I used to be a huge Wear OS fan, but our resident fitness wearable expert has been able to change my tune in 2025 with great watches like the Garmin Instinct 2X Solar, which is now $150 off for the rest of the day today, Friday, July 11.
When Michael sent me this watch back in March for a Spartan Race I was taking part in, I had zero expectations for how excellent it would turn out to be. Over the years, I’ve slowly stopped wearing smart watches during the day and typically only wear them for working out, hiking, or other outdoor activities. Turns out, the Instinct 2X Solar was made for this kind of use and beyond, as its 40-day battery life was a staggering improvement over my previous favorite Wear OS watches.
The Instinct 2X Solar has a dope solar panel on top, which can not only measure the UV intensity (letting you know when to put more sun coverage on), but it also charges the super bright flashlight built into the side. If that’s not enough, its ability to understand which muscles you’re working out while on the go feels like pure magic, and it will help you better log and train for specific fitness improvement.
This $299 price is typically reserved for watches like the Amazfit Balance 2 or even the OnePlus Watch 3, but while both of those offer compelling features, nothing touches a Garmin’s fitness tracking capabilities in my estimation.
Take this HIIT workout I did earlier this week. I sprained my ankle last week so I’ve been doing more upper-body stuff this week to give me ankle a rest (plus a lot less cardio since, you know, it hurts to use the ankle). All I did was set my Garmin Instinct 2X Solar to a HIIT workout and click the “go” button. It magically figured out what I was working out, all without me needing to tell it.
The Amazfit Balance 2 I’ve been using can do something similar, but it usually only assigns muscle usage based on specific workout types. For instance, I used it to log “strength training” and it was able to figure out that I was doing deadlifts, so it logged my legs as being heavily used. But selecting a HIIT workout on the Amazfit Balance 2 will only give me heart rate data, not muscle usage.
While this muscle data might seem superfluous at first, it’s actually incredibly helpful for specific training. That way, you know exactly which muscles were used by each type of workout, even if you go to a CrossFit or WOD type of gym with a lot of variety. If I were in the market for another smartwatch right now, this is the deal I’d be buying today. There’s absolutely no question.
