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Immigration officials would have authority to quickly expel migrants temporarily admitted via the CBP One App and a separate program for certain people fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

(Image credit: Gilles Clarenne)

Commentary: "AI" has been a constant buzzword at tech events, but some of Samsung's latest offerings could prove to be quite helpful.

The full implications of designating the cartels as terrorist organizations will depend, in large part, to how the administration follows through.

(Image credit: Jim Watson)

One of the CDC's weekly health publications was not published on its regular schedule, and some data about flu and vaccinations wasn't updated.

(Image credit: John Bazemore)

High cholesterol is considered 240 mg/dL. The man’s was over 1,000 mg/dL.

The FCC's press release on ending DEI efforts could have an immediate impact on broadband efforts to bridge the digital divide.

Rhodes was convicted by a federal jury of sedition conspiracy in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. President Trump pardoned him on Monday.

(Image credit: Kayla Bartkowski)

• Asus recently released its Q-Release Slim feature for GPUs
• Said feature is reportedly damaging GPUs
• There's no current fix for this issue from Asus

Asus’s Q-Release Slim was first revealed in August 2024 during Gamescom. It is an eject feature on 800-series AMD and Intel motherboards that makes removing graphics cards much easier. However, the recently released feature is reportedly causing major headaches for buyers.

According to HXL and Andreas Schilling from HardwareLuxx (reported on by Tom’s Hardware), Q-Release Slim has been causing damage to graphics cards by scraping off the sides of the connector. This could potentially ruin your expensive graphics cards, including the recent RTX 5090.

The Q-Release Slim is supposed to be an improved version of the Q-Release launched back in 2021 for high-end Asus ROG motherboards. It lets you quickly eject cards by titling them while pulling upwards. However, the fault lies in the peg side of the PCIe slot on the motherboard, which has a metallic piece embedded in it that scrapes against the connector. If the card is ejected frequently, this can result in significant damage — something reviews and overclockers tend to do.

Uniko’s Hardware offers more insight into the matter, including several photos from the bilibili channel. The first is of the design flaw reportedly causing this issue, while two more are before and after the original card’s condition versus the damaging results of using the Q-Release Slim eject 60 times.

We’ve also reached out to Asus concerning this issue and will update this story with any statements from them.

This isn’t the only issue plaguing Asus either

This isn’t the only recent report concerning Asus motherboards either. Patch notes slipped out early, which revealed a BETA bios fix for a “microcode signature verification vulnerability,” apparently affecting Asus gaming motherboards.

Tavis Ormandy, the security researcher who spotted the leak, stated, "It looks like an OEM leaked the patch for a major upcoming CPU vulnerability, ie: 'AMD Microcode Signature Verification Vulnerability.’” He then continues, “I'm not thrilled about this. The patch is not currently in Linux firmware, so this is the only publicly available patch."

By the time Asus edited the patch notes to remove mentioning AMD’s microcode issue, AMD had already confirmed the vulnerability to The Register. "AMD is aware of a newly reported processor vulnerability. Execution of the attack requires both local administrator-level access to the system, and development and execution of malicious microcode," the company stated.

It seems that Asus motherboards have been embroiled in some serious trouble, which could spell disaster for both processors and graphics cards. Hopefully, the manufacturer can correct the issue soon, as the timing couldn’t be worse — with the release of the RTX 5000-series and new processors on the horizon.

• AMD confirms processor security flaws after Asus patch slips out early
• Painful GPU extraction woes could be a thing of the past with new motherboards
• Some of the most iconic AMD chips have a serious security flaw — which the company says it probably won't patch now

Lexington residents have multiple providers to choose from, including Spectrum, Comporium and Kinetic. Here’s how the best broadband providers in Lexington stack up.

Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22: One minute review

Epson’s smaller, portable EpiqVision home projector models were long overdue for an update, and that’s just what it has done with the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22. This introduces the tilting, swiveling stand design that’s proven so popular with many other recent projectors, and it packs in Google TV for streaming, which helps bring the EpiqVision Mini EF22 closer to parity with its competition. Add in a pair of stereo speakers and the EpiqVision Mini EF22 proves an effective all-in-one system.

The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 beams a laser through its 3LCD projection system, providing respectable brightness near 1,000 lumens. It makes for a decent picture, though it doesn’t manage quite the exciting color gamut of triple-laser options like the JMGO N1S Pro. Its 1080p resolution will also have you sticking to smaller projection sizes than you might otherwise opt for with the best 4K projectors like the BenQ X300G or even the older Xgimi Horizon Pro.

While the EpiqVision Mini EF22 is a simple and effective little home theater projector selling for a reasonable $999, it struggles to contend with the market it’s entering. Not only are there many great new projectors in the $1000-$2000 range but there’s also a sea of slightly older models that have come down in price. It’s a good projector, but I’m hard-pressed to find a reason to choose it over the alternatives. I’d snag myself a BenQ X300G or Xgimi Horizon Pro instead, both of which have been seeing some impossible-to-ignore discounts.

(Image credit: Future) Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 review: Specs

The JMGO N1S Pro 4K delivered strong picture quality across the board (Image credit: Future) Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 review: Prices & release date

• Release date: October 2024
• Price: $999

The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 launched in late 2024 with a starting price of $999 (£799, AU$1,599). It has seen some discounts since then, though these tend to come and go. The EpiqVision Mini EF22 comes in a variety of colors, giving you more options. You can find it in Stone Blue, Opal Green, Quartz Rose, Onyx Black, and Diamond White.

(Image credit: Future) Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 review: Design & features

• Built-in stand makes setup easy
• Google TV and automatic image adjustments
• Built-in 2x 5W stereo speakers

Like many of the new consumer projectors in 2024, the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 comes with a stand built in. This makes it easy to adjust the vertical tilt and horizontal angle of the projector, even supporting vertical projection up toward the ceiling. This provides a simpler setup, though anything but a perfectly lined-up projection will result in some digital corrections that detract from the usable image.

The EpiqVision Mini EF22 makes automatic vertical and horizontal keystone adjustments very quickly, letting you shift the projector around and see the image change shape in real time. It’s also quick to focus automatically. It has an optional setting to avoid obstacles when projecting, and this proves effective, but it is a slower process than the other automatic corrections, taking a few seconds. The EpiqVision Mini EF22 rounds out its smart projection features with eye protection that dims the projector when it detects someone in front of it.

The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 is plenty compact, proving not dramatically different in size from the JGMO N1S I recently tested. That said, projectors can certainly come smaller, as LG showed with the LG CineBeam Q. It’s hard to have small projectors get very bright or offer solid audio, though, and those aren’t sacrifices the EpiqVision Mini EF22 made. It features stereo speakers and is rated to hit 1,000 ISO lumens. It also comes with Google TV. Unfortunately, Epson didn’t make the most of the projector’s size, as it opted to include just one HDMI port (with ARC), a USB-A port, and a 3.5mm audio output jack. It’s providing options, but not many. The focus of the EpiqVision Mini EF22 really is on being a standalone device that doesn’t call for external connections.

The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 comes with a simple remote. It’s all plastic with rubber buttons and nothing too elegant, but it’s effective. It has simple navigation controls, a Google Assistant button, a shortcut to the HDMI input (making the input selection button a bit redundant), dedicated volume and brightness controls, and shortcuts for projection settings, auto-focus, as well as YouTube, Netflix, and Prime Video. None of the buttons have backlighting, making it a bit hard to use in the dark, but at least some of the buttons are white, and it’s easy enough to feel out the volume buttons.

• Design & features score: 4/5

The JMGO N1S Pro 4K's picture is at its best with bright and colorful images (Image credit: Future) Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 review: Picture & sound quality

• Decent brightness
• No unsightly motion smoothing
• Color could use a boost

The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 provides an overall good-looking image, but it’s not the most impressive I've seen in this projector category. While natural content looks solid, with the projector offering a great presentation for Dune, it can struggle elsewhere. In the extremely colorful Mind Game, it didn’t keep up with some of the triple-laser options on the market, like the JMGO N1S, and I noticed some banding in color gradients. That said, the 3LCD technology avoids some of the unsightly swimming-pixel artifacts I’ve seen from DLP projectors displaying large monotone regions, as well as DLP rainbow artifacts.

The EpiqVision Mini EF22 doesn’t keep up with some of its 4K competition either. BenQ’s X300G may have originally been much more expensive, but it’s come down considerably in price, and it has the chops to really threaten the EpiqVision Mini EF22.

I took a rough measurement to overall brightness in the Dynamic profile, which achieved 959 lumens with an ANSI test pattern and a matte white screen. There again, it’s just decent. Competitors like the Dangbei Atom and JGMO N1S offer as much, and slightly more expensive options from BenQ and JMGO take it to another level.

Gaming on the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22, I found the projector added considerable latency if it had any sort of processing going on (i.e., keystone correction or digital zoom). With these disabled, the projector still had a tangible delay between actions and on-screen effects, but it wasn’t significant enough to slow me down as I worked my way through numerous encounters in Hades. Oddly enough, there’s no specific picture profile for gaming that would disable the projector's processing automatically, so you’ll have to manage these settings on your own.

With two speakers on the rear of the EpiqVision Mini EF22, it works reasonably well whether you set the projector up in front of you or at the back of the room. They provide a bit of stereo separation, which adds a touch of depth, though they’re no substitute for a dedicated audio system. They get reasonably loud for a small, quiet room, but the sound gets a bit muddled at higher volumes, making it hard to pick out everything that’s going on in a song, for example. You’ll get clear enough mids and a bit of bass, but higher frequencies tend to suffer when the volume is cranked.

To the EF22’s credit, it doesn’t mess around with any unsightly motion smoothing. Right from the jump, it provides good, clear motion.

• Picture and sound quality score: 3/5

(Image credit: Future) Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 review: Value

• Effective all-in-one package
• Comes up short next to the competition

The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 puts plenty into one package. It’s a decent projector, providing a bright image that can handle impromptu movie nights or let you settle in to binge the next hot series, as long as you turn the lights off. With Google TV, it’s ready to stream a great variety of content with no external sources. And it packs in a good enough set of speakers to make do in quiet, intimate viewing conditions. The built-in stand also proves helpful, making it that much easier to set up in various places without the need to stack up a pile of books or go buy a separate stand.

The biggest thing holding the EpiqVision Mini EF22 back in the value department is the competition it faces. You can get much brighter projectors and ones that offer 4K or provide more vivid color for the same price or just a little more. Compared to these, the EpiqVision Mini EF22 ends up feeling lacking.

• Value score: 3/5

The JMGO N1S Pro 4K comes in a styrofoam carry case. Although portable, it is on the weightier side (Image credit: Future) Should I buy the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22? Buy it if...

You want a simple all-in-one: The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 is easy to set up and easy to use. It has the streaming platform, speakers, stand, and display all covered. It performs decently in each department as well, giving you a reasonably well-rounded experience.View Deal

You can’t stand DLP rainbow artifact and dithering: Epson’s 3LCD projection technology gets around a couple visual artifacts that often impact DLP projectors. If you see rainbows or are distracted by weird pixel movement when watching DLP projection, you may prefer the look of Epson’s projector. View Deal

You can’t stand motion smoothing: The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 doesn’t mess around with motion smoothing at all. While most projectors I test have it enabled by default, forcing you to turn it off manually, the EF22 lets you avoid it entirely. View Deal

Don't buy it if...

You can’t control ambient lighting: Projection at 1,000 lumens is decently bright and can work in a dim or dark room. But if you can’t close the blinds and dim the lights, it won’t be enough for a bright room.View Deal

You’re a big gamer: The Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 has no optimizations for gaming. It requires all of its image adaptations to be disabled to avoid serious input latency, and even then the latency is perceptible. There are much better gaming projector options, like the BenQ X300G.View Deal

You plan on setting it up with more home theater gear: A key aspect of the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 is its all-in-one nature. It’s well-rounded, but not exceptional in any one area. If you’re planning on pairing your projector with separate speakers and video sources, you may as well go with one that goes more all-in on visuals (and one that has more useful ports).View Deal

Also consider

JMGO N1S Pro

The JMGO N1S Pro costs twice as much, but its tri-laser projection system is brighter and way more colorful. If you can tolerate DLP artifacts, it makes for a great alternative with more stunning visuals.

Read our JMGO N1S Pro reviewView Deal

LG CineBeam Q 4K Projector

The LG CineBeam Q gets you upgrades in color quality and resolution thanks to its 4K, triple-laser projection system. It’s also tiny, making it far more portable. But it sacrifices brightness and audio for its size.

Read our full LG CineBeam Q reviewView Deal

BenQ X300G

While this projector might have a high MSRP, it’s recently seen its price reduced to become incredibly competitive. It’s much brighter and offers 4K visuals and gaming enhancements. If you can live without the built-in stand of the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22, strongly consider this one instead.

Read our full BenQ X300G reviewView Deal

(Image credit: Future) How I tested the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22

• Tested at home in multiple, real-world viewing conditions
• Presented the display with a variety of media and formats
• I have tested numerous projectors and displays over the last half-decade

I tested the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 at home, in real-world conditions. This saw it faced with ambient light coming in from numerous windows, in-room lighting, as well as ambient noise that both the projector and speaker systems had to overcome. The projector was tested both against a bare, white wall and an Akia Screens CineWhite screen. It was presented with streamed content, HDR and non-HDR, and PC gameplay.

My testing evaluates the projector’s performance concerning its price and competition from other models that I and my colleagues at TechRadar have tested.

I have been testing projectors since 2021 and displays for even longer.

• First reviewed: January 24, 2025
• Read TechRadar's review guarantee

Back in August 2023, Meta revealed an ‘all-in-one’ AI translation model capable of understanding close to 100 different languages.

Dubbed SeamlessM4T (Massively Multilingual and Multimodal Machine Translation), this is Meta’s attempt at creating a ‘universal translator’ akin to the Babel Fish in Douglas Adams’ classic sci-fi series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The team behind the SeamlessM4T tool has now detailed its work in a piece in the journal Nature, revealing the advanced system delivers an all-in-one solution for text-to-text, speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, and text-to-speech translations across an impressive, and growing, array of languages.

Over 400 years of raw audio

SeamlessM4T, which, among other things, is being used to automatically dub videos on Facebook and Instagram, currently supports speech-to-speech translation from 101 to 36 languages, speech-to-text translation for from 101 to 96 languages, text-to-text translation for 96 languages, text-to-speech translation from 96 to 36 languages, and automatic speech recognition for 96 languages. This unified approach overcomes the limitations of traditional cascaded systems, which often require separate subsystems for speech recognition, translation, and text-to-speech synthesis.

By streamlining these processes, Meta says SeamlessM4T outperforms existing models, achieving up to 23% higher BLEU (Bilingual Evaluation Understudy) scores in translation accuracy and demonstrating impressive resilience to background noise and speaker variations.

To create SeamlessM4T, Meta started with 4 million hours (over 400 years) of multilingual raw audio originating from a publicly available repository of crawled web data. The team developed SeamlessAlign, a multimodal corpus containing over 470,000 hours of aligned speech and combined the dataset with cutting-edge machine learning techniques, including SONAR (Sentence-level Multimodal and Language-Agnostic Representations) embeddings, which enable multilingual and modality-agnostic encoding for text and speech.

Meta says that by addressing social and ethical challenges through the use of safeguards, SeamlessM4T can be a valuable tool for global communication. These safeguards reduce gender bias - errors in grammatical gender determination - and mitigate the problem of added toxicity - where offensive words appear in translations but not in the original source.

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Israel is slowly withdrawing from Lebanese villages it occupied, as part of a ceasefire deal. Lebanese residents waiting to return to their villages say the Israeli military has destroyed nearly everything.

(Image credit: Ramiz Dallah)

I had a chance to see Dreame's newest robot vacuum, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete, in action. With its cutting-edge features, this brand is the one to watch. In fact, it might even make me switch allegiance from my current favorite bot brand, Roborock.

We saw plenty of impressive robot vacuum innovations at CES 2025 in January, but the X50 Ultra Complete has the most... well, complete feature set I've seen.

The standout headline feature is that it has tiny little mechanical legs. These lift the bot and help it hoist itself over tall thresholds in the home. This 'ProLeap System' means the X50 Ultra can tackle steps up to 4.2cm tall in a single bound or up to 6cm tall in two. In action, it looks kind of like the wooing ritual of an exotic bird. It's really quite majestic.

Slightly less graceful is the bot's descent down steps. There is a "shock-absorption system" designed to soften collisions and absorb sound, as well as a little wheel in the front that means the X50 is not quite face-planting, but it still comes down with a bit more of a bump than I was expecting or am wholly comfortable with.

What's afoot?

Beyond those little feet, there's more to show off, though. It also has a navigation puck that can pop up and down (a feature appearing on one of the newest Roborock bots). That enables it to use LiDAR navigation without permanently raising the height of the bot.

With the puck retracted, the height of the robot vacuum is just 8.9cm tall, shallow enough that it can sneak under low-sitting furniture, where dust and hair might otherwise collect. It'll then pop back up again when space allows.

Those are two 2025 innovations, but there are further features that have appeared on previous Dreames – including 2024's highly-rated Dreame L40 Ultra robot vacuum and Dreame X40 Ultra Complete robovac – and help round out what is an extremely capable setup.

For example, the spinning mop pads attach using magnets, which means the X50 Ultra Complete can drop them off in its base when they're not required and then return to pick them up again as needed, with no manual intervention required from you.

That means there's absolutely no danger of wet mop pads dragging over your carpets (the mop pads can also lift up to avoid this, but it's not such a failsafe approach if you have thick rugs, for example).

(Image credit: Future)

To ensure the edges of rooms aren't missed, the Dreame X50 not only has an extending side brush to sweep debris into the robot's suction path (fairly common on premium bots), but also a mop pad that can kick out to the side.

I saw the Dreame X50 Ultra, alongside the brand's other products, at the grand opening of its first flagship store in Birmingham, UK – a "significant milestone" in the brand's expansion into the UK.

We're in the process of testing the Dreame X50 Ultra and will report back if it's as good as it looks. It will go on sale in the UK from February 7 at a list price of £1,299. It'll be available to purchase directly from Dreame (in-store and online) as well as via Amazon.

US release information and pricing has been requested, and we'll update this when we hear back.

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• 5 overdue robot vacuum innovations I want to see this year
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Commentary: We want to see Android phones with built-in magnets, but official cases are a step towards that.

Exclusive: Check out this reveal of two cards from the next Magic: The Gathering set, leaning into Aetherdrift's interplanar race theme.

• The FBI’s missive follows three previous ones in as many years
• Statement is aimed at educating businesses and warding off domestic collaborators
• Suggested remedies include employing endpoint protection on computer systems and checking applications for “typos and unusual nomenclature”

The FBI has claimed North Korean IT workers are extorting US companies which have hired them by leveraging their access to steal source code.

In a statement, the agency warned domestic and international firms employees turned threat actors, “facilitate cyber-criminal activities and conduct revenue-generating activity” using stolen data “on behalf of the regime.”

It recommended endpoint protection, and monitoring network logs to identify where data has been compromised across “easily accessible means” like shared internal drives and cloud storage drives.

FBI guidance on remote hiring processes

The FBI also recommended a litany of actions that all amount to taking care to know who you’re hiring, which sounds like good practice even if you’re not especially worried about unwittingly hiring a threat actor.

It recommended stringent identity verification processes throughout the recruitment process and cross-checking applicants’ details against that of others in the pile, and across different HR systems.

It also claimed these applicants are using AI tools to obfuscate their identities, but, if true, offered little advice to counter them beyond conducting recruitment processes in person; which isn’t always possible.

The agency also suggested recruiters ask applicants “soft questions” about their whereabouts and identity, but we’d suggest that this is good practice all round too.

North Korean IT workers have been a target of the FBI for some time, having released separate guidance in 2022, 2023, and 2024. In the latter, it expressed concern that US-based individuals were, knowingly or unknowingly, helping facilitate state-sponsored threat actors by setting up US-based infrastructure such as front addresses and businesses.

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• We’ve also listed the best malware removal tools right now

Garmin Instinct 3: One minute review

As I begin our Garmin Instinct 3 review testing, I know this watch has a lot to live up to. After all, the Garmin Instinct 2 received a rare, coveted five stars in our official review. With a variety of sizes (from 40mm to the Instinct 2X Solar at 50mm), solar-powered and non-solar versions, a smorgasbord of fun colorways, and - my personal favorite - a hybrid Garmin Instinct Crossover, there truly was an Instinct 2 for everyone.

The Instinct 3 runs along very much the same lines, with a selection of cool colorways, a variety of sizes, and two key screen options. The smallest 40mm size is called the Instinct E, and is most reminiscent of the Instinct 2: there’s only the MIP (Memory in Pixel) option with no solar charging and no flashlight. In 45mm and 50mm sizes, you can choose between a bright, smartwatch AMOLED screen and a classic Garmin MIP screen equipped with Garmin’s Power Glass solar charge technology, offering ‘unlimited’ battery life in bright enough conditions, if you’re out and about with it exposed to sunlight for several hours.

It only really makes a big difference during endurance exercise on sunny days, when it can slow down the GPS mode’s drain on the battery life, but it’s nice to have. We got the AMOLED 45mm version to test in its cool, minty Neotropic colorway, but I do have a soft spot for the digital watch-esque MIP screens that the best Garmin watches used to use as standard. As is, this feels more like a Garmin Forerunner 265, with limited map capabilities, although the case design is still stereotypically Instinct.

The Instinct series has never offered the full-color topographical maps more premium watches in Garmin’s range have, and I was wondering if the AMOLED screen meant we’d finally see topographical maps on an Instinct, but there are no maps or touchscreen here. I suppose Garmin has to distinguish between the ranges and keep the Instinct’s price down somehow. I have recorded two workouts with the Instinct 3 so far – a run and a boxing session – and it handled both with accuracy, and was as intuitive to use as the Instinct 2. It was easy for me to replace my daily Instinct Crossover with this with barely three minutes of setup, seamlessly taking over with my sleep tracking, Body Battery and Training Readiness scores from my old watch.

Overall? As a pre-existing Instinct fan, I’m loving it. It’s fast, it’s bright, it looks fun, and most importantly, it’s useful. Yes, it’s chunky and plasticky, and if you don’t like the old design, you won’t like this one either. But it’s not a sleek metal communications tool: it’s a toy, and it’s best played with outside.

Garmin Instinct 3: Price and availability

(Image credit: Future / Stephen Warwick)

• Instinct E starts at $299 / £259 / AU$549
• 45mm Instinct 3 starts at $399 / £349 / AU$829.
• 50mm Instinct 3 starts at $449 / £429 / AU$929

The Garmin Instinct 3 is available now on Garmin’s website and other retailers, slightly confusingly with five different prices, depending on which model you pick.

The cheapest Instinct E is available now for $299 / £259 / AU$549. The 45mm watch starts at $399 / £349 / AU$729 for the MIP Solar screen, rising to $449 / £389 / AU$829 for the AMOLED screen option. The largest 50mm watch with MIP Solar screen is available from $449 / £429 / AU$829, rising to $499 / £449 / AU$929 for the AMOLED screen option.

Garmin Instinct 3: Specifications

(Image credit: Future / Stephen Warwick)

Below are the specifications for our review unit, the 45mm AMOLED Instinct 3.

Garmin Instinct 3: Design

(Image credit: Future / Matt Evans)

• Chunky polymer casing
• Choice of screens
• Intuitive, unchanged Garmin layout

The Instinct 3 builds closely on the design legacy of the Garmin Instinct 2, and the casing looks mostly the same. It’s got loads of colors, it’s roughly the same thickness, roughly the same weight (with just a gram of difference between the 45mm Instinct 3 versus the 45mm Instinct 2), and it’s still got five buttons and similar bezel indentations. The main differences are the metal accents, the new AMOLED screen option, and the flashlight, neither of the latter are available on the smallest Instinct E.

The new AMOLED screen is clear and bright, and seems at first glance to have a faster refresh rate than slightly older AMOLEDs like the Garmin Epix Pro 2 and Garmin Forerunner 965, although I’ll have to confirm that’s the case in my full review. I like the default watch face layout, although this is easily changed, and navigating around the watch with the five-button control interface is intuitive for me (a regular Garmin user) even if my Apple Watch-wearing fitness writer, Stephen Warwick, was offended at the lack of touchscreen.

While Garmin’s Forerunner, Venu and Fenix watches have adopted the hybrid of buttons and touchscreen, it’s another feature missing from the Instinct 3 to keep it affordable. The same could be said of the chunky ‘fiber-reinforced polymer’ (read that as ‘thick plastic’) casing, with slim metal accents the only thing separating it from being too childish for some users. Metal screws give it a rugged edge.

Functionally, the heart rate and skin temperature sensor array has been given a slight upgrade, with the watch now sporting the more accurate Elevate Gen 5 instead of Gen 4. The universal Garmin proprietary charger remains the same, only with a newer USB-C cable instead of USB-A, as is standard with most Garmins now.

Garmin Instinct 3: Features

(Image credit: Future / Matt Evans)

• Almost all of Garmin’s wellness features
• New torch is useful
• Basic directional maps

For the uninitiated, opening a Garmin watch and scrolling down with the ‘down’ button provides a list of wellness, navigational, and quality-of-life widgets. Outdoor-focused widgets range from the weather, sunrise and sunset times, and a compass shortcut to your sleep tracking information. Wellness stuff includes your last completed workout, sleep, Body Battery and your Training Readiness score. As a watch tailored to the great outdoors, all the functionalities you expect can be found here and the list can be customized as usual to suit your needs. Climbing a mountain? Stick the altimeter at the top. A keen marathon runner? Choose the ‘Race Calendar’ widget.

It’s fun, intuitive and acts like the watchOS 11 widget stack, but less flashy. I found most of the usual Garmin stuff there, but some premium features like Endurance Score and Hill Score were missing. They would have been nice to have. As previously mentioned, there’s no topographical maps functionality either, just basic directional guidance, but there have never been maps on an Instinct watch, and most of the time directions are all you need. You can, however, still retrace your steps with the ‘TracBack’ feature, along with a slew of other navigational tools.

Hardware-wise, the new torch is very useful: it comes in four intensities and a less dazzling red option, just like the torch on the Garmin Fenix 8. I’ve already used the red light on an evening run and the white light to help me stumble my way to the bathroom at six am. In the morning, you’ll get a daily digest, Garmin’s ‘Morning Report’ detailing information on your sleep, the weather, your Training Readiness, and a motivational message. Garmin’s been doing this for a while and it’s refined the feature over the last couple of years. Its long battery life means you won’t shy away from wearing it to bed.

• Our performance section, final scores and verdict will be added after around two weeks of testing – watch this space!

Check out our picks for the best AV receivers from Onkyo, Sony, Yamaha, Denon and Marantz.

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