). Because of apps and websites like GNSS View, you can see the satellites above you and you can adjust your GPS connection settings accordingly.

4. Battery %- This is straightforward. We should be able to see the exact % of battery remaining.

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0 DavidSee over 5 years ago

+1 Battery %

Would be perfect for me if the Instinct have -

Direct key Music Control - Using physical keys to control common functions (e.g. for play/pause, volume +/- and track fwd/prev) instead of only in Music Control.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I have just received my Instinct today and I think its a fantastic device, better than my Forerunner 235 in nearly every way for my personal use case.

In playing with customisation I noticed something that I think could be handled a little better and that is the Phone Notifications Icon. On the Instinct you have to set it to be a permanent addition to the watch face even if you have 0 unread notifications which seems like a bit of a waste, on the 235 on the watch face I used the icon would disappear if there were 0 unread notifications thus freeing up the screen real estate.

My suggestion would be to have the notification icon switch places with another data field when notifications are present and then switch back when notifications are all read and back to 0.

So in my case I'd have the battery icon bottom right which would then switch to notifications when unread notifications are present then switch back to battery when all notifications are dealt with.

0 randb66 over 5 years ago

The sleep monitoring needs some sort of shift worker mode, where it can assume you could be sleeping at any time during a 24hr period. At present I have to set my normal sleeping hours every time I change shifts. I know, first world problem.

0 dav.dc over 5 years ago

My main wish:
- add a datafield with the remaining ascent to next waypoint. This would be a killer feature for me, allowing to have some kind of a "climb pro" data screen if I put waypoints at the top of every ascent.
Note that the total remaining ascent can be seen in the future elevation profile screen, so I guess my wish should be easily implemented.

Additional wishes:
- Possibility to disable "on course" alert. Currently we can only disable "off course"...
- Fix navigation issues for courses created on Explore (already mentioned in 2.76 beta post).
- Improve GPS (with or without Galileo and Glonass) accuracy: my total distance is often 3% less than other people who did the exact same run.

0 NemoSandman over 5 years ago

My main wish:

A Tide Widget.
A Horizontal Big Number Watch Face

And the usual improvement in GPS tracking and general sensitivity. :-)

I'm already very happy with mine anyway.

0 randb66 over 5 years ago

What about a depth meter. Don't know if it's possible but it would be cool. Like the Suunto core.

0 Rick11 over 5 years ago

So, I'm playing with my brand new Instinct. One nice thing would be a short cut to turn on/off the wrist hearth rate.
And, of course, VO2Max :)
I'm very satisfied, thank you Garmin.

0 AztecMountain over 5 years ago

1. I forgot my Garmin Instinct at home today and I need a way to combine stats from my iPhone health monitor back to my garmin tracking (steps, etc..).
2. I am willing to pay more for weather and other GPS related features so this watch can be useful when I'm outdoors in no service which is the majority of the time. Seems like this watch looses its charm when you are outside of cell service which doesn't make sense since its an outdoors watch

0 sagamore123 over 5 years ago

2. I am willing to pay more for weather and other GPS related features so this watch can be useful when I'm outdoors in no service which is the majority of the time. Seems like this watch looses its charm when you are outside of cell service which doesn't make sense since its an outdoors watch

I think the GPS functions work without cell service. The weather function gets its info from your cell phone, and it won't work without cell service. But you can pair the Instinct with a Garmin Inreach Mini, at least for messaging via the Mini's satellite service. The Mini has weather info (via its messaging), but I don't know if its weather info can be displayed on the Instinct. At least it's available if you have a Mini.

0 AztecMountain over 5 years ago

I think the GPS functions work without cell service. The weather function gets its info from your cell phone, and it won't work without cell service. But you can pair the Instinct with a Garmin Inreach Mini, at least for messaging via the Mini's satellite service. The Mini has weather info (via its messaging), but I don't know if its weather info can be displayed on the Instinct. At least it's available if you have a Mini.

thanks for the heads up. Im saving up for an in reach mini!