Garmin's new smartwatch lets streamers show real-time heart rates
The $300 Instinct Esports Edition watch is available now.
Watch a Twitch streamer playing horror game du jour Phasmophobia, progressing in a tense esports tournament or perfecting a speedrun, and you might see their current heart rate on their feed. Garmin is offering broadcasters another way to layer that data into their streams with an Esports Edition of its Instinct GPS smartwatch.
The smartwatch uses Bluetooth to hook into a PC streaming tool called STR3AMUP!, which might be the worst name I've heard for anything in my entire life. Broadcasters can then display their live heart rate, stress and Body Battery energy level data on their streams.
The Instinct Esports Edition also has an esports activity profile you can use to monitor your heart rate and stress level along with the game session time and time of day. You can sync that data to the Garmin Connect app. Garmin's promising a battery life of up to three days when the device is in esports mode or 14 days in smartwatch mode.
The wearable includes some standard smartwatch features as well, such as sleep monitoring and notifications when it's connected to a compatible smartphone. There are more than 30 sports apps and profiles for other types of activity tracking too. The Instinct Esports Edition is available now. It costs $299.99 in the US and £269.99 in the UK.
