#TECH: Garmin unveils smartwatch for gamers

KUALA LUMPUR: Garmin Instinct e-sports edition, a rugged GPS smartwatch distinctively designed for e-sport tracking feature is now available in Malaysia.

Made with gaming athletes and enthusiasts in mind, this watch is equipped with Garmin’s proven health and fitness technologies, and it also utilises a dedicated e-sports function to monitor and analyse heart rate and stress during a gaming session.

According to Garmin Asia’s director, Scoppen Lin, many athletes around the world have been utilising multitudes of Garmin’s products to monitor and improve their performance, and with this e-sport edition, Garmin is giving the same opportunity for gamers to enjoy the same benefit of understanding their physical being during a gaming match.

“With Instinct Esports edition, now e-sports athletes can tap into that same technology to track and examine how their body responds to intense competition.

“Players can also use Instinct’s data to make adjustments in their daily lives, whether it be altering sleep patterns or activity levels, which can result in increased cognitive and physical performance during play,” added Lin.

LIVESTREAM BIOMETRICS

Garmin’s new STR3AMUP! PC streaming tool also provides Instinct users the ability to livestream biometric data to their audiences for a new streaming experience.

Players can utilise the tool to broadcast heart rate, stress level and Body Battery feature live and embed these data into their video streams or recordings using customisable overlays.

Having these metrics on display at real time allows players to interface with their audience and showcase – in real time – the physical and mental demands of a competitive play.

With battery lasting up to three days in esports mode, users can make the most of their playing time while taking their performance to the next level.

STR3AMUP! also allows audiences to be further engaged with their favourite player or team.

BATTERY AND DESIGN

Garmin Malaysia recognises the impact of e-sports and its new breed of young athletes. The Instinct Esports edition is made for elite e-gamers as well as enthusiasts who want so much more out of their games.

Purpose-built to meet military standards (MIL-STD 810), the watch is lightweight in design and provides a distraction-free gaming experience.

The Instinct’s bold black and red colours, high-contrast display and rugged design bring to life a non-traditional smartwatch.

Its 80 hours of battery life while on e-sports mode, and up to 14 days in smartwatch mode, this watch is all about convenience.

When paired with a compatible smartphone, Instinct also provides smart notifications such as email, texts, and alerts to a user’s wrist so they can stay connected both during and outside of game play.

E-SPORTS ACTIVITY PROFILE

Once the e-sport function is activated, Instinct, which comes with Garmin’s proven wrist-based heart rate technology will start analysing and user will get heart rate data along with alerts if a user’s heart rate stays too high or too low while at rest, and gauge how hard their heart is working during specific gaming moments on display in addition to the time of day and also a gaming timer.

Designed with an emphasis on elite-tier competition, the Instinct Esports edition provides a variety of valuable body metric analytics features, so users can analyse and fine-tune how their body reacts to competitive play.

And once a gaming session has ended, users can sync their activity to the free Garmin Connect app to view, store and analyse their data to see how their body would react in different gaming situations.

Using Garmin’s heart rate variability, the Instinct Esports edition can calculate an individual’s stress level score, giving them the opportunity to optimise stress management to conserve mental and physical resources and its Body Battery Energy Monitor uses heart rate, stress and sleep data to determine how much energy a user has and allows users to know when to play and when to rest.

For those who want to monitor performance even further, on top of Garmin’s 30+ sports apps and robust activity tracking, Instinct users can train with preloaded activity profiles outside the gaming world with a separately sold Heart Rate Monitor chest strap.

The Garmin Instinct Esports edition is available at RM1,399 on AECO e-store, authorised retailers, Shopee and Lazada.

Source: NST