My plan as a young boy was to be a pilot, and it wasn’t until my early 20s that I pivoted a bit to serving as an engineer down below the decks of a ship instead of cruising above the sea in the air. I won’t be able to evaluate the new Garmin D2 Air X10, but I can certainly appreciate its capabilities as an assistant or backup for pilots. The major new features for the D2 Air X10, compared to the D2 Air, is the addition of phone call support from the wrist through a connected smartphone and the ability to access and control your voice assistant from the watch. We saw Garmin make these same new featurs available in the Garmin Venu 2 Plus. The D2 Air X10 also has that same fantastic OLED display for excellent visibility in various lighting conditions with a smooth touchscreen and button interface. Also: Best sports watch 2022: Garmin, Coros, Polar, and more Since this is a watch focused on aviation, the D2 Air X10 has a preloaded worldwide database of airports and waypoints for navigation assistance. A horizontal situation indicator is present with a barometric altimeter and several aviation alerts such as time, distance, altitude, and fuel timers. The watch will track your flight and transfer the date, duration, total flight time, and route to your flyGarmin.com logbook. Flight plans can also be transferred from the Garmin Pilot app. Weather-related functions are also supported with METARs and TAFs that provide wind, visibility, and more. While pilots have large display devices with all of this information, the D2 Air X10 can serve as a good backup or supplement for these devices. Garmin also includes a host of the typical health and wellness features you expect on a GPS sportswatch. These include advanced sleep tracking, Body Battery, pulse oximeter, respiration measurements, stress tracking, women’s health tracking, and heart rate monitoring. More than 25 sports and activities are present, including running, walking, golf, hiking, and more. Offline music services are supported, as well as Garmin Pay, smartphone notifications, and more. Also: Venu 2 Plus review: Garmin moves closer to a true smartwatch The Garmin D2 Air X10 is available in black or ivory with a 43mm watch case, stainless steel bezel, and 20mm quick release band. Battery life is rated for up to seven days as a smartwatch and 20 hours when used with GPS and pulse oximeter measurements. It is available now for $549.99.
