Feature Request: Instinct 3 with grey shade mapping and Fenix 8 with dual layer display possible ?

Oh no, please.

What's great about the Instinct is its minimalism. The low-res monochrome display is very legible without backlight in most conditions, and its pixellated esthetic matches the general philosophy of the watch.

Actually, I would love Garmin to improve on the "pixel art" side of things. For example, I really like the squarish pixel fonts and bar graphs of the smartwatches in the Casio G-Squad lineup (which also have a low-res monochrome display). They look much cooler than my Instinct.

The one design choice that gets me is the circular display and the cutout around it. It's like they purposely made limitations on the Instinct display so it wouldn't compete as well with the Fenix.

Putting maps on the Instinct would need a larger screen, more memory, processing power, and larger battery totally changing the watch so I doubt it's possible.

In fact Fenix 2 had screen resolution of only 70x70 (!) pixels whereas Instinct 2 has 176x176. Both watches have 32MB RAM and Fenix 2 still got mapping. Fenix 2 can drive 20 hours in GPS mode whereas Instinct 2 can drive 30 hours GPS mode (albeit no maps). So, I think it could make sense to add some kind of monochrome/grey mapping to Instinct, maybe just to show tracks/streets in low detail mode and have routing calculated directly on watch.

Of course Fenix/Epix would still be premium regarding quality colorful mapping experience...

You are right, and I was wondering too, how great this would be...

I had a Fenix 2 and I really liked it back then.

But unfortunately, from a manufacturer's standpoint it just wouldn't make sense. Loading maps was a pain in the ss on F2, you literally couldn't load a whole country on it, so had to compile a whole new package every time you went on a hike (and Hungary is a very small country... in bigger ones maybe it wouldn't even handle a whole county) and so Garmin added that as a kind of "hidden feature", so they didn't have problems with reviewers and not so geeky users complaining about it all the time.

I2 already has less than enough memory (you can literally fill it with the single komoot app) and they do remove experimental features to make the user experience and stability better because it matters more for them.

Even on the Fenix line, they had to introduce new map managing solutions because the old one wasn't up for the rest of the software's quality.

I can only imagine this as some kind of hidden feature here too, but it would come with too many work which wouldn't pay off and would only get hardcore users away from the Fenix line, so I wouldn't hope for it much.

Maybe the Instinct X2? There are rumors that a 57mm model is coming soon! (5k runner website)

Is 57mm not overkill?

No! It would be much better when there would be a more brutal design lika a g-shock :(

No, It would be better if there is a more brachial design, like a gshock!!

Maps with grayscale would be awesome, but I'd rather had a solar instinct with better glass that does not hinder angle visibility and screen brightness ;)

I don't understand these kind of posts. We are speaking about an outdoor watch and maps DO have a lot of sense in this watch. This is the kind of watch with an infinite battery that could be used for  ultra trails, long time navigation or even for militar y purposes.

Maps do have a lot more sense here than on the FR series. 

Mapping is a must for an outdoor watch. We do have navigation, but in the future the navigation of the Instinct watches will be improved for sure. It's a matter of time of course