Garmin Instinct 3 Crossover AMOLED & Tactical Hands-On: 33 New Things To Know!

Here's everything you need to know about the new Instinct 3 Crossover AMOLED edition. If you had ‘Garmin makes another Crossover watch’ on a list for the year, it certainly wasn’t on my bingo card. I say that not because it isn’t cool (I think it is), but because it was the watch that Garmin most heavily discounted over the past 18 months or so. It’s like Amazon, and Grandmas in Olathe yard sales, all seemed to be trying to offload them at crazy prices. Yet, here we are with a swanky new Crossover. Perhaps what the Crossover needed was a better display, combined with all the features of the Instinct 3 (software and hardware). And if so, that’s what you get here. It’s kinda honestly as simple as that, except there are also a few new Garmin Connect features the company is launching today, though those aren’t yet integrated natively into the watch. And fear not, these are not Connect+ features, but instead, free to everyone. More details on that shortly. For those not familiar with the Crossover family, it’s designed to blend the analog watch face hands with a normal screen behind it. The hands cleverly move around, out of the way of data elements on the screen. And in other cases, the hands are used as pointers (such as a step gauge, compass, and so on). In any event, here’s how it differs specifically from the Instinct Crossover before it: – Added LED flashlight (both white & red) – Switched from MIP to larger 1.2” AMOLED screen (was 0.9”) – Improved Revodrive Analog hands gearbox (slight durability/accuracy changes) – Added multi-band GNSS/GPS with SatIQ – Weighs 2g less – Price increased by $250, from $399 to $649 (full list below) Next, there are all the new Instinct 3 features. All of them are here. Every one of them: – Added a metal ring into the bezel as “reinforcement” and GPS antenna – Added Training Load Focus – Added Training Load Ratio – Added Multisport/Triathlon Auto Transition – Added Nap Detection – Added Sleep Coach – Added Muscle Map for Strength Workouts – Added Strength Workout Animations – Added Garmin Share – Added Garmin Messenger compatibility – Added Garmin Pay as standard on all units – Added large font mode I asked Garmin whether or not the Instinct Crossover AMOLED would be part of the Instinct 3 family when it came to software updates and such, and they confirmed it would. That means when the Instinct 3 receives those updates, it’ll be grouped in with that. That’s a good boat to be in, since the Instinct 3 gets quarterly software updates on the regular (well…quarterly), including feature updates. And at Garmin, it’s always better to be in a ‘big product’ update boat, than a small product boat. Cause the little boat seems to sink.