Temperature in the little bubble on the Garmin Instinct watchface

I purchased the Garmin Instinct directly from Garmin a few weeks ago.

So far I like the watch but one annoying feature is the weather station temperature widget on the watch face bubble.

I bought the watch so that I could quickly glance at the ambient temperature on my watch while hiking, running or sleeping in my tent.  I realize that my wrist will cause the temperature to not be accurate until I remove the watch.  However I typically have my watch next to my sleeping pad with its alarm etc on.

Garmin currently has the temperature in the watch face bubble showing the weather station widget ...this information and temp comes from a local airport or station which could be 30 miles away.  I compared the temps to a medical grade thermometer I have & it often read either no temp or when it finally synced with my phone it was often off by 20’+.

We should be able to choose between viewing on the watch face bubble the actual ambient temperature or if one likes the current setup the weather station widget temp.  I have not taken the watch hiking yet out of cell tower range/ no iphone cell signal - but I’m assuming that my temp widget bubble will have no reading in that situation until a cell tower is close again... which is also annoying.

Thx for your feedback

  • You can buy a Garmin Tempe (https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/107335/pn/010-11092-30) and sync it to your Instinct to measure the local ambient temperature.  The temperature from the Tempe can only be displayed in the temperature widget or during an activity, however, and cannot be displayed on the watch face bubble.  I have one Tempe attached to my running shoes and one attached to my backpack to record during running and hiking activities.

  • thanks for your thoughts & suggestion.

    I am just frustrated as I’m trying to limit more things to carry & charge on longer trips while hiking in the backcountry etc.  

    I think I’m correct too that when one is hiking   out of cell range then the watchface bubble is empty with no info anyway.

    Spent a lot of $ to end up looking at my $3 rei thermometer clipped to my pack!! lol

    thx 

  • Not sure whether I understand exactly what you are asking, but why don't you look at the temperature widget showing the temperature of the internal sensor (including a graph for last 4 hours) instead of the weather temp? You can also add the temperature of the internal sensor to the main face. Of course, as you mentioned, the sensor reads the temperature near your skin, and it is also influenced by its own heat, so it won't be very accurate, but it works relatively OK when off the wrist, and perfectly in water, even on the wrist.

  • Sorry I forgot to mention one thing.  I called Garmin for the third time today ...it turns out that you cannot show the ambient temp sensors  (on the back of the watch) temperature in the watch face bubble.  

    The watch face bubble only shows the weather station widget connected to your phone.

    She said that she was going to write a “suggestion” to the garmin programmers to see if they think it’s worth doing in a future update to allow people to display the ambient sensor the way I want to do in the watchface bubble 

  • Why does it have to be in the bubble? I do not remember about the other fields, but you can certainly have minimally it in the upper left field

  • I don't think the internal temp can be displayed on any watch face configuration.  Would be a nice feature, however.  

    I've had a few ABC type watches with a temp sensor built-in and they all have to be removed from the wrist for a period of time to get an accurate ambient temp reading.  In my mind that point renders them worthless.  I like the Tempe solution because I can display AND record the temperature over the activity (I'm too much of a data geek maybe).  The Tempe also pairs up with my GPSMap 64 to again display and record temperatures if I'm using my handheld.  Handy tool for under 30 bucks.

  • As mentioned by others, Garmin watchfaces only show temperature data from the internet. But you can have the temperature from the sensor shown in the "bubble" (or any other datafield) during an activity. I forget if the Instict has a Temperature widget or not, but if it does, that also shows the sensor temp. Or you can do what I (and others above in this thread) did and buy the $25 Tempe sensor and get accurate off-body ambient temperature readings. If you do that, everywhere that the internal temperature sensor reading would normally be shown gets replaced with the Tempe's reading automatically. I have one Tempe that's paired to both my son's Instinct and my Fenix 6X, and as long as we're both within about 30ft of each other, our watches both show the Tempe's readings during an activity.

    For $25, it's a very worthwhile investment.

    Should you ever decide to not bother to take your Tempe sensor with you for an activity, or you forget it at home, the watch automatically temporarily reverts back to using the internal sensor.