Instinct Solar charging: the charge is fiction

J. Pedro said:

gave me the, “theoretical”, record of 115days of battery.

Are you talking about the Instinct ? Or the Instinct 2 ? The Instinct 2 has its own forum section.

Question: did you wear the watch on your wrist? Or was it laid down in the sun ?

Hello!

Instinct Solar… I’m not sure if it is the version 1 or 2…

the watch was all the time with me, on my left wrist.

On the back it says instinct or intstinct 2.

Good that you have worn the watch on your wrist. The skin contact brings a cooling. That is why I had asked. If the watch is left in the sun without cooling, it can overheat and shut down the solar charge.

Thank you Bluefish, I wasn’t aware of this overheating prevention measure, but fortunately it wasn’t the case.

Well, at the back is only written “Instinct Solar”. I’ll check the manual once I get home. But I moved this question to the “instinct Solar” section of the forum… it’ll be better placed there, for sure.

Did you check battery percentage to compare before charging? In my case for IS1 it works, but it charges so little that it basically makes no sense to stay in the sun longer than needed. It needs 1 hour to charge 1-2%, while IS2 it's something like 2-3% or more. I would be more happy with quick charge more, so that I don't have to wait couple of hours to charge fully.

Good point, I’ll do it next time.

What was frustrating was that I thought:

“Now I’ll this Solar Charge working!”

But after one week at the beach, using it everyday, at the end I recharged it exactly at the day what was supposed to… As if nothing different have happened the days before.

So weird and a bit frustrating!

I have the impression that this “Solar Charge” isn’t something that we can count on…

It may extend battery life very little, but it's nothing worth any sacrifices - I mean staying in sun just for sake of charging. I've spend few days outside where I spend around 4-5 hours a day in full sun, and it added unnoticeable amount of battery life. I hope IS3 will bring more significant change in that matter.

Yeah, it's nothing compared to a Citizen eco-drive, which keeps going ad-infinitum based only on the normal ambient exposure it receives during daily wear, or even sitting on a bedside cabinet. I think maybe Garmin could do more to counter some people's expectations about solar charging. Even using it just for HRM broadcast (so no GPS) whilst cycling on a sundrenched holiday, I don't think solar moved the needle.

Recycled said:

it's nothing compared to a Citizen eco-drive

That should be clear, right ?

1) the Eco-drive watches of course have a larger area that can be used for the solar cell, since it is an analog watch.

2) Analog watches are of course not as power hungry, because there is no computer with processors installed.

A comparison to an analog solar watch, without CPU is a really bad comparison.