For this year, first we’re going to show you our five best picks. Then we’ll talk about what you should look for before buying a smart watch for hiking. You can find time stamps and links to all of the products we mentioned in this video down in the description below let’s get started. Number five garmin instinct, solar, the garmin instinct packs in a lot of the same features found on the phoenix 6 for less and now also gets solar charging to give battery life a boost on your adventures. You miss out on proper mapping features, but you do get the likes of course: navigation, uploading of gpx routes, elevation data, storm alerts and track pack for following waypoints back to your starting location, there’s a heart rate monitor on board. That should be good enough for your big tricks and now adds a pulse oximeter to a tracking and training at altitude. While it lacks contactless payments and a built in music player, it does let you view your smartphone notifications. When it comes to battery life, you can expect 24 days in smartwatch mode when indoors and up to 50 days with regular exposure to sunlight number four garmin fenix 6 pro the garmin fenix 6 range is one of the best quality outdoor watches on the market and Offers mapping and gpx waypoint functionality with absurdly long battery life and a tough build. The phoenix is essentially the greatest hits of all garmin’s top features.

It tracks everything from trail running to xc skiing and includes a hiking mode for those that are really into fitness. There’S. A heart rate which feeds into the vo2 max stats for high intensity sports, with training effect and recovery data, but let’s stick to why this watch is the best option for outdoors types. You can upload gpx routes from the connect app or third party apps like strava. You also get so much more data than many other outdoor watch options. The phoenix 6 pro uses topographic maps, which adds a whole dimension to risk based navigation, and you can even find places of interest rate from the watch. Number three polar grit x. The grit x is the first outdoor watch from polar but it’s brought some seriously neat features and is available at a competitive price. Outdoors watches need good battery life and that’s ticked off here, with 40 hours of full gps tracking that can be extended to 100 hours. Using power, saving polar has, put a big focus on endurance and recovery. So major features are the fuel wise feature that enables you to plan your adventure and of polo work out when you should eat how much and remind you on the go we found it worked. Really well, but the reminders were a little easy to miss there’s sleep tracking, with a focus on recovery, which we found outstripped garmin in terms of accuracy and running stats in vo2. Max are a big part of the feature set thanks to the 10 led array.

Heart rate monitor number two amazefit t rex, something from the other end of the price scale. The maze fits t rex is an outdoor sports watch that does a decent imitation of a garmin fenix for a reasonable price at 47. Millimeters it’s, big there’s. No doubt about that, but no more of a monster than the phoenix 6 pro and smaller and lighter than the phoenix 6x it’s built to military grade toughness standards and is water resistant to 5 atm. You get 14 tracked sports, including trekking, although there’s no mapping built into the watch like the garmin, instinct or phoenix. However, you will get around 20 hours of gps tracking, which is not too bad at all. Amazefit’S app experience is nowhere near as detailed as garmin but it’s a clean experience with plenty of interesting fitness data. If you’re into running the vo2 max metrics from the first beat the same company that handles garmin’s advanced, analytics and you’re, getting all that goodness for a fraction of the price number one coros vertex carl’s is a bit of a newcomer to the space, but on a Short space of time managed to launch a collection of impressive multi sport watches, including the outdoor centric vertex, looks wise. The similarly sized 48 millimeter watch definitely takes some design. Inspiration from garmin’s phoenix series, but, unlike its rifle, does include some touchscreen functionality for some features tracking wise. It covers the basis in terms of satellite system, support and dedicated modes for the likes of hiking and trail running.

You do also have the ability to import gpx routes or build your own, though the experience on the watch is pretty basic there’s, also a pulse oximeter to keep you safe, exploring at altitude and a pretty reliable heart rate monitor based on our intensive testing. Smart watch features are a little bit more basic with notification support, but no music or payment features in tow. Now that we’ve shown you the best smart watches for hiking let’s talk about a few things you should look for before buying one battery life battery life is an essential consideration. When purchasing a watch, you want a watch, you can go the distance with and it won’t die before you can charge it again. The time between charges is highly dependent on how you use your watch. If you use gps every day to track your hikes all day, then you’ll need to charge every night or every other night. If you only use gps occasionally, then you can squeeze between five to seven days out of a full charge. Some watches, like the sun tone, 9, have unique power, saving modes that cut down on gps usage in exchange for longer battery life. If battery life is an issue, then you should consider a non gps watch that lasts weeks and even months without charging some of the models we review use solar power, which extends their battery life glass.

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