Sporadic Resets and Display Freezes

8266151 said:

In total this is not acceptable and I am considering to return the watch for refund unless there is a solution for these annoying problems.

Well, we cannot help you with that, here on the user forum. Rather contact the dealer where you got the watch from, or directly Garmin.

If they refuse taking back your watch, you can send it to me

trux said:

Well, we cannot help you with that, here on the user forum. Rather contact the dealer where you got the watch from, or directly Garmin.

I am quite sure both the community as well as Garmin can provide valuable information on that.

a.) If the resets are a common problem and Garmin is already working on a software solution then I will wait for that.
b.) If the resets do not occur anywhere else than on my watch then this probably is an individual hardware defect. In this case my watch will require repair or replacement.
c.) If both resets and freezes are common problems and Garmin has no intentions to resolve these then I will return my watch for refund.

Therefore forum feedback does make a difference.


Best regards

-M-

8266151 said:

Therefore forum feedback does make a differenc

Oh, I did not realize you were not aware of the issue, and did not search the forum before posting - it is one of the most frequent topics here, on the Instinct Solar forum. Check out for example the thread Instinct Solar Freezes

I read about the freezes. This seems to be a common problem.

Are the resets a common problem as well? Or is it only my watch that resets sporadically?

8266151 said:

Are the resets a common problem as well?

Personally I have no problems, but some users report resets during swimming. There is also a know bug of crashes during navigation when a waypoint has a long name using unicode characters.

You best search the forum for any issues you are interested in. Better than using the built-in search, is looking it up with a site-specific search in Google. For example:

site:forums.garmin.com "instinct solar" resets

Random freezing/crashing is not common since version 12.20. Since upgrading, I have not experienced any issues whatsoever and I do use it every day outdoor and indoor.

I see some people still complain about swimming and navigation. Perhaps, these do not working quite good at the moment. Unfortunately, I do not use any of them functions, so I can't comment.

sspanak said:

Random freezing/crashing is not common since version 12.20.

I do not have any freezes since the v12.20 either (though I own the non-Solar model), but it looks like there are several users still experiencing them even with v12.20: https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/instinct-solar/243437/instinct-solar-freezes

On 12.20 I had my first freeze today.

And I was just thinking this morning that the problems seem to be over and I am finally happy with my watch.

It seems to only be the front-end that freezes, hearth rate monitoring still runs, and notices when the watch is removed etc. 

Im on 12:20 firmware and just posted the same. Watch is now "rebooting" / losing sync daily and showing incorrect time. I just performed a factory reset to attempt to fix.
Watch is 3 months old and great until now.

I am on 12.00. I tend to push my watch a lot - i.e. multiple .fit files, always playing with navigation settings, using long route / waypoint names, constantly playing with the navigation / return to start trackback settings, frequently change temp between watch and tempe sensor. On average my watch will crash once every 8 weeks, and generally reboots to where it left off. A pretty acceptable rate for my use case.