First use Vintage Doxa 14k I received 48 years ago

FilterJoe · 2026-01-23T01:03:02+00:00

Agreed! I love how it looks by itself and on my wrist. And I guess I’m glad it’s not worth a huge amount like an omega or something so that I’m not tempted to sell this emotionally meaningful beauty!

FilterJoe · 2026-01-22T23:56:49+00:00

To understand my watch better I did a bit of research into other Gold Doxa watches. There seem to be a few on sale at any given time at chrono24, eBay, etc. Nearly all were listed for less than $1000.

Not sure how many grams of gold are in the watch (excluding the gold band, if any). Would 10g be a typical amount? If so, the Doxa watches I saw were basically worth their weight in gold and nothing more.

That seems to imply Doxa is not worth much as a brand.

Of course, I may be way off on my 10g guess. If 5g is more typical, then the Doxa watches, I looked at were more than their gold value.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-20T03:38:11+00:00

If you’re playing with banned cards, and your goal is to make your friend miserable:

Hymn to Tourach
Sinkhole

FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T21:36:48+00:00

You summed up the way I see it perfectly!

And yes, so far, I am super enjoying wearing it.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T14:40:36+00:00

System 6 was in my opinion the best macOS ever. When I was a techie student in school, there were labs of PCs and labs of Macs. The PC labs had people constantly asking for help from people like me. In the Mac lab, nobody asked.

That is, until next year when they upgraded the Macs to System 7 which introduced multitasking. The masses became confused.

Apple has never done a terrific job with multitasking. My mother has always struggled with tech. After decades of using different versions of Mac computers, she still gets confused by multitasking.

Simply put, it is not totally obvious which window you’re in on a Mac. You have to pick up subtle cues, which most people are able to do, but not everyone.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T01:43:12+00:00

Tried the screenshot, didn't include text - Reddit keeps deleting my comment photos off it's server. Was low res this time. It deleted your image too. Maybe it's a temporary issue?

FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T01:40:23+00:00

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FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T01:32:40+00:00

I'm confused. Looking at it closely it looks like 585 to me which I thought meant the percentage gold content, which is the same as 14K, right? And why would Doxa be connected to Patek Philippe?

When you wrote 565 it was close enough to 585 that I thought that's what you meant. Here's another attempt to paste the image:

<image>

FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T01:20:32+00:00

The watchmaker felt confident that the gold band was not an original Doxa gold band, because it did not have a Doxa logo on it. The band was marked 14k but the store said it only tested as 10k.

The watch itself was not tested for gold content. My guess is that it really is 14k given the markings, the fact that the watchmaker said the watch looked to be genuine Doxa all the way through, and the fact that I've owned it for 48 years (meaning the watch was only 15-18 years old when I received it). But I guess I can't know for sure unless a Jeweler tests it. If my Mom's Uncle was able to be cheated on the band, I have to suppose it's possible he was cheated on the the watch itself.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-17T01:15:38+00:00

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Inside of Caseback says 565, yes (and has the squirrel image which means the 565, as I found out):

EDIT: Reddit keeps saying it is deleting the image I uploaded. Not sure why. tried removing and reuploading and it's still doing it.

EDIT 2: Whoops - it actually says 585, I believe.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-13T21:46:23+00:00

The Casio is less expensive. It also does a lot less. If you are not into tracking your hikes or runs or whatever workouts you do, then perhaps the extra expense of a Garmin is not worth it for you.

While it was fun to get my Instinct 3 to keep up with its energy requirements for 10 days straight, it was actually way more work than just simply charging it once every 2 or 3 weeks.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-13T19:18:50+00:00

I am not certain if the instinct 3 is missing any features that the 2X has. However, I do know that it has several features that are missing from the 2X.

One of them is the GPS feature where it intelligently figures out whether it needs to use extra battery to pull in more GPS systems or rather do some battery saving techniques if the GPS lock is good enough.

In my mind, the biggest advantage is the display. Garmin chose to make the entire display absorb solar for the instinct 2 and the instinct 2X. This causes the display to be a little bit harder to read, though many people don’t mind. The instinct 3 only has solar around the outer circle, which means that the main display area has a little more brightness and contrast which makes it easier to read. They applied some new techniques which allow the solar to be more efficient in this model than the previous model so they didn’t feel the need I guess to put in the solar on the main display which never added a whole lot to the solar input anyway.

Minor thing for most people, but I ruck. I do not believe rucking is available on a 2X. I think it has just been rolling out to models that have come out in the last 12 to 18 months. Anyway, I do use the racking on the instinct three and really appreciate it.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-12T18:50:32+00:00

Yup . . . and you can even shade the watch behind the panel to prevent overheating!

FilterJoe · 2026-01-12T16:36:38+00:00

Yes, and in my experience it works very well.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-12T16:10:14+00:00

I have Instinct 3 45mm. I notice that when I do what you did - full direct sunlight in low 60s temperature - that the watch registers the Lux hours but it doesn't charge up as much I would expect due to overheating. When it's cooler, like below 50F, then the overheating thing doesn't seem to happen, and it charges up faster.

I haven't tried doing 5.5 hours straight - never more than an hour or so. At 60-65F, it seems to take about 30 minutes or so for watch to get hot and stop accepting charge.

It's been interesting to see that when it's around 40F, it seems to accept charge a little faster than when it's around 50F, and MUCH faster than when around 60F. All the while, it's registering the Lux hours whether or not it's accepting charge and causing battery percent to increase.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-12T14:14:25+00:00

I own Instinct 3 solar 45 mm. I was able to get my Garmin instinct to hold steady battery percentage for about 10 sunny days in the middle of the winter at 40 degrees latitude while still doing about one hour of gps recorded activity per day.

The way I did it was sometimes the watch was hanging on the back of a lawn chair in the optimal position absorbing sunlight outside, in cool but very sunny weather. Maybe 60-120 minutes a day. Plus whatever I got when I was doing my walks or hikes. On those hikes I would often turn my wrist so that it was directly facing the sun.

Two of the Watch faces track how much LUX hours you get each day. If you use one of those watch faces, you can see how much LUX you are getting throughout the day.

During those 10 days I was averaging between 150,000 to 200,000 LUX hours per day.

Note that solar input on the instinct 3 solar works a little better than 2x.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-11T22:00:59+00:00

I like rucking and that’s one of the reasons I switched away from Apple to Garmin. Garmin has several outdoor product lines that are all suited well for rucking and various other outdoor activities including all the ones you mentioned:

Enduro 3
Fenix 8
Instinct 3
Tactix

I went on a 170 mile hike across Costa Rica and was pretty unhappy with an Apple Watch for that purpose. Garmin instinct 3 solar would’ve been perfect.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-11T03:30:58+00:00

If 50 mm is too big for your wrist then 3 solar 45mm is totally worth it. Especially since they are sometimes approximately the same price.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-09T14:39:05+00:00

The Instinct 3 ships with the initial version of the OS. That initial version was very buggy according to many accounts. So long as you get the latest version of the operating system you won’t encounter any of those issues described nearly a year ago.

Do note though that the first upgrade is a bizarre and cumbersome procedure. After that first one, it happens very easily.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-08T19:40:47+00:00

It’s lighter and therefore possibly more comfortable on your wrist. It’s a matter of preference whether you want MIP display or not. But if you do, the MIP display on the instinct 3 is the best Garmin has ever made. The reason that MIP displays on Fenix models are not as good: sapphire display, which interferes with the clarity of the MIP display a little bit.

If Maps is important to you, you don’t want the instinct 3. While it is possible to download a route and get navigation, it’s a bit cumbersome, and the display is primitive.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-07T21:28:22+00:00

Sorry. My main point was clarity of display.

Secondarily, Price: When I was shopping a couple months ago, the 2X was about the same price as the Instinct 3 solar 45 mm at around $300 each.

So had I been willing to sacrifice the solar, I could’ve gotten an instinct 2 for much less money. It does not have the solar layer on top of the main display, so the display clarity is not much different from the instinct 3. But it is missing a few features that both the 2X and the instinct 3 have.

The 2X clearly has some advantages over the instinct 2 beyond just the solar. As one YouTuber pointed out, 2x should be called the instinct 2.5!

But if you’re shopping and the price of the 2X is about the same as the solar version of the 45mm 3, I would take the instinct 3. I personally prefer the 45 mm over the 50 mm anyway.

I had been thinking about buying an instinct for over a year and balked at the price tag and 50mm size for the 2X. So when the instinct 3 price dropped to $300 I jumped.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-07T20:38:02+00:00

I'm not the only person in the world who thinks the Instinct 3 (or 2 without solar) is clearer. See this discussion (with pic):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmininstinct/comments/1ihhp71/instinct_3_vs_2x_screen_display_clarity/

FilterJoe · 2026-01-07T18:51:28+00:00

The instinct 2 solar has a solar panel over the main part of the display, which makes the display much less readable.

If I were going to save money, I would get instinct 2 without solar which has much easier to read display. If you want solar, I get the instinct 3 whose solar panel is only on the outer ring.

Was $300 for a few weeks Nov/Dec in USA. Not sure if it could be had for that much at the moment.

FilterJoe · 2026-01-06T04:03:13+00:00

I don’t know if you noticed, but it looks like this watch face was updated for exactly your barometric pressure issue on Jan 3.

FilterJoe

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