Garmin Instinct 3 review

If you like to spend a lot of time outdoors, you'll likely get on with Garmin's Instinct 3. It is an outdoor and adventure watch released in January 2025 and a more affordable alternative to the Fenix series, with a bright, colorful OLED screen tech coming to this family for the first time.

We are reviewing the 50mm OLED version, the largest model that has the new display tech. It costs $499.99/£429.99.

There is also a 45mm model in the same style, versions with duller-looking transflective screens but even longer battery life and solar charging. And, new for this year, a more affordable and smaller Instinct E.

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Some of our comments will only apply to the Garmin Instinct 3 in its 50mm OLED incarnation, but many stand across the range.

Garmin Instinct 3: Design

• Big and bulky but comfortable to wear 24/7
• May cause skin irritation after prolonged use
• 10ATM water resistance rating

Garmin's Instinct 3 is not a subtle watch. It's for someone not afraid to wear a sports and outdoors watch that professes what it is from across the room.

The experience of wearing it is not at all what you might expect, though. While the Instinct 3 is bulky, it is not remotely heavy thanks to its largely polymer plastic construction. It's just over half the weight of some Fenix 8 watches.

I've worn it overnight throughout testing. And while surely not every Instinct 3 user will want to do this, it's surprisingly easy to get used to.

Garmin has made sure you virtually never need to take the Instinct 3 off, actually. It has 10ATM water resistance, matching the best bar Garmin's dive-specific watches. And as the bezel forms a raised lip above the screen glass, you don't have to be too careful when wearing it.

The materials here are nothing too special — only the shiny orange highlights here are metal (aluminium) and the screen glass is a non-specified "chemically strengthened glass." But Garmin's plastic watches are surprisingly forgiving of rougher treatment.

There’s one other potential issue here. I ended up with a spot of contact dermatitis on my wrist after wearing the Instinct 3 almost 24/7 for several weeks. I haven’t had this with a Garmin watch before, but it is a fairly common issue with wearables like this. It’s the back of the watch body causing the issue, not the strap.

“Some users may experience skin irritation after prolonged use of the watch, especially if the user has sensitive skin or allergies,” warns the Instinct 3 manual.

Garmin Instinct 3: Display

• Crisp, colorful 1.3-inch OLED screen
• No touchscreen (button control only)
• Excellent outdoors visibility

The 50mm Instinct 3 has a 1.3-inch OLED screen. This is every bit as sharp and as clear as that of Garmin's best watches.

You can choose between countless watch faces, sharpness is excellent and outdoors visibility even on a sunny day is good. As with any OLED watch, the screen brightness ramps up in bright conditions.

This naturally uses more battery power, which is why there's still room for the "Solar" versions of this watch. They flip the situation by not only getting clearer in direct sunlight without using additional power, they top up the watch battery using an invisible solar panel.

Which should you pick? If you're not going to be heading out on weeks-long expeditions, don't undervalue OLED's appeal. It gives the watch more personality, a more fluid feel and can fit more stats on-screen clearly.

In the Solar versions, there’s a separate circular area in the screen, which has been a series quirk since the start. Some of the OLED watch’s faces recreate this. Others don’t.

No version of the Garmin Instinct 3 has a touchscreen, though. It's button operation all the way, but that's less of an issue than you might guess. There are few things more annoying than accidentally ending a workout early, which can happen a lot with the touchscreen Garmin Venu 3.

Garmin Instinct 3: Features

• Compass, altimeter and barometer
• No downloadable maps
• Plenty of fitness tracking features

Garmin leans into the outdoors angle of the Instinct 3 in a few obvious ways. Long-press the side button labelled "ABC," for example, and you get quick access to the compass, altimeter and barometer functions. It's a watch suited even to hikers who turn their noses up at an over-reliance on tech.

Up on the top side wall of the watch is a dual-LED flash, which could be a godsend for night (or early morning) activities, or just finding your keys at your front door. There’s a red LED too, which increases visibility without putting out too much light.

One important Garmin favourite feature is missing: maps. You can plan hiking, running and cycling routes on the Garmin Connect app and send them to the Instinct 3. But when you load them, you navigate by a line on a blank background — no indication of streets or terrain.

You need to spend more to get downloadable maps. Check out the Fenix and Forerunner 965 families for that.

The Instinct 3 also lacks music support, but this feels much less of a big issue for potential buyers. It can only control audio played through a connected phone.

Elsewhere, the Instinct 3 gets the usual encyclopaedic array of features in any mid-tier Garmin watch. It also has more enthusiast training stats, like Training Readiness, and unlike the roughly comparable Forerunner 265, has a library of golf features. This includes access to a library of tens of thousands of courses worldwide. And those can be sync'd to the watch.

Garmin Instinct 3: Performance

• Accurate heart rate measurements
• Long battery life
• Reliable dual-band GPS navigation

Most Garmin watches are reliable performers. While the Instinct 3 doesn't have every recent innovation, it does have the ones that suit this series's niche well.

The Instinct 3 has dual-band GPS for example. It's a more battery-sapping mode that can help out in tricky environments like deep valleys, dense forests or skyscraper-packed cities.

We had zero issues with the GPS, and it’s fairly fast to attain signal. As with the Fenix 8, we’ve found last-gen watches were actually faster, but it still takes just a handful of seconds.

The heart rate array doesn't get the same attention. A last-generation Elevate v4 array sits on the back of the watch. This lacks the additional LEDs used to help stabilise readings during exercise. But in our testing it has been mostly exemplary, and in one run recorded using the Instinct 3 and Fenix 8, they came out with exactly the same average and maximum heart rate readings.

Heart rate accuracy is as much dependent on limited (or ideally no) on-wrist movement during exercise, and the Instinct 3’s moulded strap and surprisingly low weight helps here. Last-gen hardware does absolutely rule out the watch ever getting Garmin’s ECG heart reading feature, though, which can be used to monitor for signs of arrhythmia.

The best part of the Instinct 3’s performance is its battery life. We tested it in the most challenging way we could muster, using the watch’s always-on screen mode and tracking plenty of exercise. It lost 49% after four days of solid use, close to Garmin’s claim the watch will last nine days when keeping the clock face active all day. Much longer stamina of “up to 24 days” is possible. But a Garmin Instinct 3 is such a better watch with the always-on mode switched on, you’re not getting the best from this wearable without it.

A 10.5-mile (17 km) tracked run, which took around 90 minutes, took 7% off the battery. This suggests it will last for more than 20 hours of active tracking. Garmin claims 30 hours even when using the more battery-sapping Multi-Band mode.

However, this is largely a reminder of how much the screen has a part to play in real-world battery life. When you’re out for a run on a bright day and use the Instinct 3 to navigate or look at your stats often, its brightness will rise very high.

This watch lasts long enough that you only rarely have to think about how much charge it has, even if your long runs and rides stretch into multi-hour efforts. The Instinct 3 uses Garmin’s classic four-pin connector cable to charge and — one thing Garmin should think about improving one day — charging isn’t super-fast.

After an hour, the Instinct 3 went from 6% to 64%. A full charge takes a while.

Garmin Instinct 3: User reviews

At the time of review, the Garmin Instinct 3 is a little too recent to get a full picture of user reviews just yet. This particular model had an average 3.8 out of 5 score at Amazon.

One reviewer echoed our sentiments about the Instinct 3’s weight. “I'm also surprised that the watch still feels very light on my wrist in regards to the weight,” they said.

The 50mm Solar version had a lower average score of 2.8 out of 5, with some early reviewers criticising the cost and design. One reviewer said it “looks like something that would cost $19.99 at Walmart.”

Should you buy the Garmin Instinct 3?

The Garmin Instinct 3 is an adventuring and outdoors watch that is less intimidating in use than it may appear on a retailer’s website.

It’s a bit bulky, but the low weight keeps it comfy. And the larger size lets Garmin fit in a battery that, for some, can be measured in weeks rather than days.

Those not well-schooled in the Garmin range may be surprised by a couple of the missing features, though. There’s no full mapping in the Instinct 3, even if it’s made for exploring, because that is a feature only available to higher-end watches.

If the Garmin Instinct 3 isn’t for you

Turned off by the Instinct 3’s bulk? Check out the Forerunner 265 and 265S. These are a slightly more mainstream alternative, available in smaller sizes and a less bulky casing. You also get music support, with 8GB of storage for tunes and podcasts.

Want maps? You’ll need to spend more to stay within the Garmin range, the Fenix E or Forerunner 965 being the key models to look out for.

The Coros Pace Pro also brings OLED screen tech and offline maps at a price similar to the Instinct 3. But we find Coros software is less slick, and Garmin’s heart rate accuracy is better.

Garmin Instinct 3: How we tested

The Garmin Instinct 3 was worn for several weeks, almost 24/7, until a skin irritation issue crept in. This is because the watch offers sleep tracking as well as exercise monitoring.

It has primarily been used to track runs, including a marathon-distance run one day, and gym sessions.

Throughout testing the Instinct 3 was predominantly used in its “always on” screen mode. It was also connected to a phone feeding through email and WhatsApp notifications, to provide a more realistic and unflattering evaluation of its battery life.