Watchmaker Garmin has launched a smartwatch that reminds us of its skills in manufacturing aviation equipment. The watch dubbed Garmin D2 Air X10 GPS Aviator smartwatch is actually designed for pilots while retaining the key features you’ll find in a smartwatch.
The watch is equipped with a GPS feature
which enables it to be used for navigation. The company says pilots can use the
watch to plot their way to the nearest airport, perhaps in case of instrument
failure. There is a . Alternatively, you can choose to activate a direct course
to the nearest airport or waypoint deploying a database of locations preloaded
to the watch. There is also a horizontal situation indicator (HSI) course
needle onboard that indicates whether the aircraft is either left or right of
the desired flight path.
It equally comes with a flight tracking
feature which gets activated as soon as the flight takes off. It also transfers
useful data such as date, route, total flight time, and duration, to your
logbook on flyGarmin. Pilots can also transfer the flight plan to the watch via
the Garmin Pilot app. In terms of the build, the Garmin D2 Air X10 looks
similar to the Garmin Venu 2 and Venu 2 Plus. It utilizes a bright AMOLED
screen protected by a later of Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It also
contains many similar sports features that you can find on its predecessors
including a built-in microphone. There are also tracking monitors such as heart
rate monitor, SpO2 sensor, respiration tracking, and breathwork activities. It
also features sleep tracking, sedentary reminder, and Garmin’s Body Battery
tool that gives an estimate of the energy. There are several workout modes
onboard as well as a storage space that can take up to 650 songs. Users can
also stream directly from Spotify, Amazon Music, and others. You equally get
support for Garmin Pay contactless payment platform.
It’s worth noting that the D2 Air X10’s
battery life is slightly shorter than that of the Venu 2. The aviation-focused
watch has a battery life of seven days in smartwatch mode, or 20 hours in full
GPS mode with SpO2 monitoring while flying. For comparison, the Venu 2 keeps
running for up to 11 days in smartwatch mode, or eight hours in GPS mode with
music. The Garmin D2 Air X10 comes in black and Ivory colors and is priced at US$ 549.99. The aviator smartwatch is presently available from Garmin US and other
third-party retailers.
