The Garmin Instinct 3 is a solid middle-ground between a running watch and full-on outdoor adventurer’s watch. It’s great, provided you like its looks and can live with its small compromises.

The Garmin Instinct 3 is a very good sports and outdoors watch but it doesn’t stir strong feelings of tech lust or excitement in me – in a good way. It’s a purely functional, utilitarian gadget, ready to do whatever you want with no frills, aside from the inclusion of a colour AMOLED screen, a first for the Instinct series.

Sporting a G-Shock-mirroring look, I strapped the 45mm black version to my wrist for a month of walking, running and sleeping to see how the new Garmin fared. I’ve been left impressed by a no-nonsense watch that’s a great, non-distracting alternative to an Apple Watch or Pixel Watch if you love the outdoors but don’t care about notifications and apps.

I didn’t get to test the solar version of the Instinct 3 that offers free top ups in battery power simply from being outside in the sun. That version ditches the AMOLED screen for a monochrome, energy sipping Memory-in-Pixel (MIP) version instead, so you’ll have to decide if you want a watch you basically never have to charge, or the one I tested with a nicer display.

Having previously used the Instinct 2 Solar, I actually prefer the perk of never having to charge the watch. I’d have appreciated the new colour screen more if the Instinct 3 had features that would benefit from the upgrade, but it’s mostly aesthetic.

One thing colour screen watches often excel at is topographical, full colour mapping, but the Instinct 3 mystifyingly does not have a proper maps function, which is a big miss at this price. You can track where you are or have been with breadcrumb trails while in GPS mode and get very basic navigation, but the screen can’t display full maps, or any real kind of recognisable map bar lines that denote distance for you to orient yourself. It feels like a miss for a company built on its navigation technology, and means you can’t rely on the Instinct 3 to help you if you’re lost in the woods.

The screen is also not a touchscreen, a rarity for colour AMOLEDs in modern tech, and it feels a bit odd to have to control the UI purely with the watch’s five physical buttons.

But enough of what this watch can’t do. I tracked several walks and runs using the in-built multi-band GPS and found it supremely accurate. It’s a shame then that Garmin didn’t upgrade the sensor array on the underside of the unit to its Elevate Gen 5 tech, leaving this watch with the solid but less accurate Gen 4 heart rate sensor.

Despite the lack of solar, the Instinct 3 lasted for days even when I was using GPS regularly. With the always-on display disabled, it can go for well over a week before you need to top up with the included cable.

Turning the handy always-on display on, the watch will last up to seven days, according to Garmin. If you’re on a mega weekend of hiking and want to fire up the GPS constantly, you’ll still get 32 hours before it conks out. Adventures can also take in a swim or a dive, with the 10ATM rating meaning the watch can survive underwater up to 100m.

Wearing it day and night is no issue either, as despite the relatively large 45mm casing, the watch only weighs 53g (not including the strap). It’s worth noting the watch is made from polymer rather than the more premium-feeling metal used in some rival products at this price. You might miss the heavier feel but I think it’s a sound choice by Garmin, as the Instinct is light enough to forget you’re wearing it.

It’s a little bulky to wear in bed but I managed in order to track my (often terrible) sleep, which displays data in the Garmin Connect app. At least when I stumble to the loo in the dead of night, the watch has a bright LED torch built in that you can quickly turn on and off with two quick presses of the Ctrl button. It has four brightness levels and a red mode.

The Garmin Connect app is a little cluttered but it can do a lot, from displaying your metrics to adding a card to Garmin Pay for wrist-based contactless payments, which I did with my Monzo card, but not all banks are supported. I also easily linked Connect with Strava and found my workouts logged quickly and imported seamlessly into the popular social app.

The software on the watch is a little trickier to navigate if you’re not used to Garmin’s layout, which relies on those five buttons and different combinations of short and long presses. For example, the ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons scroll through menus, but holding each down opens the Menu screen and compass/altimeter. After a few days I was used to the system though, and made peace with the lack of touchscreen. It means this works at full function even if you’re wearing gloves, unlike many touchscreen watches.

Present and correct is Garmin’s useful morning report, which pops up when you wake up and gives you a breakdown of your sleep, the day’s weather and a little pep talk message for the day based on how ready it thinks you are to get out and exercise. This feature is good, and works best if you wear the watch 24/7 so the tech knows exactly how ready you are to train based on previous workouts and your recovery from them.

In all, the Garmin Instinct 3 is a solid upgrade on previous generations, introducing a quality AMOLED display while maintaining truly outstanding battery life. If you do a lot of hiking and other outdoor activities, this is the sweet spot of Garmin’s range. At this price I’d like for there to be better mapping tools, but aside from that, the Instinct 3 is a great all-round adventure watch that’s worth choosing over Garmin’s Forerunner range if you’re into more than running.