If you are in the market for a tough, outdoors GPS smartwatch, now is arguably one of the best times to get your shop on, and the Garmin Instinct Crossover Solar is another to add to your growing list.

I’d fully expect names like Suunto and Polar also to feature, as they now offer powerful timepieces that look great and pack the tech chops to get you out of a wilderness bind.

What’s more, tech giant Apple has even stepped into the fray, recently updating its sensational Apple Watch Ultra 2, so now smartwatch lovers don’t have to compromise on features when diving into the ocean’s depths or scaling the world’s tallest peaks.

So where does that leave Garmin? Arguably the first name most think of when asked to name a durable outdoors smartwatch, the company now has the deepest lineup of sports-specific devices and adventure-ready wearables in its recent history.

Garmin covers most bases, from the AMOLED screen Epix to the all-conquering Fenix. Well, at least I thought so until the Instinct Crossover came along. A niche within a niche – an Inception of niches, if you will, the watch features much of the activity tracking you’ve come to expect of a Garmin, but with a set of rather handsome hands.

Is this necessarily a good thing, or just plain weird? I strapped one to my wrist for a few weeks to find out.

Design

• Monochrome, sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) display
• Luminescent analogue hands
• Ultra-rugged plastic exterior

Anyone who has spent time with the Garmin Instinct 2 will recognise the shared features here. There’s a familiar fibre-reinforced polymer casing that feels robust but comes across as very plastic-y. Although, you’ll have trouble scratching it up.

The display is slightly different, though, as the small circular section found on the Instinct 2 has gone, and this instead uses a full-screen approach – albeit one obscured by analogue hands. Yup, old-school mechanical hands like you find on a real watch. Remember those?

But fear not, as said hands are very clever, able to swing out of the way when you wish to view various data fields. Select one of the workouts, for example, and the two hands form a horizontal line so the screen can be viewed without obstruction. Pretty cool.

Cooler still is the way these two hands become a gauge when viewing a heart rate monitor or when looking at daily step count, for example. Garmin dubs its technology RevoDrive, which makes no sense to me but essentially self-calibrates to keep accurate time after the hands swing out of the way.

Apparently, the tech will automatically re-adjust the hands in the case of a major shock, such as a big bike crash. It will detect a shunt and rapidly recalibrate the hands. Because, you know, accurate timekeeping is important when you’ve potentially broken bones.

On top of this, the hands are covered in what Garmin refers to as Super-Luminova luminescent paint, which glows in low-light conditions. During testing, I found this is really nothing to shout about, as there are plenty of cheap analogue watches that glow much brighter in the dark.

It is available in a number of subdued colours, from all black to grey and dark blue. There is also a Tactical edition, which is more expensive and features solar charging tech for a theoretically unlimited battery life and handful of other military features.

A standard Solar version is also available, without the Super Army Soldiers stuff, while Garmin also offers a number of straps that can be easily fitted if you wish to personalise it. That said, it’s not a handsome watch and even with some fancy straps, it looks more like a Casio that it does one of Garmin’s other units, such as the Fenix, Epix or if you’ve got the cash, Marq models.

Display and software

• Display size: 23 x 23 mm
• Display resolution: 176 x 176 pixels
• Type: Monochrome, sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP)

Despite the analogue hands, the watch runs on the same operating system as the Instinct 2 and pairs with the Garmin Connect smartphone app. With that in mind, it can essentially do much of the same stuff as anything in the Garmin outdoor GPS smartwatch stable, although the display will limit that to an extent.

It is impossible to follow beautiful, full-colour maps like it is on Epix, Fenix and Marq models; instead, it offers a sort of breadcrumb trail approach where you follow turn-by-turn directions to get you back to where you need to be. These instructions then appear in the background, with the analogue hands swinging out of the way so you can see the data that matters.

Similarly, when working out, the screen splits into three segments, and you are able to see the most important data from your run (fully customisable, of course). Scrolling between data screens requires pressing the stubby button, which I prefer over swiping, especially when on the move.

Activity tracking

• 64MB internal memory
• 9 built-in sensors
• 10 ATM water rating

Anyone familiar with the latest Garmin range will know that these devices track pretty much every activity you can think of, including really obscure stuff, like Disc Golf (golf with a Frisbee, anyone?), hunting, and even snowshoeing.

A recent update introduced wrist-based running power, which is a cinch for keen runners, while the Instinct Crossover 2 will happily sync with power meters, heart rate monitors and other devices via Bluetooth and/or Ant+.

There’s also the latest version of wrist-based heart rate monitoring, which constantly reads heart rate information throughout the night and day and the tiny variations in the heartbeat to measure overall health, fatigue and other factors that influence a training regime.

Also worth noting is that Garmin has opted for a new GPS chipset, which is supposedly more accurate and faster to locate satellites. Although it doesn’t have the dual-frequency tech that’s found in the multi-band Fenix 7, range-topping Marq models and the excellent Apple Watch Ultra 2, which we found to be extremely accurate.

That said, the GPS tracking was excellent in the sports modes I tested out. Long road runs, trail running sessions and outdoor cycling activities were all tracked accurately and granular information can be sifted through either on the watch itself or via the Connect app on a smartphone following a sync.

As I previously mentioned, despite the lack of screen real estate, it’s also possible to cycle through plenty of data screens during the activity, with the aforementioned heart rate status proving really intuitive to use.

The hands literally point towards the “zone” you are currently in, making it simple to adjust effort according to your training goals.

However, it is worth noting that the screen, complete with analogue hands, sometimes feels quite busy. Even though the hands do a good job of getting out of the way, some of the data can be difficult to visualise quickly when on the move because it’s so small.

Performance in the wilderness

• Weighs 65g
• Lacks built-in music
• Garmin pay as standard
• Galileo, GPS and GLONASS

I will admit that getting used to the Garmin Instinct Crossover takes a bit of time. It doesn’t make as much sense as the Instinct 2, which is essentially a watered-down version of the colourful Fenix 7, Epic and Marq models, packing lots of the same advanced tracking features without the battery-sapping colour touchscreen and fancy mapping.

As I said earlier, the Crossover is a niche within a niche. Adding hands to it is purely a stylistic decision, but I have to admit it looks pretty neat. Hold it up next to an Instinct 2; it seems like a more premium product. I like wearing it most days because it blends into the background. It also doesn’t scream “mug me” like a massive Apple Watch Ultra does.

Out in the wild, it performs admirably, boasting all the same excellent features that I enjoyed when testing the Instinct 2. While there is no mapping, the breadcrumb trail system works very well, with turn-by-turn directions ensuring you don’t get lost. You can switch this on at the beginning of a hike or trail run and then follow the directions back should you lose your way.

It’s also possible to navigate by sight, essentially turning the watch into a digital compass, or you can punch in coordinates, load up a predetermined route (plan that in the app) and work with routes from third-party apps, such as Komoot or even Strava.

As I previously mentioned, I found the small screen to be quite tricky to read sometimes, often requiring a press of a few buttons to cycle to the appropriate data screen. Compare this to a Fenix or Marq, where all the info is beautifully presented on a pin-sharp colour screen, and it feels a bit poor, but then this is a much cheaper proposition.

However, the luminescent analogue hands are less impressive, which I found rarely really drew enough charge from UV rays to be of much use. Apparently, it’s possible to charge them up with a blast of an iPhone torch or other bright light source, but the low light visibility is among some of the worst I’ve seen in a Garmin watch. The backlight is measly, too.

I own several analogue watches with similar technology that manage to shine brightly throughout much of the night, but the Garmin Instinct Crossover would never really reach full output and would then die off almost instantly.

It’s not a huge issue, but I found I had to set the watch face up with a digital time data field and then light up the display to tell the time at night or even when walking in dense woodland.

Battery life

• Battery life: Smartwatch mode up to 28 days/70 days with solar
• Charging via Garmin proprietary plug charger
• Expedition GPS Activity: Up to 40 days/327 days with solar

The battery life is astounding in the Solar model I tested, and I found I only had to charge the watch once every few weeks – even with relatively heavy usage.

A typical week would involve several gym-based workouts, a quick 5K run with GPS mode enabled and then a much longer bike ride with the watch doing most of the tracking. Even still, the Instinct Crossover lasts an incredibly long time.

It is entirely possible to run the watch for 327 days in Expedition mode with occasional GPS activity, assuming it is used in 50,000 lux conditions daily. That’s the equivalent of an overcast day. Let that figure sink in 327 days. It’s just nuts.

Verdict

There’s a lot to love about the Garmin Instinct Crossover Solar, from the unique styling to the excellent battery life, but I can’t help thinking there are more stylish analogue watches and superior smartwatches out there.

Here, the analogue hands can sometimes make the screen feel busy, the MIP display isn’t particularly easy to read, and I found luminescent performance was poor at night.

That said, it’s small, discreet and just as good as any other Garmin watch at tracking activities – not to mention cheaper than a lot of the colour screen models. Opt for the solar model; you will barely need to charge it.

Despite it being a slightly odd mash-up, I still wear it most days, purely because of the discreet styling and ease of use.