- Garmin has revealed its Garmin Instinct Crossover AMOLED
- It’s an Instinct 3 variant with analog hands in front of the display
- The original Garmin Instinct Crossover received high praise (from me, anyway)
I loved the original Garmin Instinct Crossover. A rugged smartwatch with analog hands, it used RevoDrive technology to get accurate timekeeping information from Garmin’s satellite network, adjusting its hands accordingly. When you wanted to use the smartwatch functionalities, a button press moved the hands out of the way of the screen. It was brilliant in its simplicity.
As someone with a soft spot for both Casio G-Shocks and the best Garmin watches, the Instinct Crossover felt like a marriage of the two in the best possible way. I gave it 4.5 stars in my Garmin Instinct Crossover review, and it made my list of the best hybrid smartwatches to buy.
It was impractically thick – it stuck out on my wrist and was very obtrusive – and probably too expensive for what it was, but I honestly didn’t care. I just thought it was cool.
Imagine my excitement when I learned that Garmin is making another one! Just as the original Instinct Crossover was a version of the Garmin Instinct 2, the Garmin Instinct Crossover AMOLED shares the design ethos of the Garmin Instinct 3 – which I also rated very highly in my Garmin Instinct 3 review. It abandons the digital watch-style low power memory-in-pixel display in favor of a brighter AMOLED display, and packs the Garmin Instinct 3’s built-in LED flashlight.
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A feature new to Garmin watches is lifestyle logging, allowing users to record triggers like caffeine and alcohol in the same way as Oura’s tagging system or Whoop’s journal. This can help provide context for erratic heart rate and sleep readings. Battery life is strong but not surprising for Garmin, at 14 days in smartwatch mode.
However, the real attraction remains the physical analog hands powered by RevoDrive technology, and the charm of having a ‘proper’ watch that still packs all the functionalities of a Garmin. As users work out, sleep and recover, they still get all the advanced readings that a Garmin watch provides. The RevoDrive hands are a neat trick, and they’re mostly cosmetic in function – they actually limit the information shown on the new AMOLED display.
But dammit, it looks cool and I want one, especially in that new black-and-orange colorway. It reminds me of a heavy-duty piece of construction equipment.
The Garmin Instinct Crossover AMOLED is available now, starting at $649.99 (around £475 / AU$975). A Tactical Edition with Garmin’s military functionalities like an instant-reset Kill Switch is also available, costing $749.99 (around £550 / AU$1,100).
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