Garmin Instinct 2 Solar vs Apple Watch Series 10
🗓️ Release Year
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: 2022
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: 2024
🏃 Activity
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Garmin Instinct 2 Solar is a purpose-built, rugged outdoor GPS smartwatch designed for extended adventures and comprehensive activity tracking, featuring enhanced battery life through solar charging. It accurately tracks steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes with customizable daily goals. Its extensive activity profiles are tailored for a wide range of outdoor pursuits, offering reliable data for prolonged training and exploration in demanding environments.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 offers an advanced fitness tracking system that measures steps, calories burned, distance traveled, active minutes, and elevation changes. It automatically tracks daily movement and provides real-time heart rate zone updates to optimize workouts. The Move, Exercise, and Stand rings help users stay motivated by closing daily activity goals.
❤️ Health Monitoring
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: This device provides continuous heart rate monitoring, stress tracking, and detailed sleep tracking for insights into daily well-being and recovery. The integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for blood oxygen saturation monitoring, particularly useful for altitude acclimatization and assessing physiological status during extended demanding activities, supported by consistent power from solar input.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: Designed with comprehensive health tracking, the watch continuously monitors heart rate, blood oxygen levels (SpO2), and skin temperature. It includes high and low heart rate alerts, irregular heart rhythm detection, and AFib history tracking, providing crucial health insights. The Heart Rate Variability (HRV) feature assesses cardiovascular health trends over time.
🔋 Battery Life
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: A key highlight of the Instinct 2 Solar is its exceptional battery life, significantly extended by solar charging. It provides up to 28 days in smartwatch mode and up to 30 hours with continuous GPS active, with the potential for virtually unlimited battery life in smartwatch mode with sufficient solar exposure, making it an ideal companion for multi-week expeditions where charging is impractical.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 delivers up to 18 hours of battery life in normal use and up to 36 hours in Low Power Mode. Fast charging allows it to reach 80% in around 45 minutes, ensuring minimal downtime between charges.
😴 Sleep Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: Sleep tracking on the Instinct 2 Solar monitors sleep stages and provides valuable insights into sleep quality, contributing to a better understanding of recovery. The data, combined with other metrics like Body Battery, helps users optimize their rest and training, with reliable overnight tracking ensured by the efficient battery management and solar capabilities.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The watch tracks sleep stages (light, deep, and REM), offering personalized insights into sleep patterns. It also monitors respiratory rate and blood oxygen levels during sleep to detect potential disturbances, such as sleep apnea.
📍 GPS Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: Equipped with built-in GPS, the Instinct 2 Solar provides accurate outdoor activity tracking without needing a paired smartphone. It supports multiple satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo) for reliable positioning in diverse and challenging terrains, essential for navigation and route tracking during extended outdoor excursions.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: With precise dual-frequency GPS (L1 + L5 bands), the Apple Watch Series 10 delivers accurate location tracking for outdoor activities like running, cycling, and hiking. It provides real-time pace, elevation, and route mapping in the Apple Fitness app.
🏋️ Workout Modes
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Instinct 2 Solar supports a wide variety of workout modes beyond standard running and cycling, including profiles for hiking, climbing, swimming, strength training, tactical activities, and more, providing relevant metrics for each activity, with the battery capacity to track even the longest sessions.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The watch supports over 100 workout types, including HIIT, strength training, swimming, cycling, rowing, and yoga. Advanced metrics such as stride length, ground contact time, running power, and vertical oscillation help athletes optimize performance.
💫 Exercise Recognition
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The device includes automatic exercise detection for common activities like walking and running through its Move IQ feature, ensuring these movements are captured in the activity log even when a specific workout isn't manually started, contributing to seamless and comprehensive tracking over extended periods.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 automatically detects workouts such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, and elliptical sessions, ensuring that activities are logged even if users forget to start tracking.
🍎 Compatibility
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Instinct 2 Solar is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, connecting via Bluetooth for seamless data synchronization and smart notifications, ensuring connectivity is maintained even during prolonged periods in the outdoors.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: Seamlessly integrates with iPhone (iOS 17 or later) via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It syncs with Apple Health and supports third-party fitness apps like Strava, MyFitnessPal, and Nike Run Club.
📲 App Support
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: Synchronization with the comprehensive Garmin Connect app provides users with detailed analysis of activity data, performance metrics, and health statistics. The app allows for planning routes, customizing watch settings, and connecting with the Garmin community, leveraging the extensive data collected by the watch during extended use.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Fitness+ app provides guided workouts, live metrics, and personalized fitness plans. Users can also sync with third-party wellness apps, including meditation and recovery tracking platforms.
💡 Smart Features
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: Beyond its rugged outdoor focus, the Instinct 2 Solar includes practical smart functionalities such as on-wrist notifications for calls, texts, and calendar alerts. It also features a barometric altimeter for accurate altitude tracking, a crucial tool for hikers and climbers, all powered for the long haul by solar charging.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: In addition to fitness tracking, the Apple Watch Series 10 includes smart notifications for calls, texts, and apps. It supports Siri voice commands, Apple Pay for contactless payments, and music streaming via Apple Music and Spotify. The SOS Emergency Call feature provides enhanced safety by detecting severe falls and crashes, automatically notifying emergency contacts if needed.
💦 Water Resistance
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: With a robust water resistance rating of 100 meters (10 ATM), the Instinct 2 Solar is built to withstand swimming, showering, and various water activities, making it a durable and reliable device for watersports and wet environments encountered during outdoor adventures.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: With a WR50 rating, the watch is water-resistant up to 50 meters, making it suitable for pool swimming, water workouts, and showering. It also tracks swimming metrics, including stroke count, distance, and pace.
⌚ Display Quality
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Instinct 2 Solar features a monochrome, sunlight-readable, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) display with an integrated solar charging lens. While not a color screen, this display offers excellent contrast and unparalleled readability in direct sunlight, which is essential for outdoor use, and is highly power-efficient, directly contributing to its exceptional battery life.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The ultra-bright LTPO OLED Retina display offers sharp colors, deep blacks, and excellent visibility in direct sunlight. The always-on display ensures users can quickly check the time, notifications, and health data without raising their wrist.
👌 Ease of Use
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The device utilizes a five-button interface, designed for reliable operation and easy navigation through menus and data screens, particularly useful in challenging conditions or while wearing gloves. This button-based interface prioritizes functionality and durability over touchscreen complexity for demanding outdoor use.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The watch features a responsive touchscreen, a Digital Crown for precise scrolling, and haptic feedback for smooth navigation. With customizable watch faces, users can personalize their interface based on preference.
✨ Design and Comfort
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Instinct 2 Solar features a rugged and durable design built to withstand tough outdoor conditions, incorporating the solar charging lens seamlessly into the display. Its construction prioritizes resilience, while the comfortable silicone band ensures suitability for extended wear during activities and throughout multi-day excursions.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 features a lightweight yet durable titanium or aluminum case with interchangeable bands. It is available in multiple sizes and finishes, ensuring a comfortable fit for all-day wear.
🩸 SpO2 Monitoring
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: An integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for monitoring blood oxygen saturation levels during sleep and at altitude. This feature provides valuable data for assessing acclimatization and overall physiological well-being in varied environments, with continuous monitoring supported by the extended battery life.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The built-in SpO2 sensor continuously measures blood oxygen levels, providing real-time insights into respiratory and overall health, especially useful during sleep and high-altitude activities.
💖 ECG Functionality
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: It is important to note that the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The ECG app allows users to take electrocardiograms (ECGs) on demand, detecting signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). Results can be shared with healthcare professionals for further analysis.
🧘 Stress Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Instinct 2 Solar tracks stress levels throughout the day based on heart rate variability and offers guided breathing exercises to help users manage stress, contributing to a more complete picture of their daily physiological state and recovery, essential for sustained performance in challenging situations.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: With Mindfulness and Breathe apps, the watch offers guided breathing sessions and stress-level assessments. It tracks heart rate variability (HRV) to indicate periods of high or low stress.
🩹 Recovery Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: The Body Battery energy monitoring feature provides insights into the body's energy reserves based on activity, stress, and sleep data, helping users understand their physiological readiness for training or the need for rest. This is a key feature for optimizing recovery in demanding training cycles and extended trips, with reliable data available due to the device's battery performance.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Recovery Insights feature provides data on heart rate recovery time, sleep quality, and fatigue levels, helping users determine when to train or rest. Apple Fitness+ offers personalized recommendations based on recovery status.
💳 Subscription
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: A significant benefit of the Garmin platform is that all features and data tracked by the Instinct 2 Solar are accessible through the free Garmin Connect app, requiring no additional subscription fees for core functionality or advanced tracking features, providing comprehensive and enduring value for a rugged, outdoor-focused device with exceptional solar-enhanced battery life.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: ✅ The watch provides core health and fitness features for free, but Apple Fitness+ (optional, $9.99/month or $79.99/year) offers guided workouts, advanced training insights, and exclusive content.
🏷️️ Price
1️⃣ Garmin Instinct 2 Solar: $399.99
Check Garmin Instinct 2 Solar Price *2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: $399.00
Check Apple Watch Series 10 Price ** If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you