Garmin’s latest move feels like a little nudge — and a shove — toward making the pilot’s wrist a real cockpit hub. On October 22, 2025, the company introduced two new aviator smartwatches, the D2 Air X15 and the D2 Mach 2 (47mm / 51mm), and they’re not shy about trying to be both a serious flight instrument and something you’d actually want to wear when you’re off duty.

If you’ve followed Garmin’s D2 line, this feels like the next logical chapter: brighter AMOLED screens, built-in speakers and mics for voice and calls, and deeper hooks into Garmin’s avionics ecosystem so flight info, alerts and even limited messaging live on your wrist. The new models aren’t just about beep-and-blink avionics; Garmin also padded them with mainstream smartwatch and health features — sleep, pulse ox, activity tracking — so they can keep up whether you’re flying cross-country or just trying to sleep after a red-eye.

There’s a practical message behind the polish. Pair the watches with Garmin Pilot and compatible Garmin avionics and you can pull flight data, navigation cues and crew-alert messages straight to the face of the watch. That’s not just convenience; it’s about giving pilots another glanceable layer of situational awareness when toggling between panels isn’t ideal. Garmin is also baking in aviation voice commands and workflow shortcuts — start a Fly activity, go direct-to, or ask for the METAR — which is one of those features that sounds small until you actually fly with gloves on.

The D2 Air X15 is pitched as the entry point for pilots who want a lighter footprint. It wraps a 45mm case around a 1.4-inch AMOLED screen, uses Gorilla Glass 3, and includes a two-tone LED flashlight with a red-light mode for night ops — the sort of tactile things that matter during an IFR departure at 0300. Garmin also gave the X15 dynamic watch faces that reflect METAR conditions at a selected airport, so the face becomes a tiny weather quick-check without digging into menus. Battery life is sensible for an everyday watch: Garmin rates the Air X15 for up to about 10 days in smartwatch mode.

For pilots who want to live in their watch, the D2 Mach 2 is the flagship. It elevates materials — sapphire glass, titanium bezels, leakproof buttons — and stretches hardware and software toward pro use. The Mach 2 is available in two sizes (47mm and 51mm), and the larger model is advertised with battery endurance that can rival a handheld radio: up to 14 days in smartwatch mode for the 47mm and up to 26 days for the 51mm, depending on settings. The watch also packs what Garmin is calling its most detailed aviation maps yet for an aviator watch: color-coded airspace, topo shading, VORs, intersections, and a live breadcrumb trail of your flight path.

One of the subtler but instantly useful additions on the Mach 2 is configurable personal weather minimums. You can program your own thresholds — ceilings, visibility, crosswind limits, density altitude and so on — and the watch will actively monitor METARs against those limits, flagging elements on the face when a threshold is crossed. It’s a small nudge toward discipline: instead of a paper kneeboard note, your minimums are on screen and updating as conditions change. For risk-minded or single-pilot operators, that could change decision flow in real time.

Garmin didn’t ignore the “wear it all day” angle. Beyond aviation tools, there are full health and activity suites, music storage, contactless payments and standard smartwatch notifications — the kind of feature set pilots have come to expect from their daily driver devices. The Mach 2 goes further with water resistance and dive features, supporting single-gas scuba activity and adding a post-dive no-fly timer, so it’s not just a cockpit instrument but a travel-and-sports companion too. That crossover reflects a broader industry truth: owners want specialized tools that aren’t specialized sacrifices.

If you already live in Garmin’s avionics ecosystem, both watches make a lot of sense as extensions of that stack. PlaneSync support — which lets a paired device pull non-flight-critical data from a compatible aircraft while it’s on the ramp — shows Garmin is thinking about continuity between hangar, phone and cockpit. Practical examples: checking fuel or electrical status from the flight line, confirming database currency, or pulling location info before you step into the plane. That connectivity is conditional on compatible avionics and any required subscriptions, but it’s the sort of integrated feature that can shave minutes and reduce uncertainty on preflight.

Ownership will cost you. Garmin’s suggested U.S. pricing puts the D2 Air X15 at roughly $649.99, while the D2 Mach 2 starts in the mid-four figures — about $1,349.99 for the 47mm and $1,499.99 for the 51mm. Those aren’t impulse buys, but for pilots who already spend on panel upgrades and portable avionics, the watches slide into an existing price paradigm where integrated capability and certified avionics interoperability carry value.

There are trade-offs. The Mach 2’s heavier materials and pro features mean a larger footprint on the wrist, and the price puts it in competition with other high-end multisport watches that share some features but not the aviation focus. The D2 Air X15 aims to bridge that by offering many of the aviation niceties in a lighter package, but its reduced price and size also mean fewer premium materials and slightly shorter claimed endurance than the larger Mach 2. For many, the choice will come down to how much cockpit data they want immediately available versus how much they value weight, style and battery life.

For a watch that’s trying to be both a kneeboard and lifestyle accessory, Garmin’s new D2s are candid about what they are: integrated nodes in a larger flight system rather than standalone replacements for certified avionics. They’re useful for situational awareness, lightweight in-flight tasks and pre/post-flight checks, and they nudge pilots toward keeping personal minimums and weather awareness front and center. Whether they become mission-critical tools will depend on how pilots incorporate wrist data into cockpit flow and on the hardware in their planes. But for anyone who’s ever squinted down at a tablet in turbulence and wished for a glanceable, voice-accessible cue, these watches feel like the next sensible step.

If you’re shopping, check compatibility with your aircraft and avionics before splurging — the watches really sing when they’re part of a broader Garmin setup — and try the ergonomics: size, strap options and how the watch handles with gloves on will matter more in the cockpit than they do on the pavement. Ultimately, the D2 Air X15 and D2 Mach 2 make a tidy case that the pilot’s wrist is becoming a small, sensible cockpit console rather than just a place to check the time.