Customer Reviews for Garmin - Instinct E GPS Smartwatch 40 mm Fiber-reinforced Polymer - Black with Charcoal Band - (2025)
Customer Rating
3
Good Beginner Health/Activity Smartwatch
on July 18, 2026
Posted by: LittleMissJulia
Good beginner health/activity smartwatch. It's decently accurate with what it monitors, although the auto-pause features can be finicky when you start moving again or are slowly meandering when the dogs are sniffing around. An annoying aspect is that even though it continuously monitors your temperature, it doesn't support monitoring it during sleep so that value is missing in the sleep report to detect abnormalities. There also isn't a way to do a quick-add for hydration from the watch, so I have to open the app on my phone every time before I forget to keep track, which can be tedious while at work. The battery duration between charges is less than expected from what was advertised, but still superior compared to other common smartwatch brands according to my colleagues.
I’ve had it for a weeks now. So far it’s been exactly what I was wanting. Battery last a reasonable time unless you turn the GPS on. That really takes it down. I have the e40 which is about a perfect size for my wrist (7”). Any larger wrist than that you will need a longer band. It took me awhile to get it setup and a face that had all the info I wanted at a glance. Overall pretty happy with it.
I got this as a replacement for my 2s. So far so good. I'm actually getting 16 days on a charge instead of the 14 it says. I got 17 on my 2s. Hopefully this one lasts longer than 2.5 yrs
I have not had my Instinct E very long but long enough to check out most of the capabilities. I purchased this device to work with my Garmin Pro 550 Plus and have worked with it enough to know that it performs exactly as expected. I'm looking forward to hunting in the fall and using GPS, hunting, and dog functions.
I purchased this watch about a month ago and I've still not learned how to use it. It has so many functions and they have to be setup. Also it has five buttons and each button has several functions. I had an older version that was much simpler to use. To me the manual ( or Youtube) doesn't do a very good job explaining setup of the was watch.
I bought this watch for my kids. I would give it a 5 star if I were able to track their workouts through my phones connect app. However, I also have a Garmi. Watch and the connect app is setup for 1 person on a single device. With that, it makes their workouts useless to track so Ive rated it a 3 star.