The Best Fitness Watches for Outdoor Adventures

This post is part of Find Your Fit Tech, Lifehacker’s fitness wearables buying guide. I’m asking the tough questions about whether wearables can really improve your health, how to find the right one for you, and how to make the most of the data wearables can offer.

A watch can be a great friend when you’re out adventuring—helping you navigate, communicate, and keep track of your activity, no matter what you end up doing. “Outdoors watches” have a tougher job to do than a running watch or a general-purpose fitness tracker, and I have a few picks for the best ones.

To be clear, you don’t need a watch just to hike and camp and kayak. But many outdoor adventurers enjoy having one as an on-wrist companion…so here’s a guide to finding the right one for you.

What to look for in an outdoors watch

Does it come with maps?

Some GPS watches come with fully-featured maps, preloaded onto the watch. Others have GPS functionality, minus the maps. With these, you can get a track of where you’ve been (“breadcrumbs”) and you can mark specific spots you’d like to come back to (“waypoints”). Pay attention to whether a watch comes with its own maps, can accept maps that you upload yourself, or can only do breadcrumbs and waypoints.

How good is the GPS?

GPS isn’t the only game in town anymore. There’s also GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, and QZSS. But you don’t need to choose: the best accuracy will come from watches that can use several different systems. GPS itself will usually be in the mix, but note that single-band GPS isn’t as accurate as dual-band. In general, the more services a watch can use, the more accurate it will be.

What is the battery life?

Smartwatches need to last all day; running watches need to get you through a run. But for an outdoors watch to really shine in the battery department, it should be able to tackle days-long hikes. Some of my picks will last for weeks on their lower battery settings, and be able to track an all-day activity with GPS running the whole time. I’m also awarding extra points here to watches that can do solar charging.

Make sure to check the settings on your watch; there may be several battery-saving settings to allow you to fine-tune the tradeoffs you’re making.

Our picks for the best outdoor and adventure watches

Best overall: Coros Apex 2 Pro ($US449)

The Coros Apex 2 Pro has five-system GNSS with multi-band GPS for accurate location tracking. The Pro comes with global maps pre-loaded.

This watch has a multitude of sport modes, including different types of swimming, biking, and skiing, water sports like windsurfing, and not just rock climbing but also multi-pitch climbing. There are also triathlon and multi-sport modes for when you need to combine multiple activities into one workout.

The Apex 2 Pro gets 24 days of use in smartwatch mode, and 66 hours with full GPS. It’s also got a sapphire screen and can give you training plans if you like.

• Coros Apex 2 Pro ($US449)
• The Coros Apex 2 (not pro) is $US349. The GPS isn’t multi-band and it doesn’t come with maps, but you can upload the ones you need.
• The Coros Vertix 2 is an upgrade from the Apex, retailing for $US699 and featuring a longer battery life, and a bigger, higher-resolution screen.

Best for battery life: Garmin Instinct Solar ($US259.99)

This rugged watch has multi-system GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo) plus its own built-in compass and altimeter. Garmin also brags that it’s built to military standard 810 for heat, shock, and water resistance.

The Instinct Solar doesn’t come with full-featured maps, but you can navigate with breadcrumbs (seeing a line showing where you’ve been) and waypoints (marking a spot so you can navigate to it later).

The Instinct Solar has a long battery life, allowing for 24 days (not hours, days!) in smartwatch mode, or 30 hours while recording GPS and heart rate. At the other end of its spectrum, the watch can go a whopping 56 days in battery-saving mode. If the watch gets at least three hours of bright (50,000 lux) sunlight per day, you could theoretically get unlimited battery life.

• My pick: Garmin Instinct Solar ($US259.99)
• For a budget option, the non-solar Instinct is currently just $US169.99.
• Want the best and newest? The Garmin Instinct 2 Solar is $US399.99, but the upgrades are pretty minimal when compared to the original version. For example, you’ll  get a slightly better battery life, and the ConnectIQ feature that lets you customize the watch faces.

The fancy-pants model: Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Solar Sapphire ($US899.99)

This was our pick for a top-of-the-line running watch, and it takes the same spot here as well. The Fenix 7 series has a long battery life, solar charging (in models with Solar in the name), a rugged build with scratch-resistant glass, and a flashlight to be handy around a campsite.

Besides the obvious running and hiking activities, the Fenix 7 has modes for plenty more, including skiing, rock climbing, and even skydiving. There are also modes for hunting and fishing, with features to navigate to your favorite hunting spots or to note when and where you caught a fish.

There’s also an expedition mode, which notes your location once an hour—perfect for multi-day hikes, where you might want to know how far you went that day but you don’t want to run down your battery tracking all the time.

• My pick: Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Solar Sapphire ($US899.99)
• Want to save a few bucks? Here’s a Fenix 7S Solar (not Pro, not Sapphire) for $US579.99. Battery life is 11 to 14 days depending on how much sun it gets.
• If you can do without the flashlight, solar panels, or touchscreen, you can save even more with this refurbished Fenix 6 Pro for $US329.99.

Best off the beaten path: Suunto 9 Baro ($US239)

While Garmin and Coros are the best-known brands in this area, Finnish brand Suunto has its dedicated followers. I’ve read countless forum threads where people enthuse about how well-built the watches are and how they’re a better deal for the money than Garmins with similar specs.

The Suunto 9 Baro gets its name from the built-in barometer, which measures air pressure and can warn you when a storm is coming. This watch has 80 different sport modes. The battery lasts up to 7 days in smartwatch mode, or can handle 24 hours of activity tracking with GPS.

• My pick: Suunto 9 Baro ($US239)
• If you want to stick with Suunto but need more battery life, check out the Suunto Vertical ($US629) which has 60 days’ worth of battery in watch mode. It also has free global maps.
• The Suunto 9 Peak Pro ($US409) has a 21-day battery life, and is slightly smaller and lighter than the 9 Baro.