Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

Forget fitness, Garmin’s new smartwatch is designed for “esports athletes”

Garmin has announced the new Instinct Esports Edition, a new smartwatch aimed at “esports athletes.” The smartwatch boosts the regular Garmin Instinct with some gaming-specific monitoring features.

The Garmin Instinct Esports Edition puts all of the company’s proven tracking chops into a dedicated esports activity function – offering heart rate and stress readings while you play. There’s room for long-term analysis too as well as a feature for displaying esports athletes data to onlooking audience members

Related: Best smartwatch

Garmin Instinct Esports Edition

Key features that make the new watch an “Esports Edition” include: dedicated esports activity profile, STR3AMUP! Livestream biometrics and body metrics tracking.

Activating the dedicated esports activity profile will monitor your heart rate and stress during play while displaying time of day and game time. STR3AMUP! livesteam biometrics lets players embed their stats into video streams and recordings via a customisable user interface.

Body metrics tracking is “designed with an emphasis on elite-tier competition” and is aimed at helping esports athletes analyse how they react during competitive matches. On top of heart rate and stress tracking, users can utilise advanced sleep monitoring and take advantage of over 30 sports apps.

There’s a body battery energy monitor too that combines the aforementioned metrics to inform a player when on their optimal times to play or when it is time they rest.

Related: Best fitness trackers

Garmin vice president of sales Dan Bartel addressed the smartwatch’s entry into the esports market:

“Elite athletes around the world depend on Garmin products to monitor and improve their performance. With the Instinct Esports Edition, esports athletes can tap into that same technology to track and examine how their body responds to intense competition.”

The new Instinct Esports Edition offers up military standards, with its rugged design, while maintaining a lightweight. In the esports mode, you can get up to 80 hours and, in smartwatch mode, you can go up to 14 days.

You can pick up the Garmin Instinct Esports Edition now for a price of £269.99. Garmin also touts an optional heart rate monitor chest strap for added accuracy, at a cost of £119.99.

Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

author icon

Editorial independence

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

author icon

Professional conduct

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Trusted Reviews Logo

Sign up to our newsletter

Get the best of Trusted Reviews delivered right to your inbox.

This is a test error message with some extra words