The aviators, or aspiring ones, can now benefit from an excellent wrist support, consisting of the resistant and also elegant Garmin D2 Mach 1 smartwatch which, in addition to acting as a sport watch and fitness tracker, also has ad hoc functions for flight.
After paying attention to the depths of the sea with the Descent G1, Garmin has dedicated itself again to the sky, with a smartwatch for pilots, aviators and aspiring worthies (given the indications for example for ideal gliding), through the new Garmin D2 Mach 1 placed a step above the previous D2 Air X10.
The new Garmin D2 Mach 1 has a frame, surrounded by 5 physical buttons, waterproof up to 10 atmospheres, sized with a diameter of 47 mm, a thickness of 14.5 mm, a weight of 70 grams (47 of which excluding the straps, from 22 mm, in Oxford brown leather or titanium, like the bezel). The canopy places a sapphire glass to protect the circular display, a 1.3-inch AMOLED panel resolved at 416 x 416 pixels.
On the commonly smart level, the Garmin D2 Mach 1 connected to an Android or iOS smartphone receives notifications, social updates, calendar reminders, the latest news, while – thanks to NFC – it supports wrist payments and, through the 32 GB of storage, it allows you to download up to 2,000 songs from Deezer, Amazon Music and Spotify. It can also be used as a fitness tracker and allows you to analyze stress, keep track of the menstrual cycle, monitor sleep, pay attention to respiratory activities, remember to drink, also displaying a body battery score from which to infer the level of charge of the body. , with attached drainage caused by sports activities and stress.
There is also the Health Snapshot function which, created in two minutes a snapshot of the state of health by recording the main parameters (eg saturation of oxygen in the blood via Pulse Ox, of heart rate with warnings exceeding certain thresholds), allows it to be shared with a professional. Going from wellness to fitness, the Garmin D2 Mach has more than 30 applications, with which to measure (also thanks to multi-band multi-GNSS) various sports activities, including GPS based and indoor (e.g. running, swimming, hiking, walking, golf via maps of 42,000 greens, skiing via SkiView Maps).
However, as a wearable dedicated to aviators, this is where it gives its best. The Direct-to and Nearest functions allow you to navigate directly to an airport or the nearest one, being able to have (from the METAR and TAF reports) information on parameters such as visibility and winds before even taking off. With regard to some specific US airports it is possible to have graphical indications of the forecasts, to which are added the trend projections for elements such as dew point, wind and temperature.
At take off, the watch begins to plot the route, entering parameters such as the total flight time and the relative duration in a personal log on flyGarmin.com: the connection to the smartphone, on the other hand, allows you to send flight plans to the wearable with the various waypoints along the route (about which it is possible to know the distance, the travel time, the altitude and the remaining fuel duration). From the Marq Aviator comes the union with the NEXRAR radar overlay, “with additional weather radar images based on a direction from the current position“. Connected with a Garmin InReach device, such as the Mini 2, you can send pre-established messages in the absence of a telephone signal, activate or deactivate the SOS detection, and contact the IERCC emergency service (multilingual, active 24 hours a day all week) .
The autonomy of the Garmin D2 Mach 1 depends on the mode of use: as a smartwatch (therefore connected with a smartphone) it operates up to 11 days while, in fly mode – that is, having pulse oximeter Pulse Ox and GPS active – it decreases to 24 hours. Waiting to see it also on Amazon, the smartwatch in question can already be bought, with an attached trial subscription of the Garmin Pilot app, on the official store, at a price of 1,119.99 euros for the model with the Oxford brown leather strap. or 1,299 euros for the iteration with the titanium strap.