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If you a Garmin instinct 2 wearer, you’ll get some of Garmin’s best new features in an Alpha firmware update coming in January, including the popular Morning Report and wrist-based running features. What a way to start your new year!
The new firmware update takes some of the features from the best Garmin watches released this year and adds them to the Instinct 2, according to a report published on Garmin website (opens in new tab). Initially, the features will only be available to members of Garmin’s early-access beta testing program, but they are expected to roll out to all Instinct 2 users automatically by the end of January, according to a report from Gadgets and wearable devices (opens in new tab).
Full details of the features coming to the Instinct 2 can be found below, as written on Garmin’s website:
- Morning report added.
- Sleep mode added.
- First looks at race and race calendar added.
- Added wrist-based running power.
- Added daily suggested workout improvements.
- Added grade-adjusted tempo.
- Backcountry Snowboard activity added.
- Added Physio TrueUp – Training status improvements.
- Added real-time settings support for activity alerts.
- Added activity setting for temperature recording.
- Phone app pairing flow updated to use PIN comparison.
- Fixed an issue where the daily active calories could be incorrect.
- Fixed an issue where indoor cycle activity could start on the wrong data screen.
- Fixed overview page for surf waves.
Analysis: report for duty – but what about the Instinct Crossover?
The main attraction here, and the feature we’ve used the most, is the Morning Report. First introduced on the Garmin Forerunner 955the Morning Report sends a selection of curated information to your wrist as soon as you wake up, including information about last night’s sleep, the weather, your Training Readiness score, and a recommended exercise intensity.
This allows you to change and build your training plans for the day: for example, if it’s a frosty day and you’ve had a terrible night’s sleep, you may want to give up that long run in favor of a short, restorative yoga flow.
Race calendar tins are also very interesting, letting you see the races you’ve put on your wrist in Garmin Connect, and count down to the next big day. Wrist-based running power is a great way to calculate the total effort and load on your body created during a given run.
Normally you have one of the best heart rate monitors to effectively calculate this metric, but with the Instinct 2 you can do without HRM from January. Other features include listed fixes for common issues, such as increased calorie counter accuracy.
There’s no mention of whether these features will come to the Instinct Crossover, Garmin’s latest watch, which is essentially an Instinct 2 modified to work around analog hands. We imagine Crossover users will have to wait longer as each feature’s UX will need to be tweaked to get around the watch’s analog design.